| Thursday, April 24, 2003 |
20:57 - More Radio Fun
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Whenever I leave work earlier than 7:00 PM, I get to hear what's on NPR before Fresh Air comes on-- which in this case is Pacific Time. Usually it's fairly benign, but there's always the strange air of some shadowy patronage behind it. It's always just a little too cheerful, a little too starched.
Today, when the radio came on, it was on a report of an Asian Hip-Hop Festival taking place in LA; it talked about the various rappers whose oeuvre spanned English, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean, and played a few samples. Good clean fun.
Then it mentioned that all the proceeds from the concert were to go to a relief charity for the North Korean people. "We want to send the message that we want food, not bombs, in North Korea," one youth said. From the tone of the show, it was decidedly unclear whose bombs he was talking about-- Kim's, or ours? The events of the past few months have conditioned me to assume always that when young activists get together to raise support for a cause involving a part of the world that we're taking an interest in, for whatever reason, it's damned seldom that said cause is aligned with US foreign policy.
One guy did say, in fact, that the Asians in the communities putting on the event do blame US foreign policy over the past fifty years, in part, for the situation in North Korea. (At least they were good enough to allow the in part part.) And then he delivered the real corker, proving wryly that the show must have been taped a couple of days ago at least: that he and his compatriots hoped that the trilateral talks this week between the US, NK, and China, would lay the groundwork for the relief and disarmament that North Korea and its people so desperately need.
Boy, that's really worked out well, hasn't it?
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