Don’t give peace, or Pence, a chance
North Korea’s attempt to offer the hand of friendship at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics is almost as laughable as America’s refusal to shake it.
Get out of here, people. We want to watch a 19-year-old weed head doing aerial somersaults with a plank strapped to his feet. We don’t want to listen to old folk drooling on about world peace.
But when the International Olympic Committee is about, you don’t have a choice. These people think sport and politics (and business) mix. Hey, let’s make the outline of a dove in candles and form a little choir to sing Imagine. Kerching.
And so where America and China came up with their phoney ping pong diplomacy nearly 50 years ago now, Korea has come up with ‘sing song diplomacy’. North Korea even sent down a group of choreographed ‘beauties’ to wobble and warble in the stands.
One of North Korea’s songs went, ‘‘Victory! Our players win! Win!’’
Hmm, not one of the great lyrics and when the joint Korean ice hockey team went 8-0 down to Switzerland, not a very believable one. So at this point the sing song diplomats went for a more lyrical option: Korean freedom fighters My home town that I lived in Is a flower blooming mountainous place With peach blossom flowers, apricot flowers and baby azaleas Various palace of flowers in the neighbourhood I long for the time I played in that place.
This failed to move the stony heart of Mike Pence, the vice-president of the USA. He had not come all this way to make friends. The man who has been called shock jock ‘‘Rush Limbaugh’’ on decaf said: ‘‘We will not allow North Korean propaganda to hijack the message and imagery of the Olympic Games ... North Korea is the most tyrannical and oppressive regime on the planet.’’
Described by Donald Trump as ‘‘straight from central casting,’’ Pence added: ‘‘As the Old Book says, ‘the soldier does not bear the sword in vain,’ and we will defeat any attack and meet any use of conventional or nuclear weapons with a response that is rapid, overwhelming and effective.’’
What a downer, man. Oh, and Mikey, that bit about the soldier not bearing the sword in vain. How about Vietnam? There is a film out about it at the moment. Admittedly ‘The Post’ is part comedy when La Streep is on full beam and Spielburger is attaching electrodes to the emotional parts of your brain. But there’s also some good stuff about the whole heap of lies the American government told to service a futile war.
And talking of futile wars. Ah yes, the Korean War. Lest Donald forgets, and it was called the Forgotten War, we are in this Korean soup because paranoid America decided to ally with Japan against China and Russia and help South Korea fight North Korea. President Truman even described the US military intervention as ‘‘police action’’.
Well, we know about American police action at that time. It usually involved beating shady (skin) characters with sticks. And sometimes their brains would plop out on the pavement.
So here we are in Korea and another fine mess. Fortunately Thomas Bach, the head of the IOC, is around to change a few rules so that Korea can field a united ice hockey team in the name of world peace. Admittedly the coach and several of the players are really Canadian, but as Bach says, it’s all about ‘‘the unique power of sport to unite people’’.
‘‘All the athletes around me, all the spectators here in the stadium, and all Olympic fans watching around the world … we are all touched by this wonderful gesture,’’ Bach said.
‘‘We all join and support you in your message of peace. United in our diversity, we are stronger than all the forces that want to divide us... Now in PyeongChang, the athletes from the teams of South and North Korea, by marching together, send a powerful message of peace to the world.’’
It’s all hokum, just as ping pong diplomacy was hokum. A British communist banker started the International Table Tennis Federation as a means of using ping pong to spread the communist message. The Chinese eventually bought in. Mao called ping pong China’s new ‘‘spiritual nuclear weapon’’.
And then one day in 1971 an American patsy called Glenn Cowan was invited on to China’s team bus. China’s finest player player Zhuang Zedong shook Cowan’s hand and gave him a silk-screen picture of a Chinese mountain scene.
Over 30 years later Zhuang said: ‘‘Even now I can’t forget the naive smile on Cowan’s face.’’
And we are still being sold this world peace nonsense by Bach and his cronies.
Even now we get a warm cosy feeling at the thought that our marches and boycotts of oranges and sport actually brought down apartheid. The collapse of communism and the deaths of thousands of Africans had a bit more bearing on bringing today’s equal opportunities violence to South Africa, but that’s not so fuzzy a thought. It was all about us and our marches for freedom.
So sorry, I am not going to clap along with Tommy Bach and North Korea’s sing song diplomacy. Nor will I be at the airport to greet Ivanka Trump when she arrives in a cloud of fragrance. I would rather hang out and watch the kids do their thing.
America’s slopestyle snowboarder Jamie Anderson said after winning the first of her gold medals, ‘‘Today I was listening to some old-school hiphop, Dr Dre. I was laughing at myself because literally that album is from 2001, but I love the beats. Music is power and I love it.’’
I mean ‘‘what’s the difference’’ is literally from 2001. Wow, far back. Love it.