{"id":410,"date":"2008-08-08T22:52:38","date_gmt":"2008-08-09T05:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=410"},"modified":"2008-08-12T19:12:12","modified_gmt":"2008-08-13T02:12:12","slug":"any-questions-kim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=410","title":{"rendered":"Any Questions, Kim?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well. Say what you will about the Olympics, the Chinese sure put on an opening ceremony. For a moment there, I almost understood how a people might willingly, even happily, surrender their individuality to the grand goals of a powerful state.<\/p>\n

At the same time, though, I couldn’t help thinking about the North Koreans and their love of mass spectacle, particularly the Arirang mass games.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Arirang Mass Games, North Korea<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I doubt many North Koreans were allowed to watch the Beijing opening ceremonies, but if any North Korean did, it was Kim Jong-Il, the Dear Leader. And I bet he got a case of flop sweats, because . . .<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Beijing Olypmics opening ceremony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

. . . tonight . . .<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Beijing Olypmics opening ceremony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

. . . he met his match!<\/p>\n

Update (Aug 12):<\/em><\/span> My apologies to the Dear Leader and Peoples’ Republic of North Korea.\u00a0 It turns out that portions of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies were computer-generated and lip-synched<\/a>.\u00a0 The DPRK’s Arirang mass games demonstrations may seem primitive by comparison, but they’re real.\u00a0 At least I think they’re real.\u00a0 After all, they can’t very well be computer-generated if Kim Jong-Il has the only computer in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well. Say what you will about the Olympics, the Chinese sure put on an opening ceremony. For a moment there, I almost understood how a people might willingly, even happily, surrender their individuality to the grand goals of a powerful state. At the same time, though, I couldn’t help thinking about the North Koreans and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-current-events"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}