EDITORIALS

A canceled Interview

Intimidation 1, Guts 0

IT HASN’T been a good month for Sony Entertainment. First came that Hack Attack by some shadowy outfit calling itself the Guardians Of Peace who tapped into Sony’s computers, stole all kinds of information, then made it public bit by bit. Why? Who knows yet? But these “guardians of peace” seem to have guarded anything but.

But until last Wednesday, the studio’s biggest worries had to do only with embarrassing emails about what they were telling each other about their super-stars. It was the kind of Hollywood gossip that Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper would’ve loved. Walter Winchell, thou shouldst be living at this hour—you’d fit right in, snarky voice, sharp-brimmed fedora and all. Not that anybody with a modicum of good taste, as rare a breed then as now, cared half a whit.

Then word came Wednesday: The studio had canceled all showings of a movie called The Interview. The hackers, it was said, had threatened to attack, physically this time, movie theaters that dared show The Interview, another silly comedy about North Korea’s pudgy poo-bah, the latest Kim. Whereupon the bravehearts at Sony cut and ran, canceling any and all showings of the movie.

Whoever these anonymous electronic bullies were, they’d won. Without encountering an ounce of resistance.

Can these high-powered execs at Sony be Americans—a species that traces its political and spiritual heritage back to the Spirit of ‘76? The execs at Sony sound more like wimps.

But there are some red-white-andblue types extant. Right in our newsroom, where one inky wretch was heard saying he’d had no interest in seeing the silly movie before, but now he’d make a point of taking it in—if he could just find a copy of it.

Why? For the same reason he’d been determined to see The Last Temptation of Christ: because he’d been told not to. Don’t Tread On Me and all that. It’s an all-American reaction. Nobody tells us what to do. And if somebody tries, well, we’ll fill Boston Harbor with the East India Company’s tea.

But the Spirit of ’76 is all too rare these petrified days. Especially when the anonymous hackers—anonymity is still the surest sign of a coward—sent out another message:

“Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the [movie theaters showing the film] at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.)”

Some of us do remember September 11th. And we also remember America’s response to it: Give us Osama bin Laden dead or Osama bin Laden dead. It may have taken a while, but eventually we did get him—dead to rights. But our brave compatriots at Sony have caved. And the surest result will be that the threats will keep coming. Why shouldn’t they? They’ve worked so well.

There’s really only one acceptable, American response to these nameless pests: Defy Them.

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