KIM JONG-UN MISTAKENLY
NAMED 'SEXIEST MAN ALIVE'
www.nzherald.co.nz -
The online version of China's Communist Party newspaper has hailed a
report by The Onion naming North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as the
“Sexiest Man Alive” - not realizing it is satire. The People's Daily ran
a 55-page photo spread on its website in a tribute to the round-faced
leader, under the headline “North Korea's top leader named The Onion's
Sexiest Man Alive for 2012.”
Quoting
The Onion's spoof report, the Chinese newspaper wrote, “With his
devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm, and his strong,
sturdy frame, this Pyongyang-bred heartthrob is every woman's dream come
true.” “Blessed with an air of power that masks an unmistakable cute,
cuddly side, Kim made this newspaper's editorial board swoon with his
impeccable fashion sense, chic short hairstyle, and, of course, that
famous smile,” the People's Daily cited The Onion as saying. The photos
include Kim on horseback squinting into the light and Kim waving toward a
military parade.
In
other photos, all selected by the People's Daily, he is wearing
sunglasses and smiling, or touring a facility with his wife. People's
Daily could not immediately be reached for comment. A man who answered
the phone at the newspaper's duty office said he did not know anything
about the report and requested queries be directed to their newsroom on
Wednesday morning. It is not the first time a state-run Chinese
newspaper has fallen for a fictional report by the just-for-laughs The
Onion.
In
2002, the Beijing Evening News, one of the capital city's biggest
tabloids at the time, published as news the fictional account that the
U.S. Congress wanted a new building and that it might leave Washington.
The Onion article was a spoof of the way sports teams threaten to leave
cities in order to get new stadiums. Jokes are always being lost in
translation: in September, another Onion article headlined “Gallup Poll:
Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama” was reprinted as fact by an
Iranian news agency.
Last
week a Chinese newspaper, the People’s Daily, noted that the North
Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un had been named “the Sexiest Man Alive For
2012” by The Onion, a US website. Celebrating his victory, the Communist
Party-affiliated paper’s website published a collection of photos,
showing him squinting sexily in the sun, sitting sexily astride a horse,
and in various other sexy poses. What it failed to notice is that The
Onion is a spoof website. Many people in China have no idea The Onion is
purely satirical news. Despite cultural differences, humour is
everywhere, many times, other people's misfortune or embarrassment are
used for laughing or satirical comments. In this material world, the
Lord's external energy is used to deceive those living beings who want
to be deceived.
WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?
A
conditioned living being is endowed with four principles of
malpractice, namely errors, insanity, inability and cheating. These are
signs of imperfection, and out of the four the propensity to cheat
others is most prominent. And this cheating practice is there in the
conditioned souls because the conditioned souls are primarily in the
material world imbued with an unnatural desire to lord it over the
material world. A living being in his pure state is not conditioned by
the laws because in his pure state he is conscious that a living being
is eternally subservient to the Supreme Being ... In the conditioned
state the living being is not satisfied even if he actually becomes the
lord of all that he surveys, which he never becomes, and therefore he
becomes the victim of all kinds of cheating, even with his nearest and
most intimate relations.
Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 1.14.4 - Canto 1: “Creation”
Chapter 14: “The Disappearance of Lord Krishna”
Verse 4 - Bhaktivedanta VedaBase Network
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