THE PLANK JULY 24, 2009
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Hillary Clinton was slammed this week by a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman, who called her unintelligent and "unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community." He said she should brush up on her "understanding of the world." Piling on, he also said that "sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."
Who is North Korea to give advice? Turns out, the Hermit Kingdom often doles out tips--and in exceedingly awesome language. As one official release says, Pyongyang "does not say empty words." So we took a look at some of its finest missives.
--Elise Foley
Photo courtesy of Getty Images
2 comments
My blood freezes at the thought of that day when the North Koreans come out and say, "Ironyroad? Uh, basically a decent sort of guy . . ."
- ironyroad
July 24, 2009 at 7:09pm
Sure, it's always fun to play, "whack their dictator".
But the mainstream media almost never play, "whack our dictator".
In part because we put so many of those kind of tyrants in power ourselves. And because we continue to pay lip service to "democracy" in our thug regimes while skewering the lack thereof in their thug regimes.
Or aim the beam at our own government.
Indeed, there is absolutely no comparison between Washington and Pyongyang.
But if anything has been exposed over the past decade it is how, with respect to top drawer economic and foreign policy issues, American citizens are kept woefully in the dark. Up that high it is always strictly on a "need to know" basis.
As the hopes for a reformed and more broadly inclusive healthcare package begin to crumble, we hear rumors about secret meetings and negociations in the White House with top healthcare industry CEOs [re Cheney and the energy industry] and the occasional story about Congressional lobbyists buying the votes of crucial Congressional leaders.
But it's all so vague and insubstanial. And it's always the usual suspects. Few grasp the extent to which this is systemically built right into our political economy.
And really: How much more information leaks out to us about U.S. foreign policy? How much more sunshine pours into Washington than in Pyongyang? Substantially more, sure. But, again, as with the crony capitalists embedded in the healthcare "debate", the "debate" over foreign policy is, in many important respects, as much a farce as well. The narratives get tweaked here and there but the essential bottomline relationships almost never change.
george walton
- iambiguous
July 24, 2009 at 9:28pm