MEA CULPA
First to a minor matter. Rashly, I placed having sex with Jolie or Zeta-Jones among things that should be ranked as negative experiences. In truth, such an experience would be positive – but not by much. Give it 1.2 positive utility. As for the ranking of Hilton or Spears as definitely undesirable, I stand by my guns. (Awful metaphor, I confess, in this context.)
More important is that I plead guilty of thinking the one-time dirty Nips had changed to being respectable Nipponese. No such thing. A recent poll reported in the Japan Times reveals that 85.6% of them still believe the death penalty is a good and fine thing. They also oppose any statutes of limitations. Find some 97 year old invalid who committed a murder 75 years ago and they want to zap him.
Most Japanese are too young to remember what painful death is like. Only a small percentage of them was alive at the time of the atomic blastings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, the truly ancient among them may have fond memories of the tortures they inflicted on the Chinese during the famous “Rape of Nanking.” An intermediate number may have loved the death marches they imposed on American prisoners during World War II. How else, can I account for their passionate love of the death penalty?
95 nations in the civilized world have abolished death as a penalty and another 50, while retaining it on the books, never practice it. And just when I was beginning to think that these camera-crazed lunatics were civilized people. I apologize.
Reminds me of the story about the elderly Japanese male tourist walking in Manhattan. He stops an elderly male Jewish resident and asks, “Could you please direct me to Central Park”? The Jewish gentleman responds: “Pearl Harbor you could find…”
I believe that violence and death were always part of the Japanese warrior culture. That’s hard to eradicate, probably even enhanced by our executing Tojo and making him a martyr in some quarters.
The post, and the above comments about it, are easily identifiable as having been written by septuagenarians like me. They show how enduring is the influence of such propaganda movies as “Destination Tokyo” and “Purple Heart” on the young and impressionable. The iconic image of the “Nip” predator is the oily (Chinese) actor Richard Loo, purring to a handsome American POW, “I, too, went to U.C.R.A. Do you remember the waitress at The Sugar Bowl? Now you will please tell me where the Frying Tiger squadron is located.”
The connection between the popular approval of the death penalty in Japan and the Rape of Nanking is as tenuous as a connection between the execution of the mentally disabled in Texas and the genocide at My Lai. Moreover, China, whose capital once was Nanking, accounts for approximately 75% of the world’s executions. It seems that love of the death penalty is aroused in both the war criminals and their victims.
By Dr. Gendin’s own count, America is one of very few countries that actually practice the death penalty. We are in the same company with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Belarus, Mongolia and North Korea. And just when I was beginning to think that we were civilized people.
Mr. Al: Your revolutionary thesis that there may not be a connection between the genocide at My Lai and the execution of the mentally retarded in Texas is a real eye-opener. Of course, it is so counter-intuitive that the onus of proof rests on you.
Dear Septuagenarian Dr. Carrier: I gather from your comment that you are not a fan of Akira Kurasawa.
To the 27 months-short-of-being-an-octogenarian: I humbly request permission to recycle your joke one thousand times. It scores 9.45 on my humor scale. Of course it is only humorous in a varicose vein, which I will soon be plagued with.
How could I not be in awe of Akira Kurasawa? He influenced Bergmann, Fellini, Scorcese, Lucas, and many others. I suspect that he also influenced Rap Brown, who famously said, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”
Stereotyping is appalling and uninformed. Not only did Kurosawa produce tales depicting violence, such as Rashomon and Seven Samurai but, in the same period of the early 1950s, he made Ikiru, a compassionate story of a civil servant with cancer who spends all of his last months getting a playground built. See also the films of Yasujiro Ozu, especially Tokyo Story, which are gentle and moving explorations of family life. How did a warrior culture spawn such works? The complex strains of a culture are difficult to understand. They require the application of a discipline called anthropology.
As for proving the unprovable, you really have me there. You can make all the dubious connections to an evil deed that you care to, and what do you get in the end? I can think of one thing: anti Semitism.
AL: My goodness, fellow, lighten up. Don’t worry, I plan to enroll in your Films 101 class this summer if I can hoist myself out of bed. As for stereotypes, do you really mean to tell me I should quit referring to those oily-skinned, coarse-haired, hook-nosed Yids as KIKES? Okay, for your sake, I’ll quit, but a Kike by any other name is still a kike.
Dr. C: You sure fooled me.
Despite being a gentile, I find Mr. Cohen’s joke is at least a 9.45. However, Mr. Gendin, if you’re going to call a kike a kike, then you must call a spade a spade — Jolie is at least a 2.00 (botox and all).
Dear Wise Mr. Welton: First, I agree to accept your emended ranking of the spade, Angelina Jolie, though she never boasts of being one. Second, so far as calling a spade a spade, of course. But with a touch of leniency, you must allow Brownsville kikes to call them schwartzes and schvoons.
You never know what a goy knows or doesn’t know so I am delighted that the goyishe kike-killer, Welton, accepts the 9.45 rating that I bestowed on Mr. Cohen’s joke.
Angelina is French Canadian, with a slight Iroquois taint, on her mother’s side. Daddy is Czech and German. You can look it up. However, Brad Pitt is a full-blooded aborigine.
That proves I am right. I never heard of a French Canadian with an Iroquois taint who was not a schvoon.