On this week’s only podcast, COMMENTARY’s Abe Greenwald and Noah Rothman join John Podhoretz to discuss the unholy choices posed by the North Korea ICBM test and wonder at the fact that the world of political commentary is far more concerned with a CNN story about an anonymous guy posting little films on the Internet than this world-shaking threat. Give a listen.

Subscribe to The Commentary Magazine Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.

There are 7 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Lazy_Millennial Inactive
    Lazy_Millennial
    @LazyMillennial

    On “what if there are no accomplishments”, some parallels from recent history:

    If it’s 1980, and an incompetent President has a bad economy and foreign crises, the President gets the boot.

    If it’s 1996, and an incompetent President has a great economy and no existential foreign threats, culture war gives the President another shot.

    • #1
  2. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    The other July 4th news that was more important than a tweet:

    Canada paid a convicted terrorist $10.5 M I L L I O N dollars because he did some time at Gitmo, Omar Khadr.

    • #2
  3. dicentra Inactive
    dicentra
    @dicentra

    Why do we obsess over the meme wars instead of a nuclear strike?

    • Because everybody knows what CNN is about
    • Because everybody has an opinion about Trump
    • Because everybody knows what doxxing can do to private citizens
    • Because the meme wars are trivial enough that one’s reaction to them has no lasting consequences
    • Because the last time we had to be afraid of a nuclear strike was 1989
    • Because the last time there was a nuclear strike was 1945
    • #3
  4. bill.deweese Inactive
    bill.deweese
    @bill.deweese

    All seriousness aside, aside from CNN’s penchant for Cyberbullying and allowing Trump to become a giant real estate mogul inside their heads, the only real news to come out of this recent spat is that there are still people out there that tragically continue to refer to a GIF file as a “jif file”. And please, don’t try to tell me it’s what the GIF file format creator would of wanted either.

    It’s Graphical Interchange Format, not Giraffe-ical Interchange Format. When a computer program or application has a Graphical User Interface, (commonly referred to as a GUI), it’s pronounced “gooey” not “jew-y”.

    • #4
  5. filmklassik Inactive
    filmklassik
    @filmklassik

    dicentra (View Comment):
    Why do we obsess over the meme wars instead of a nuclear strike?

    • Because everybody knows what CNN is about
    • Because everybody has an opinion about Trump
    • Because everybody knows what doxxing can do to private citizens
    • Because the meme wars are trivial enough that one’s reaction to them has no lasting consequences
    • Because the last time we had to be afraid of a nuclear strike was 1989
    • Because the last time there was a nuclear strike was 1945

    Granted we haven’t had a serious threat of nuclear attack since the Cold War, but are you seriously suggesting that the current regime in North Korea is above anything as twisted and psychotic as a first strike?   Do you really think that’s out of the question for these people?

    And now that they are closing in on acquiring the technology to launch one, aren’t you at least a wee bit concerned?

    • #5
  6. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    bill.deweese (View Comment):
    All seriousness aside, aside from CNN’s penchant for Cyberbullying and allowing Trump to become a giant real estate mogul inside their heads, the only real news to come out of this recent spat is that there are still people out there that tragically continue to refer to a GIF file as a “jif file”. And please, don’t try to tell me it’s what the GIF file format creator would of wanted either.

    It’s Graphical Interchange Format, not Giraffe-ical Interchange Format. When a computer program or application has a Graphical User Interface, (commonly referred to as a GUI), it’s pronounced “gooey” not “jew-y”.

    You make an excellent point. However I can see how the pronunciation of GUI might cause some unfortunate statements… For example “This design is too GUI, for our older users” could easily be misinterpreted. So while GUI may break the grammatical rules set by GIF, there is good reason …

    • #6
  7. Wolfsheim Member
    Wolfsheim
    @Wolfsheim

    Living in Japan, I do not watch CNN, so my interest in this podcast was largely focused on North Korea, not only because that Land of Mordor is nearby but also because I once lived in South Korea and have an enduring cultural and linguistic interest in the country. I very much enjoyed the meaty discussion and look forward to more such analysis. I would, however, suggest three corrections. Firstly, Kim Jong-un had his half-brother murdered in Malaysia, not his uncle. (The uncle he had executed in 2013 was Jang Songtaek, his father’s sister’s husband.) Secondly, the ideology of juche (主体), as the Koreans pronounce a conveniently vague term (‘subject, main constituent, sovereign entity’) borrowed from Chinese and also used in Japanese, is a mirage, intended to distract gullible foreigners. It is doubtful that many North Koreans would be anything but puzzled if asked about it. Identifying it, as many Westerners do, with the real ideology of North Korea (a revamped version of Japanese militarism, with ethnic racism and emperor worship) merely confuses the matter. Thirdly, Jimmy Carter, full of his own ego and lusting after the Nobel Peace Prize, went tripping off to North Korea quite on his own. Clinton should have had him prosecuted for negotiating with a hostile state as a private citizen but instead played face-saving catch-up with the runaway, even when, as I know from someone who was there at the time, Carter slipped his leash…One issue that went unmentioned is South Korean nationalism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia. Even if the US were to liberate North Korea with a minimum of death and destruction, it would not take long before the reunited Koreans began to demonize Americans, making them the second Japanese. As Clare Boothe Luce famously put it, no good deed goes unpunished.

    • #7
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.