A week ago I typed out the following editorial letter to
send to some friends. As an
afterthought I also sent it to the Taipei Times.
I thought local readers might get a laugh from it.
DIE DEGENERATE ANOTHER DAY
Dear Editor:
I didn't see the new Bond movie Die
Another Day, but now
that I've read the review from the North Korean SCPRF press office I'm glad I
didn't. The SCPRF is the
Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the
Fatherland. But I suppose
everybody already knows that. Who
doesn't read the SCPRF movie reviews in the DPRK press these days?
The SCPRF thought the
Bond movie wasn't too good outside of special effects. In fact it was mostly nothing but a
"dirty and cursed burlesque" and a "premeditated act of
mocking". (Movies would have
to be premeditated
acts of mocking, given that there's a long period of script approval and
casting and directorial decisions.
There'd be little chance of quick, off-the-cuff mocking; slapstick,
improv mocking; spontaneous unscripted mocking. So the movie was premeditated.)
The villain in the
movie does not represent the true face of North Korea. That the movie came from the American
motion picture industry only proves one thing: the U.S. is "the
headquarters that spreads abnormality, degeneration, violence and fin de siecle
corrupt sex culture."
So I'm glad I didn't see the movie. Because here in Taiwan there's already
more than enough fin de siecle corrupt sex culture. I don't need to spend my
money on American movies with wimpy fourth-generation Bonds. I've got all the abnormality and
degeneration I need right in the Taipei pubs.
Hats off to the reviewers at the SCPRF of
the DPRK for pointing out to us the futility of catching this new Bond flick.
Eric Mader-Lin,
Taipei
Just today I noticed that the Taipei Times printed the letter. As I read through it I remembered why
it was that it had been so many years since I'd sent anything to
newspapers. Here's the text
exactly as it appeared in the Taipei Times:
NORTH KOREAN MOVIE REVIEWS
Dear
Editor:
I didn't see the new Bond movie Die
Another Day, but now
that I have read the review from the North Korean SCPRF press office, I'm glad
I didn't. The SCPRF is the
Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the
Fatherland. But I suppose everybody
already knows that. Who doesn't
read the SCPRF movie reviews in the DPRK press these days?
The SCPRF thought the
Bond movie wasn't too good except for its special effects. In fact it was mostly nothing but a
"dirty and cursed burlesque" and a "premeditated act of
mocking".
The villain in the movie does not represent
the true face of North Korea. That
the movie came from the American motion picture industry only proves one thing:
the U.S. is "the headquarters that spreads abnormality, degeneration,
violence and fin de siecle,
corrupt, sex culture."
Eric Mader-Lin,
Taipei
The letter I sent the Taipei Times is clearly facetious. And the letter they published? Probably most readers would see it as
facetious, but whether this most
is 80 percent or more like 60 percent I'm not sure. For those readers who don't see the letter as facetious, Eric
Mader-Lin comes off as a nutcase who thinks the North Korean Stalinist press
offers viable critiques of Western pop culture.
I'm not going to bother writing to the Taipei Times to complain about this. Of course it doesn't matter much in any
case. But seeing this letter in
the paper reminded me of something I'd forgotten: Every time in my life I've
published a letter or editorial in a newspaper it has been edited to the point
that its argument is obscured if not turned around. Every single time.
This started with one of my university's student newspapers, where I
occasionally published editorials on student politics. I still remember the would-be
journalist in charge of that rag.
He's stuck in my mind because of a discussion I had with him about his
review of Allan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind.
His rather lengthy review trashed the book on various fronts. I remember standing in the student
union trying to talk over specifics with him, parts of the book I thought
raised serious issues. How should
the Left consider these problems?
That was what concerned me at the time, for I considered myself a
leftist. Fifteen minutes into our
talk it dawned on me that the reviewer and student editor I was talking with
hadn't read Bloom's book. He
hadn't, in fact, read any
of it. He admitted as much. "Why should I read such right wing
stuff anyway?"
"Well," I said, "if you're going to review it, don't you
think you should at least be responsible to the point of reading it?" He shrugged at this. I walked away.
The few editorials I published in that student paper had been edited by
him or one of his cronies. There
were always various grammar or punctuation mistakes edited into what I'd sent them. (The last comma added to my above-cited
letter is reminiscent of this: "corrupt, sex culture." For one thing, the comma is flatly
incorrect; for another it wasn't in the text I quoted from.) Sometimes it was a question of
sloppiness, but often it was just that pure editorial desire to do the job. Or in other words: "I'm an editor,
therefore I must modify every single paragraph given me. After all, I must be a better writer
than the person who sent us this text, otherwise I wouldn't be an
editor--right?"
Of course letters and editorials must often be edited down for size:
words and paragraphs must often be cut out. But when the text is cut to the extent that the meaning is
no longer clear, a line has been crossed toward irresponsibility. Then an ironic or facetious text turns
straightforward, a critique of a policy reads like a kudo, an argument is
reduced to nonsense and thus becomes more reason to support the opposing
argument. This has happened in
every single instance that I've published something in a newspaper. Never once have I felt anything other
than vaguely ashamed by what finally appeared in print. But this isn't all.
In 1987 I went to the then Soviet Union to take part in a citizens'
diplomacy mission called the American-Soviet Peace Walk. Upon returning to the States I was
interviewed by half a dozen or so newspapers in Wisconsin about what I saw
while in the Soviet Union and what the purpose of our mission was. Only one or two of the articles that
came out of those interviews represented the facts. The others blatantly misquoted me. In a few cases I think it was tendentious, but usually it
was just shoddy reporting. The
worst of the lot was an article that appeared in the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. Of a total of eight facts stated in the
article, six were incorrect in the most knuckleheaded way. If I had said July, the journalist said
August. If I had mentioned 450
people, the journalist wrote of 590.
If our plane took off from Moscow, the journalist had us leaving
Leningrad two weeks earlier. These
are not the precise mistakes--I no longer have the article with me--but they are
mistakes of the same glaringly stupid sort.
While in the USSR I'd also been interviewed by the Soviet press. I still have a copy of an article that
appeared in one Leningrad paper.
The journalist who wrote that article quotes me saying things I didn't
say--that is for certain. I was
placed more solidly in the service of Soviet thinking. Words were put in my mouth. But in fact the misrepresentation I got
in the Soviet press was only slightly more grievous than that I got in my
newspapers back home. And that was
what was really depressing.
It's been fifteen years since then, and I'm again on the other side of
the planet. But it seems that here
in the East the press is still strikingly reliable in the same old ways. No matter where I am or what I write I
can always count on newspaper editors to doctor it up or doctor it down until I
wish I'd never sent it to them.
Eric Mader-Lin,
2003
[Afterword: The Taipei Times has recently printing a lengthy letter
of mine nearly word for word. It's
the first time such a thing has happened to me. --E.M.-L., January, 2004]
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
This page
is at http://www.necessaryprose.com/