Let's talk about what the terrorists got right!

Liberal columnists are actually writing in all seriousness that the discussion we need to be having about the recent Sony hacking scandal — in which North Korean hackers retaliated against the planned released of The Interview with threats of terrorism — is one about how much of a microaggression the movie was.


On Wednesday, columnist Jamilah Lemieux made headlines after she tweeted: “What better example of American arrogance and White privilege than a comedy about killing a LIVING head of state?”

And it turns out that this totally misplaced focus on what is important here isn’t just coming from her. On Friday, the Daily Dot’s deputy opinion editor, S. E. Smith, wrote a piece explaining that “While the terrorists might not be right tactics-wise, they’re right on a critical level.”

In other words: Terrorists are bad, but at least they know a good microaggression when they see one!

Apparently Smith thinks there is a more important issue here than the fact that terrorists are deciding what movies we can watch on Christmas: It was racist against Asians to make a movie about killing an evil Asian dictator as opposed to a non-Asian evil dictator:


“The fact that the producers picked North Korea isn’t a coincidence – imagine the same kind of film being made about Iran, Idi Amin, Bashar al-Hassad, Manuel Noriega, or even Hitler,” Smith writes, bemoaning the fact that “the demasculinization of Asian men is a recurrent theme in society.”


Look — if you’re worried about people looking weak, maybe worry a little less about tyrants and a little more about Americans, especially now that we’re apparently letting terrorists dictate our entertainment options. While you’re at it, worry about how we go from looking weak to becoming an actual complete laughingstock when we have columnists in our own country saying that the important discussion to have is: These terrorists are bad but actually kinda right because we are kinda mean huh guys!

“Kim Jong-un in The Interview is funny to American audiences in the same way that a puffed up, angry rooster is funny to the casual observer; he’s reduced to a small, unimportant man by virtue of his race, with audiences laughing at the idea that he’d be one of the most terrifying living political figures,” Smith explains, apparently not considering that maybe it’s okay to make fun of people who deny basic human rights to the people of their country — especially when their hackers begin threatening this country, too.


Yes, terrorists are wreaking havoc and threatening even further harm, but apparently Smith thinks the discussion we should be having is one about how bad we are because of how we stereotype. It makes me want to slam my head against the wall, but I think I should be careful to save my brain cells because it sounds like we’re really going to need people who still have some left.


— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.