Lorin Maazel the head of the New York Philharmonic that is about to take a trip to Pyongyang is at it again making excuses for North Korean gulags and equating America to North Korea.  Make sure to read OFK’s response to what he likes to call Maazel’s moral retardeness. 

This quote from B.R. Myers really sums up Maazel the best:

We can of course expect Mr. Maazel to return home claiming to have found cultural "common ground" with his hosts. We will also hear a lot of patriotic hooey about the spine-tingling effects of playing the Star-Spangled Banner in Kim Jong Il’s front yard. Meanwhile North Korean propaganda — not the glossy-papered, English-language kind, but the gray-papered stuff the locals get — will set about misrepresenting the performance as a tributary visit, the paper tiger’s latest effort to curry favor from the iron-willed "General."

The timing is fortuitous, since the months from February to April mark the annual highpoint of the North’s personality cult ritual. And two or three years from now, the regime will almost certainly publish a new installment of Immortal Leadership, a series of novels celebrating the main triumphs of the Dear Leader’s rule. The story will be simple: Kim tests nuke, Washington protests, Kim hangs tough, Washington sends musicians to entertain him. And isn’t that a fairly accurate version of events?  [Wall Street Journal]

Yes, Mr. Myers it is quite accurate indeed. 

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