Last Updated on: 24th April 2014, 02:43 pm
I can’t believe how easily some people can earn the media’s sympathy if they just use a few key words. I saw this episode of Sixty minutes that aired last October. It was about this guy, Charles Robert Jenkins, who because he got scared, decided to defect from the army and surrender to North Korea. Then, quelle surprise, they kept him there. He stayed there for 40 years, and when he managed to get out, he went on Sixty Minutes, talked about how secretive and dictatorial the North Korean government was, the stuff that happened to him while he was there, and how poor the country was. Again, I say, quelle surprise. What did you expect? Did you not learn anything about the country that, before you got it in your head that they would swap you with Russia who would merrily hand you back to the U.S. like some missing child, was your fucking enemy? Hell, I’m not even fighting North Korea, and I remember the bullshit they came up with a couple years ago when some trains had a nice collision and exploded, killing and wounding a ton of people. You know what they did? They refused to take assistance from other countries because they didn’t want them to know the state of things, and they ran their regularly scheduled praise the government message on TV. Doesn’t sound like much has changed.
Anyway, my point is, why are we having an outpouring of sympathy for this guy? He wasn’t even just some random private who just enlisted and then got scared. If that was the case, I could make the excuse that he did a stupud thing but he was young and inexperienced. He was a fucking sergeant commanding a squad. This was not his first battle. It sucks that he had to experience the totalitarian dictatorship of North Korea first hand, spend 40 years where he didn’t want to be, and go through hell, but he does not need a spot on Sixty Minutes to tell his story as if he was some hapless victim of circumstance. Ever heard the phrase “you made your bed, you lie in it?” The way I see it, if someone had surrendered to any country but Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or other countries deemed scary by the U.S, the media would likely look at their story and say, “Them’s the breaks, chief. You’re a moron. Next story, please.”