It was all too much for me: the death of Christopher Hitchens, the death of Kim Jong-il. It was suddenly time to finally read Why Orwell Matters. It had always seemed a bit redundant and unnecessary to me. Of course Orwell Matters, he wrote a book called 1984.

Duh.

But I’m happy to report that having read Hitchens’s Why Orwell Matters, Orwell does in fact matter.

How can we not connect the dots of North Korean death, Hitchens death, Hitchens work on Orwell, and thusly Orwell’s work on North Korea?

Hitchens remarks, having actually visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, that, “It’s the only time in my writing life when I have become tired of the term ‘Orwellian’…The resulting dankness and dinginess and misery would have been almost indescribable without reference to a certain short novel that had been bashed out on an old typewriter, against the clock, by a dying English radical half a century before.”

See, Orwell does clearly matter. If only to provide journalistic ease in framing the horrific magnitude of the shit that is North Korea.

Hitchens continues, “There have never been any reported dissidents in North Korea – a few defectors of course, as even The Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four was quite ready to admit…and we know as yet almost nothing of its secret prisons and remote detention camps. But one prediction I make is that before this book of mine goes on to the remainder shelf we will have found out.”

Have we found out?

Is Why Orwell Matters on the remainder shelf yet?

Hitchens also interestingly captures Orwell’s ability to predict the Occupy Wall Street movement. It turns out that Orwell was buried in the churchyard at Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire, the same resting place as a Mrs. Asquith (Lady Oxford) who had once remarked, “Since most London houses are deserted there is little entertaining…in any case, most people have to part with their cooks and live in hotels.”

Hitchens is quick to note that, “Of this splendid piece of aristocratic callousness Orwell commented in his diary that ‘apparently nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99% of the population exist.’”

So while Christopher Hitchens dutifully defends Orwell against Empire, the Right, the Left, Englishness, America, Feminism, and the post-modernists, it is obvious that Orwell matters for 2 primary reasons: 1984 & Animal Farm.

Read ‘em, I say. It’s sexy.

Hitchens concludes, “…’views’ do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.”

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For some time now, long before Kim Jong-il finally kicked it, I have been wrestling with a morbid curiosity of  North Korean.

Can you relate?

The reasons for my fixation are probably somewhere between Orwellian Obsession and Despot Envy.

With her book Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick provides an impressive journalistic contribution to history by giving voice to the people of North Korea by telling the awful, modern story of their national cult by interviewing normal, everyday citizens who defected from the misery of the failed state.

Immediately addressing my North Korean compulsion, Demick asserts that, “While the persistence of North Korea is a curiosity for the rest of the world, it is a tragedy for North Koreans.”

Guilty as charged.

Even alongside the modern era’s menagerie of beasts, North Korea still contains plenty to be intrigued and horrified:

1. The recurring global theme of co-opting and perverting religion and exploiting people’s capacity to Believe

“What distinguished him [Kim Il-sung] in the rogues’ gallery of twentieth-century dictators was his ability to harness the power of faith. Kim Il-sung understood the power of religion. His maternal uncle was a Protestant minister back in the pre-Communist days when Pyongyang had such a vibrant Christian community that it was called the “Jerusalem of the East.” Once in power, Kim Il-sung closed the churches, banned the Bible, deported believers to the hinterlands, and appropriated Christian imagery and dogma for the purpose of self-promotion.”

Pyongyang was the Jerusalem of the East??? It is never a good sign when you live in a country with hinterlands.

Demick shares with us matter of factually that during the famine of the ’90s, it was the, “Simple and kindhearted people who did what they were told – they were the first to die.”

2. North Korea is literally covered in shit

“North Korea was chronically short of chemical fertilizer and needed to use human excrement since there were few farm animals…The countryside reeked of the night soil that is still used instead of chemical fertilizer.”

3. There is a name for that creepy material preferred by Bond villains and Dictators alike

“Vinalon, a stiff, shiny synthetic material unique to North Korea.”

4. North Korean Irony

“In 1991, while South Korea was becoming the world’s largest exporter of mobile telephones, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call.”

, and

“An aside here about sex in North Korea…[what] many North Korean defectors…found most surprising about South Korea was that couples kiss in public.”

1991. Few North Koreans had ever used a telephone, much less a mobile phone. Think about that.

And these poor people are so prude, so repressed, so stifled by the mere grim struggle to subsist on a daily basis that they are most surprised by public displays of affection. Affection. Think about that.

5. Grotesque Canopies of Frozen Menstrual Rags

Life in dormitories of North Korean schools was a bit different than the typical cushy American upbringing:

“[Students] were roused by a military-style roll call at 6:00 AM, but instead of marching off like proud soldiers, they shivered into the bathroom and splashed icy water on their faces, under a grotesque canopy of frozen menstrual rags.”

6. Government Healthcare

A “Let’s Eat Two Meals a Day” campaign was cheerily implemented by the North Korean government during the famine of the ’90s.

How’s that for a new diet fad?

“They [North Korean citizens] jumped from the tops of buildings, a favorite method of suicide in North Korea since nobody had sleeping pills and only soldiers had guns with bullets.”

How’s that for actual death panels?

7. Big Brother

One young man featured in Demick’s book used his new life in South Korea to read all the books unobtainable in his homeland.

“His favorite was a translation of 1984. He marveled that George Orwell could have so understood the North Korean brand of totalitarianism.”

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I hope it isn’t sold out.

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“I would choose freedom even if it meant less prosperity.” – Ron Paul

I approve of most books that come with an additional reading list. Hooray, Reading!

I especially approve of books with “A Reading List for a Free and Prosperous America.” Good for you, Ron Paul!!

The Revolution is refreshing because Ron Paul dutifully and thankfully goes after the Bush Administration and goons like Alberto Gonzales responsible for the Patriot Act and its focus on citizens rather than foreign terrorists. In The Revolution, Ron Paul accuses politicians of treating Americans like sheep and even criticizes a Senator’s quote with a summation of “creepy propaganda.”

And Ron jumps into the real issues, like weed, for which Mr. Paul diplomatically tells us, “People’s opinions on this issue are so deeply and fervently held that it can be very difficult to persuade them to revisit the evidence dispassionately.” But he quickly assures us that, “We seriously mistake the function of government if we think its job is to regulate bad habits…When you actually study the beginnings of the federal war on drugs, you uncover a history of lies, bigotry, and ignorance so extensive it will leave you speechless.”

And all this from a medical doctor no less. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a leader familiar with healthcare?

Ron Paul hits his stride and wraps things up with a topic he is clearly comfortable and passionate: money (End the Fed is his 2nd book), sharing with us a letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson:

“All the perplexities, confusions, and distress in America, arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”

And I agree. We are all foolish in many ways, especially money. Consumption Is The Problem.

Ultimately, it will be difficult for Ron Paul to garner the needed blind support of the masses because he is a walking embodiment of a theme familiar to readers of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. Freedom is messy and ugly and difficult because it demands freedom for everyone, even those you don’t like.

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The Hop-Kick.

Everyone’s doing it.

Step 1: Stand erect.

Step 2: Giggle.

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When Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow kneels in the end zone, is he thanking god that he wasn’t molested by a coach?

Or is he condemning the Pope for condoning Priest Pedophilia?

No one likes to get Fined.

But have you ever been Sanduskied?

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In his book The Revolution, Ron Paul relates George McGovern’s post-government struggles as an innkeeper. It just so happens that the Senator, former presidential candidate, and HST muse was forced to close his hotel because of exorbitant expenses mandated by (dum dum dum) “The Fed” to install things like automatic sprinkler systems and new exit doors.

<fist shaking in air> Those pesky exit doors! (In Homer Simpson grumbling voice)…I hate them so much…

George McGovern tells us:

“If I were back in the U.S. Senate or in the White House, I would ask a lot of questions before I voted for any more burdens on the thousands of struggling businesses across the nation.”

To this, Ron Paul concludes: “That is an important lesson: government intervention into the economy cannot be assumed to be good and welcome and just.”

To that, I conclude that we must ask more of our leaders. (I think, George, we were all hoping that you were asking a lot of questions in the first place.)

I have been consuming Dr. Paul’s book only because he has charmed me as a Presidential Candidate.

But to this, I’m calling bullshit.

Complete and total and utter bullshit.

There is too much focus on where our leaders stand on “issues.” It is time to stop asking our potential leaders what exactly they will do, and instead ask that they just do it well.

“Ask a lot of questions before I voted…”

Before??? <smacking forehead with open palm> Why didn’t I think of that?

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There are many reasons to be fascinated with North Korea, as I am.

The Bond-esque villain-dictators, the high-step marching, the tragic wincing flinching impossibility of it all…

If you were to actually read a book about the people who have lived there, as opposed to passive consumption of current events as I have, you’d be interested to know that there are also a few reasons to be humored by North Korea:

1. Korean Math Questions:

“Three soldiers from the Korean People’s Army killed thirty American soldiers. How many American soldiers were killed by each of them if they all killed an equal number of enemy soldiers?”

2. Korean music:

A song from music class, Shoot the Yankee Bastards, contains the lyrics, “Our enemies are the American bastards/Who are trying to take over our beautiful fatherland./With guns that I make with my own hands/I will shoot them. BANG, BANG, BANG.”

It’s too bad North Korea doesn’t have technology because I would LOVE to hear a recording of first-graders singing that.

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Republican Presidential Candidate and graduate of the Ross Perot School of Elocution, Ron Paul has two books on the shelves. In his first one, The Revolution: A Manifesto, he doubts artist’s abilities to fill out government forms:

“NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] funds go not necessarily to the best artists, but to people who happen to be good at filling out government grant applications. I have my doubts that the same people populate both categories.”

Ron Paul would like to use this as an argument against federal spending and in support of the free market. “The NEA represents a tiny fraction of all arts funding,” Paul tells us, quick to note that private donations to the arts totaled $2.5 billion in 2006. With the NEA providing a comparatively miniscule $121 million.

“Freedom Wins,” Ron Paul is fond of saying. A campaign slogan, do I detect? And I totally agree: one year for Christmas an Uncle only gave me 50 bucks and my Grandparents gave me $200. I never spoke to that Uncle again. Right Ron Paul?

Paul would love the relatively dismal and inevitably imperfect system of federal spending on art to support his case against government spending and in support of the free market. But Mr. Paul’s argument is instead an incomplete analogy that when taken to its inevitable conclusion, actually indicts the true nature of our government’s corruption. Can’t the same accusation be made of corporations, that the ones who succeed aren’t actually the best at doing business and making money by providing a service the people need, but rather merely the ones savvy in lobbying, filling out forms and affluent enough to contribute to major campaigns to ensure favorable market conditions? Paul would love to extol the virtues of capitalism and free enterprise, at the expense of that perpetually nefarious monolith of dangerous dissidents known as “Artists” of course, but in actuality it’s the Corporate State who is guilty of an addiction to an unsustainable and dangerous system of collusion and cyclical waste.

Leave the artists alone, Ron. Call me when a Banksy exhibit goes horribly wrong and hundreds of millions of gallons of spray paint spill into the Gulf. Everyone would think it was a Christo spectacle anyway.

Let’s focus on the problem. Is the problem Federal Spending? Or is the problem government investment in an unfair and dangerous economy of corporate welfare?

There are many things to like about Ron Paul. He wants to end the drug war. We wants to end war. He is a vocal advocate for the Constitution and personal liberties. He’s fun to listen to.

But like a lot of Republicans he seems to harbor a lot of resentment and disdain for various segments of the population. For a lot of Republicans, this disdain often manifests in peculiar social policies.

Whaddya got against the Artists, Mr. Paul?

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¡Satiristas! is an almost-coffee table book consisting of interviews with stand-up comedy’s modern luminaries as interrogated by Paul Provenza, of Aristocrats fame, and punctuated with photographs by Dan Dion, “the world’s premier portrait photographer of comedians.”

We all gotta be something, I guess.

¡Satiristas! was published in 2010. Comedian Greg Giraldo passed away on September 29, 2010 after being taken off of life support following a prescription drug overdose.

We get to Greg Giraldo’s interview around page 261 of the hardcover:

“Let me put it this way: a week ago, my wife’s shrink – who met with me just so he could tell her what to say to me – called me psychotic, violent, and suicidal. I’m telling you this on purpose, for dramatic effect, so you can just cut and paste this right into my obituary.”

Weird.

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