No one is laughing at North Korea’s launch of at least six ballistic missiles yesterday – except of course America’s 13 year old boys who this morning can’t stop snickering over Kim Jong Il’s limp and failing Taepodong. (You can bet that the few starving North Koreans who aren’t brainwashed are muttering the same things about Dear Leader’s tiny Taepodong.)
One thing that analysts seem to agree on is that this is a cry for help from Kim. (At moments like these it’s hard to remember that Team America wasn’t a documentary.)
Kim wants our attention. We cast him in the Axis of Evil, but the buzz these days is all about Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
From student hostage taker to world leader, Ahmadinejad’s got a story arc. No product of nepotism, he earned his right to threaten to wipe other countries off the map. And he looks great: His suits are well cut. He’s got terrific facial hair. (The spread on him in the current issue of Foreign Affairs is stunning.) He’s a Persian Andy Garcia. (If Andy Garcia had Ahmadinejad’s enriched uranium, he’d have George Clooney’s career.) Without question, he’s the It Megalomaniac.
Kim, on the other hand, has got a terrible body and smudged up glasses. Yuck. Someone hand that freak a chamois cloth.
Pyongyang’s bored paparazzi don’t need to ask “Who are you wearing, Dear Leader?” They know the answer: some crappy jumpsuit stitched together by a peasant girl six inches shorter than her South Korean cousin. (Totally true. North Koreans are so malnourished, they’re significantly smaller than their neighbors to the south.)
Worse still Dear Leader is saddled with plutonium. Yesterday’s fissile material.
But rather than draw invidious comparisons between Kim and other Axis of Evil players, I’d like to try and smooth things over. This is a tense situation and mocking Kim further will only make things more geopolitically awkward. (One last observation: I’ve always thought that Kim looks like a three day-old steamed dumpling, with glasses.) So how can we show Kim that he has our attention?
Money? No. We’re spending too much in Iraq and we’ve got a ballooning deficit. Plus it’s too easy. Will Kim think we really care if we just write a check?
Celine Dion? The Canadian songstress continues to amaze in her Vegas spectacular. Sending her there to serenade Kim would surely brighten his day. Then again, if he were a fan, he’d have kidnapped her by now. Besides, one of Kim’s titles is Eternal Sun or something like that. He doesn’t need brightening.
Cheap pharmaceuticals? North Korea doesn’t have a prescription drug plan and Kim turns 65 this February. Should we offer to include him in ours? Probably not. Prices for most drugs have actually risen since the creation of our plan. Plus Kim actually turned 65 last year. (His year of birth was amended so that he would officially be a tidy 30 years younger than his daddy, Great Leader.) So Kim is likely already enrolled in a program.
Kim wants to be the focus of the world. He wants glamour. He wants to be special.
That’s why our best option is Brangelina. To appease Kim Jong Il and save the planet, North Korea needs to be named host country for the birth of Brad and Angelina’s next child. With the birth of their first child, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, Namibia became the first African country to be mentioned in Us Weekly. Brangelina put Namibia on the star map. Just think what they could do for North Korea.
The BOC (Brangelian Offspring Committee) is currently considering bids from Laos, Peru, and Albertville. They should call an emergency session, bypass all of those bids, and declare North Korea as the site of their next birthing.





31 comments
Maximum Bob
July 5, 2006 at 8:22 am
1Brangelina, feh. What Kim Jong Il needs is the loving embrace of our favorite rich, talentless tart, Paris Hilton. Talk about your win-win solution: Kim gets to snuggle up to the world’s most famous pile-o’-coat-hangers, and we get a syndicated series called The Simple But Heroic Struggle Against Unfettered Yankee Imperialism Life.
Adam Felber
July 5, 2006 at 11:29 am
2It’s got to be even more demoralizing for Kim that Ahmadinejad wasn’t even in power when the Axis of Evil first became the Axis of Evil. Ahmadinejad is Cheryl Ladd to Kim’s eternally hopeful, but hopeless, Kate Jackson.
piglet
July 5, 2006 at 12:00 pm
3Doesn’t he fancy himself quite the rock star? Maybe we could give him a bye to the final round of American Idol. He could be our next William Hung.
Ann
July 5, 2006 at 12:02 pm
4Wait, Adam. Are you saying that Kim’s the brainy one?
Mo Rocca
July 5, 2006 at 1:35 pm
5Just wait till Syria’s Bashar “Shelley Hack” al-Assad joins the Axis. Then Kim will really feel like a loser.
I’m now obsessed with the idea of Kim Jong Il kidnapping Paris Hilton. It’s a major win-win: Kim keeps himself busy. We get rid of a Hilton.
ice weasel
July 5, 2006 at 2:32 pm
6Aw hell Adam, I always liked Kate Jackson.
ginny
July 5, 2006 at 5:22 pm
7Good thing Muammar “Farrah” Qaddafi got out of the game when he did. And he got to keep the fabulous wardrobe, too.
Alexandra
July 5, 2006 at 8:00 pm
8omg…I love you people. Sorry, off topic, I know, but studying for the bar has made me loopy, and finding nothing but minute to minute updates on the Vaughniston engagement was driving me to madness untill I found you all. …sigh….carry on…
And Mr. Rocca, you make me swoon.
tess
July 5, 2006 at 10:19 pm
9The very idea of the elder Hilton off in N. Korea makes me think that somehow her wardrobe will suddenly improve. Though I hate to image the sort of hissy fit Great Leader would throw when the elder Hilton ditches him for some other megalomaniac.
Dave
July 5, 2006 at 10:59 pm
10Riveting as it is, this tragi-terri-comedy series is only being produced until the November sweeps, then it’s back to multilateral negotiations on CSPAN2. But tune in next week when, YIKES! the grand poobah of Al-brokistan sticks his tongue out at an American flag!
tim
July 6, 2006 at 4:31 am
11I’m so disappointed. I thought this post would be about Lil’ Kim. Poor girl. In today’s world, it’s ok if you go to jail, but NOBODY is allowed to get fat.
Dave D
July 6, 2006 at 4:37 am
12Hey Dave (love that name!)
“sticks his tongue out at an American flag”
That sounds like cause for a Constitutional Amendment. I’ll contact my legislators right away. (I live in Georgia, so I *know* they’ll jump right on it)
tj
July 6, 2006 at 6:20 am
13Mo,
You certainly mean a win-win-win situation, for Ms. Hilton will also be supplied with a whole nation full of serfs to sneer down upon, lord it over, force to do her bidding, etc.
Mo Rocca
July 6, 2006 at 8:16 am
14Dave D, you’ve just given me an idea. Dear Leader’s regime may be crumbling. What better way to distract the masses than proposing a North Korean flag burning amendment? (Same-sex marriage ban amendment wouldn’t work. People are too weak to even think about sex.)
nato
July 6, 2006 at 9:00 am
15I’m curious about the flag burning amendment: If it were to somehow pass, would that mean I couldn’t burn my flag-decorated speedos, which are now several sizes too small? I would think the sight of me in them was a much worse desecration.
Mary
July 6, 2006 at 9:35 am
16Mo- I thought they already had one. Isn’t everything banned there, even eating?
I think the Hilton angle is the best. It would have the least negative impact on the people of North Korea. Brangelina would just adopt someone’s baby as a show of solidarity. Paris might feed them just so she would be the thinnest one.
cooper
July 6, 2006 at 4:39 pm
17Er…nato, burn ‘em. Burn ‘em while you still can. If anyone has a problem, just send that person to me. Burn ‘em. America has your back. Do it, man!
Mo, I think Kim Jung Il is actually 1 year older than his “official” age. Somewhere along the line, the “brain trust” thought that it would be more poetic for Kim to be exactly 30 years younger than his father, so they adjusted his age. The discreet charm of the proletariat politic - perhaps coming up with gems such as this, is how they spend the extra time saved by not succumbing to the bourgeios food fetish.
pete
July 6, 2006 at 10:14 pm
18i think he’s been jealous since he first heard Bombs Over Baghdad a few years back, and has ever since been taunting and toying with the world in order to get his own OutKast- or Dre-produced monster track. have you heard the music they play at his military parades? sucks. sucks like crazy. that sort of thing could really drive a crazy man mad.
madbard
July 7, 2006 at 9:58 am
19tease. and here i was expecting maybe Lil Kim’s jail-free mammary made another exposure….
cooper
July 7, 2006 at 6:50 pm
20Money? No. We’re spending too much in Iraq…
Interesting fact I heard yesterday. We’ve spent about $294 billion so far in the War on Iraq, which is about $289 billion more than Bush 41 spent during his adventure there. Go to this website and watch the meter spin - www.costofwar.com
My wife says I have to get off the computer and drink some beer. Whatever you say, dear!
siobhan
July 7, 2006 at 7:31 pm
21Well, Cooper, I need to wash that number down with something. But beer might not be strong enough. Pinot maybe… but this actually sounds like a job for zinfandel.
There could be an upside for all you hot weather people if you could just figure out how to use the meter as a fan. (I know, different thread.)
Pete IVDL
July 8, 2006 at 8:09 am
22Three little words. “I’m so ronery…” (I’m tearing up already) then the finale -sob- …”poor rittle meeeeee…..”
Oh, how can we be so callous to such a little peewee. He’ll take his Taepo Dong and go home, yeah, that’s what he’ll do.
David
July 8, 2006 at 6:28 pm
23I find a certain macabre humor in a petty pissant being able to tell the “most powerful leader on earth” to go fuck himself, and the mploe can’t do jack shit about it because he thought invading Iraq was a good idea. Dumbfuck v. Dumbfuck - and W does look rather much like Alfred E.
I don’t think it makes a damned bit of difference whether Kim Jong Very Ill does or doesn’t have nukes and missiles. Just means our Idiot President can’t invade North Korea, which he couldn’t anyway. And there are more than enough loose nukes scattered about the former Soviet Union to beat global warming to the punch, should we continue on our current moron’s journey through time.
And Paris Hilton would make a better president than Dick Cheney. Harmless beats homicidally destructive every time.
David
July 10, 2006 at 5:59 am
24Well, it looks like Japan’s Koi One wants to go at it with Kim-O. Graceland had that effect on the man? Weeeee haaaaaaa.
Mattie_Boy
July 13, 2006 at 8:07 pm
25David: The words you use are correct, but I don’t think they’re appropriate–I’m dying to let my free-thinking 14-year-old daughter view this site and the comments, but won’t unless I see a long period of polite language. Can you do me a favor and clean it up? Thanks in advance (Goodness, I love that catchphrase!)–
pete
July 14, 2006 at 5:12 pm
26yeah, i’m pretty sure your 14 year old has never heard the word fuck before.
stay eternally vigilant, and welcome to the internet!
David
July 16, 2006 at 7:49 am
27Mattie_Boy,
I have wondered about that issue, but I don’t think this website would work without freewheeling use of the language in all its myriad possibilities. Intriguingly, my mother found some way to let us read all sorts of books but not swear when it would be inappropriate. I’m not sure how she pulled it off, but I’m grateful. She must have gotten us to buy into reading freely, while at the same time watching our mouths when children (and adults) should be watching their mouths.
siobhan
July 16, 2006 at 8:25 am
28David, my mother was an English teacher and instilled in all of us a love of reading and language. She recongnized that people (including her kids) swear, though she didn’t want it to become as natural as exhaling. I still remember one family vacation when my brother and I were snipping at each other in the back of the station wagon. Brother: “Eh, that ain’t shit!” Mother: “John!!” Brother: “Sorry - that isn’t shit.” True story.
David
July 16, 2006 at 8:14 pm
29siobhan,
Love that family anecdote. Your mother sounds like a cool lady. Both my older sister and I are retired English teachers, so I am immediately predisposed to admire your mother.
siobhan
July 16, 2006 at 10:32 pm
30She’d be appalled that I mis-spelled “recognized”, so let me set things straight.
David, English teachers rule. It would be a mutual admiration society, were she still here.
David
July 17, 2006 at 9:00 pm
31siobhan,
Typos on gd keyboards don’t count. I can’t believe some of the errors that I would never, ever otherwise make. And the Ctrl key, which I keep hitting when I’m just trying to hit the shift key - thereby wiping out whatever I just keyboarded (I refuse to call it typing) - is going to drive me right on over the edge at some point.