sethescope

I would love it if that happened, especially because (and unlikely because) Jenny McCarthy, who is now one of the show's hosts, is a goddamn anti-vaccine nightmare of a person who's ruining people's lives because she wants someone to blame for her kid's differences.

I hate her so much I actually linked to a Post story.

So thanks for spreading the word. I promise you: by speaking out about this you a saving lives. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Overall, the citizens lives are very obviously very dictated by the government, but I was surprised that they actually have quite a bit more free will than I thought.

...

North Korea was surprising in many respects, and its really not quite the place western media/VICE portrays.

So, you ran a marathon in a famously oppressive dictatorship, and gleaned more about what a surprisingly free, warm, and welcoming place it is than professional journalists who devote their lives to reporting on it. Huh.

I appreciate the spirit you're doing this in, but honestly, this is some of the most willfully ignorant stuff I've heard in a long time. And I practically live on reddit.

TIL you don't have to understand how propaganda works to participate in it.

Ugh. So you don't have any employees.

I read his responses before I even considered replying. I still hold that he's, at best, making light of real human suffering and real abuses he couldn't possibly have learned anything meaningful about in the capacity of... a runner in a state sponsored race. Not to mention undermining (explicitly) the authority of journalists who actively report on North Korea. For starters, by interviewing people rather than high-fiving them.

Of course he got the reasonable impression that things weren't as bad as the outside world believes. That's exactly why he was there to begin with.

Hahaha. You're ridiculous. And your "quotes" are "adorable".

Of course there's media bias, and of course every person living in every nation on the planet has been influenced by national myth and propaganda, regional politics, their upbringing, and so on. Let's throw peer pressure and advertising in (Coke tastes better!) for good measure.

But, unfortunately, North Korea has a well documented history of kidnappings, murdering political dissidents, torturing citizens, forced labor camps, etc. Every international "human rights organization" will attest to that if you're still wary of "journalists".

Just because you throw your hands up in the air and act irate doesn't impeach the integrity of international journalism or the factuality of their reporting. Sure. We never, at the end of the day, can be sure who we can trust absolutely. But I'll tell you who my money isn't on: the guy who decides to participate in a publicity stunt for an oppressive regime.

I'm not sure what OP's eyes have to do with this. But if the case you're making is that any amateur without any experience can come to the same quality of conclusions as an expert in any field because of some quality of their eyeballs, well then. Good For You. And help the rest of us.