Bill Simpich / Reader Supported News – 2014-12-31 00:46:34
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27778-focus-the-interview-seth-rogens-assassination-fantasy-is-sick
The Interview: Seth Rogen’s Assassination Fantasy Is Sick
Bill Simpich / Reader Supported News
(December 30, 2014) — Can you imagine a foreign movie dedicated to assassinating Barack Obama? Not just that, but proceeding to display it in loving detail — along with the president defecating in his pants minutes before the final attack?
It might be considered an act of war.
I’m a First Amendment maven — sure, Sony has the right to make this movie.
But it’s not funny.
It’s sick.
I’ve always liked Seth Rogen, the star and producer.
I appreciate humor that blows away boundaries.
But Rogen should hang his head in shame.
This is sick in all the wrong ways. (We live in an era where “sick” is a compliment.)
One of the North Korean woman leaders is named Suk. Guess what “the boys” would like her to do.
Hookers are bandied about for Kim Jong-un and James Franco to share . . . during the middle of the movie when it’s time to “humanize” the North Korean leader before he gets blown to bits.
While pretending to invoke the cheery spirit of Abbott and Costello in the midst of battle, Rogen’s movie displays an American culture that has fallen beneath the decadent standards of ancient Rome.
The United States government has a long history of killing and trying to kill foreign leaders.
This movie laughs about this kind of killing at every turn, secure that jokes about farts, goat-fucking, and cleavage shots of CIA officers will assure the audience that this is “all good fun.”
To name just a few of these murders of foreign leaders . . .
President Eisenhower directly called for the assassination of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba in 1960. Months later, Lumumba ran to try to escape his fate, and was killed by Belgian soldiers once he was outside his security perimeter.
Eisenhower also called for the assassination of Rafael Trujillo, in the Dominican Republic. CIA director Allen Dulles authorized passing machine guns to Trujillo’s enemies. Trujillo was shot dead by the end of May 1961.
In 1963, after deciding to overthrow the South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem, the CIA cabled the State Department “we do not set ourselves irrevocably against the assassination plot.” Diem and his brother were killed, and Vietnam descended into utter chaos.
The Church Committee found concrete evidence of at least eight plots to assassinate Fidel Castro between 1960 and 1965. There were also attempts to kill Raul Castro and Che Guevara. Che was killed after being taken prisoner in Bolivia in 1967, and an American officer wore Che’s Rolex afterwards as a trophy.
In 1970, after the socialist leader Salvador Allende was elected as Chile, President Nixon ordered his advisers to conduct a coup d’état. The principal obstacle within the Chilean military was General Rene Schneider, “who insisted the constitutional process be followed.” On October 22, the CIA passed machine guns to a rebel group. That same day, Schnieder was mortally wounded in a failed kidnap attempt.
The coup failed for the moment, but Allende was ultimately overthrown in a US-led coup in 1973. Allende died during the takeover.
The use of American drones to assassinate political figures has been a constant for the last several years, including American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011, and his 16-year-old son a month later.
Make no mistake about it, the release of this movie is a political act of hatred.
Business Insider reports that plans are underway to ship the movie to North Korea to stir unrest against the Supreme Leader. The rising demand is reportedly at $50 a pop.
Did you know that there are credible estimates that a quarter of North Korea’s population of ten million died in the Korean War?
You don’t have to be a fan of North Korea to realize that after the USA killed millions of their people in air strikes and forced them to live in caves, it’s understandable that their society would suffer from a chronic case of PTSD. The US dropped more bombs on Korea than on the entire Pacific theater during World War II.
The release of the movie was supposed to be killed because a North Korean cyberattack on Sony’s computers had made the movie commercially unviable.
That story got headlines around the world.
“Almost all signs point in another direction.” This is from the principal security researcher of Cloudfare, the world’s leading mobile security company. He thinks the likely culprit is an employee facing a pink slip, and the FBI sees this as an opportunity to pass tough new cyber laws.
By shipping this movie to the Internet and small indie theaters, CNN solemnly intones that small independent cinema owners are summoning “unabashed patriotism, rank silliness, vaudeville shtick and Yippie absurdity.” The Daily Beast tells us that viewers are “part of a moment . . . that will probably go down in film history.”
Film history? Like The Birth of a Nation?
In case you didn’t know, that was D.W. Griffith’s celebration of the Ku Klux Klan’s dedication to protect female morality. The Interview is hate speech wrapped neatly into an American flag. Seth Rogen is the D.W. Griffith of the 21st Century.
At least Griffith had the sense to repent.
Seth Rogen says that if you watch his movie, “you’re a goddamn fucking American hero.”
Boycott Rogen’s movie.
Watching it won’t make you ashamed to be an American.
Watching it will make you ashamed of being a human being.
Tell him to stop smoking so much pot.
And start figuring out that he’s hanging out with fascists.
Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney and an antiwar activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
