Funny Strange or Funny Ha Ha?

My wife and daughters and I were watching Showtime at the Apollo on TV yesterday. My wife thinks it is great that there are venues where amateurs can go to get discovered without having a panel of judges compare them to experts. This time, though, there was a comedian doing an act about being involved in an interracial marriage and how it affected his kids. The Apollo is a mostly black venue and the comedian was white. He talked about his kids choosing whether or not to be black or white depending on the holidays that were available or the social circumstance that gave one more relative merit than the other.

He wasn’t that funny, and here’s why: there were no real, hard truths behind the differences he set out to evince in his routine. His social constructs were mostly toothless, and I believe this is because we Americans have been thinking more about ourselves as Americans lately.

I know the masses of Eastern Europeans who have moved into Western Europe to find work and better lives since the restructuring of the European Union have more differences and more real social problems than we black and white Americans do, and they are for the most part racially homogeneous. I know the nouveau riche in China’s cities are having serious issues with the influx of “classless” peasants from the countryside. I know the Bantu and Muslim east Africans are still perpetrating genocide against each other, even though they are, for the most part, racially homogeneous.

I think that black and white Americans are realizing that we are not so different anymore, and that soon enough we will not be different enough to make jokes about. My older daughter is far more aware of the differences in her parents’ cultures than she is of our races. I think the guy should try a new bit, maybe with date jokes or funny stories about his foibles while trying to do laundry or work at a factory or something.

Ka Ja Baek Du San!

Pyongyang soju is supposed to be the best in the world. And the different kinds of kim-chi in the north are said to be magnificent. Why, then, can we not drink and eat them? Why aren’t there shelves in all of the Korean markets all around the US dedicated to products from the DPRK?

North Korean communism isn’t a form of government only; it is a form of mass psychosis. Harsh words? Yes. I call it mass psychosis and not mass psychology because the thinking of the mass of the population is what is causing the harm to its own self. Some of the television programs from the south are making their way over the border and the people of the north believe the opulence shown to be clever and expensive propaganda. Korea could not possibly be as wealthy as they say, and the capitalist system could not possibly have produced enough goods and services to provide for the weal of the common person. All the while they are refuting this truth the North Korean people are starving so that the state can maintain an enormous, offensive army. Who allows this?

When Kim Il Sung died, I thought for sure that there would be an end to North Korean communism, and perhaps to the DPRK. South Korea was still perfecting the art of government without military, but I know they too had hopes that the death of the dictator could trigger talks that would eventually lead to reunification. When Kim Jong Il took control and the country carried on in its old way I was shocked to say the least.

The US never had a love affair with North Korea. The US never supported the North Korean government in any endeavor or tolerated its commitment to autocracy, as it has with Iraq. North Korea admits having atom splitting weaponry, and it is ready to test it, hot on the heels of tests of long range missiles (which happen to be fantastic delivery devices for atom splitting weapons). Even if the bombs can’t reach San Francisco, they can probably reach Tokyo. North Korea would not hesitate to blackmail Japan for tribute as it has tried to squeeze tribute from the West each time they agree to sit down for talks, six party or otherwise.

The US has already said that it would not allow North Korea to have atomic or nuclear weapons, and now it appears as if they do. The US has had plenty of warning and plenty of evidence, but it has done exactly nothing to prevent it. If there were ever a case to support Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive “regime-change”, then this is it. The absence of American diplomatic effort around this, and the silence of the Yankee guns emboldens Iran. It also proves to the world that US foreign, military policy is fickle and equivocal.

We should build an international military presence in Iraq and take every measure short of war to ensure that Iran and North Korea do not have or develop atomic or nuclear weapons. And in the case of North Korea, if such weapons already exist, then perhaps war is called for. The Bush administration has to stop thinking about power politics in the next round of elections in the US and has to start, albeit too late, to provide leadership to the world’s greatest power, and so to the world at large.

The great majority of American people is not against war per se, but is against the wrong war at the wrong time. If Americans knew that their blood and treasure were being spent in morally correct fields to prevent genocide or to wrest the tools of mass destruction from madmen then there would be no reason for the administration to rally support for the efforts, and conscientious allies would assist.

Now, what this has to do with the Irish American experience, I’m still working out…