Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Slipping up to the deadline just in time to win the 2011 award, uncontested, Simon Winchester wins, hands down:
The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please.
India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.
I need not comment, since Alex handles it ably. There is a CoC-violating word in his response, but if anyone can read that without violating the CoC, he's a better man than I am. Or woman, as the case happens to be.
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Apr '11
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Say what you like about Hitler, the man preserved and revived many distinctive and charming aspects of German culture. In an ever more homogenized Europe....
You know, when a reducto ad hitlerum is not actually a reduction, it's very difficult to parody a text.
Sep '11
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Oh...my...God. I can't believe what I just read.
Oct '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
The feelings of nostalgia simply overwhelm me as I long for the days when millions of people in India starved to death, and the West "interfered" in their ancient culture to bring relief.
Then there is the socialist mark of success, notably, razor wire and guard towers.
Did the ancient and honorable North Korean culture contain these rather modern indicators of ancient socialism which prevailed over all of unified Korea since ancient times?
Sep '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
This is the kind of stuff I edit all the time. The self-absorption, self-regard, the-world-is-flat analysis of culture by the luckiest among us is nauseating. Another reason why I don't think it's wise to be impressed by the ability of some esteemed intellectuals to abuse the content while using the language well.
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Oh wow, Leslie. That sounds awful! I can't imagine. I hope you have a few manuscripts you edit that make it worthwhile!
Jun '11
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
I forgot that Ghandi had also championed starving his people while consuming millions of dollars worth of Cognac.
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Yes, what could be more authentically Korean than a pickled Stalinist import?
Sep '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Thanks, Mollie! What I feel guilty about is making so many so-called scholars look so much better than they are (in terms of documentation; the writing is dreadful no matter what one does, that is, if you like points being precisely made, good transitions, the linking of ideas throughout). I've long expected this kind of work to dry up—and extended feelers for commercial work, which may soon be in at hand—but I think the process is being sped up by the education bubble bursting. Bad for me. Good for the country.
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
Oh wow, Leslie. That sounds awful! I can't imagine. I hope you have a few manuscripts you edit that make it worthwhile! · Dec 23 at 6:52am
Aug '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Claire Berlinski, Ed.:
Wow. My friend who's an English teacher and stand-up comic in South Korea would respectfully (or disrespectfully, as the case may be) disagree. Anyone who thinks South Korean culture isn't quite different from ours has made only the most superficial of observations.
And what's so authentically Korean about kindergarteners being forced to practice parade formations hour after hour for their Dear Leader? Why would anyone assume that the collectivist culture North Korea has now must be a more authentic specimen of Korean tradition? Isn't smashing traditional culture usually part of imposing collectivism?
Nov '11
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Wow. More offensive than Paul Krugman on 9/11. Impressive.
Jul '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Proof, if any were needed, that there is literally nothing that bien-pensant liberal internationalists will not excuse, as long as it strikes a blow against the "Americanization" of other cultures. How revolting.
Oct '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Appears to be tottering? My first clue would have been the history of massive famine, but I'm not particularly smart. Did I miss something?
May '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
ever notice that liberals who are constantly pleading for CHANGE in their own society suddenly become conservatives, opposing all change, when dealing with some foreign place?
Oct '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
... when the "foreign place" is socialist and implacably anti-US.
Oct '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
HVTs
... when the "foreign place" is socialist and implacably anti-US. · Dec 23 at 8:37am
Cuba being the classic example. This was the first time I saw it done with North Korea.
Oct '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
By Winchester's logic, when reduced to hunter-gather status, we'll all be authentically Homo Sapiens again.
Dec '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
James Of England: Say what you like about Hitler, the man preserved and revived many distinctive and charming aspects of German culture. In an ever more homogenized Europe....
You know, when a reducto ad hitlerum is not actually a reduction, it's very difficult to parody a text. · Dec 23 at 6:24am
Read somewhere - can't remember the source - that Hitler actually had great admiration for British culture. That's why in the initial bombing attacks on England only military sites were targeted. It was only after British bombers began attacking German civilian centers that Germany began targeting British cities.
Edited on December 23, 2011 at 6:01pmApr '11
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Fool or tool? Both.
Apr '11
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
The strange fascination with cultural "authenticity" is a nostalgic urge that, for some, can override their sense of simple human compassion.
Aug '10
Re: Alex Massie Discovers the Most Offensive Newspaper Column of the Year
Publius
HVTs
... when the "foreign place" is socialist and implacably anti-US.
Cuba being the classic example.
Well, only with Cuba once the Revolution was a done deal -- a revolution incidentally, that managed to wreck much of Cuba's cultural inheritance along the way, Havana's architecture being just one example.