Jules Crittenden on "'The Sun of Songun Shedding Its Rays All over the World,'

an epic serial blockbuster about the life of Kim Jong Il." From The Independent (U.K.):

His birth was marked by a double rainbow and a new star, he hit 11 holes-in-one in his first game of golf, finishing 38 under par, and throughout his life he has performed heroic feats impossible for mere mortals. When he shouts, "huge storms happen".

John Meiners (mail):
I'll bet he doesn't always drink beer but when he does he prefers Dos Equis.
7.17.2009 9:47am
MarkField (mail):
He's got nothin' on Chuck Norris.
7.17.2009 9:54am
George Smith:
Yes he can!
7.17.2009 9:56am
Cornellian (mail):
He is the most interesting dictator in the world . . .
7.17.2009 9:56am
wuzzagrunt (mail):
But can he increase spending by a couple of trillion dollars, give 95% of families a tax cut, and cut the deficit in half? If he says he can do that, I'll call him a liar. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on the 11 holes in one.
7.17.2009 10:00am
Mhoram:
Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated.
7.17.2009 10:01am
NaG (mail):
All your base are belong to Songun!
7.17.2009 10:04am
Azatoth:
Wuzzagrunt:


I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on the 11 holes in one.


I don't know ... Even Tiger Woods rarely gets more than 8 Holes in One per round.
7.17.2009 10:15am
Anon321:
It's funny to think of the writers trying to decide how many holes in one he got on his first time out. Eighteen? Preposterous. Two? Pedestrian. Eleven? Just right.
7.17.2009 10:28am
mcbain:
Being the writer for these types of movies has got to be the most hazardous occupation in the world.
7.17.2009 10:47am
Dave N (mail):
If you want to read this kind of thing on a regular basis, the North Korean News Agency has an English language website.
7.17.2009 11:00am
Daniel Chapman (mail):
I think JM won the thread on the first post.
7.17.2009 11:12am
Harry Schell (mail):
Obama better get to work on his golf game...pitching baseballs is not where he will make his mark, whatever he is wearing.
7.17.2009 11:21am
George Smith:
Yeah, I bet THEIR Dear Leader doesn't throw a baseball like a 9 year old girl.
7.17.2009 11:36am
Soronel Haetir (mail):
The thing you don't realize, it was a mini-golf course.
7.17.2009 11:46am
some guy:
Obama better get to work on his golf game...pitching baseballs is not where he will make his mark, whatever he is wearing.

Yeah, but if actual performance did not stop the media from cropping the view in order to make Obama's pitch look better, what makes you think they won't also say (15 years down the road) that he was the second coming of Roger Clemens?
7.17.2009 11:50am
A. Nony Mouse:
I read once that Dear Leader pitched a perfect game - 81 pitches, all strikes, resulting in 27 strikeouts.
7.17.2009 11:51am
Bill Poser (mail) (www):

I read once that Dear Leader pitched a perfect game - 81 pitches, all strikes, resulting in 27 strikeouts.

It's amazing what a death threat can do to a batter, isn't it?
7.17.2009 12:03pm
Soronel Haetir (mail):

It's amazing what a death threat can do to a batter, isn't it?


Not to mention the umpire. You would expect a few of them to be outside an honest strike zone by accident.
7.17.2009 12:31pm
Farmer Lawyer:
He speaks French --- in Russian.
7.17.2009 12:35pm
TMac (mail):
"But can he increase spending by a couple of trillion dollars, give 95% of families a tax cut, and cut the deficit in half?"

Sure he can, the same way Obama is going to do it: Print $$
7.17.2009 12:36pm
rarango (mail):
"He speaks French --- in Russian" anyone can do that--the question is: does he speak Austrian in any language?
7.17.2009 1:24pm
Soronel Haetir (mail):

Sure he can, the same way Obama is going to do it: Print $$


That's part of the problem, actually, NK is believed to be one of the major sources of counterfeit US currency.
7.17.2009 1:27pm
MCM (mail):
Kim Jong Il doesn't do push-ups; he pushes the Earth down.
7.17.2009 1:30pm
PersonFromPorlock:
So how come he didn't do the loaves and fishes thing when they had a famine?
7.17.2009 1:31pm
PersonFromPorlock:
Come to think of it, "loaves and fishes" puts him in a junior role: I shoulda said "the manna thing."
7.17.2009 1:34pm
http://volokh.com/?exclude=davidb :
Just in case anyone wondered whether the North Korean government was the equivalent of a religion -- with all that entails -- we now have our answer.
7.17.2009 1:36pm
Jim at FSU (mail):
The north korean golf course slopes towards the holes so that anything that lands within a certain distance of the hole rolls in.
7.17.2009 2:06pm
Mark E.Butler (mail):
Sounds like Glendower. But he woulda whacked Hotspur.
7.17.2009 2:09pm
mcbain:

Come to think of it, "loaves and fishes" puts him in a junior role: I shoulda said "the manna thing."



How dare you confuse Kim Il Sung with Kim Jong Il!
7.17.2009 2:45pm
[insert here] delenda est:
No, Jim, that is the Dear Leader holes - on the minigolf course! The rest of the party has to deal with holes mounted on small pyramids set in sloped sand greens on the full-size course that is set around the mini-golf course.
7.17.2009 2:54pm
Avatar (mail):
I actually had to work on a giant monster movie produced by Kim Jong Il (with a kidnapped actor and director). Ironically, the film had a strong anticommunist moral and was immediately banned in North Korea...
7.17.2009 3:19pm
cp277:
What's funny to me is that they threw in the 11-holes-in-one thing. If you're not impressed that his birth was marked by rainbows and stars, and that he can make it rain by shouting, is his being really, really good at golf going to wow you?
7.17.2009 3:42pm
rick.felt:
Rainbows? Stars? Come on, that's for schoolgirls. Our demigods can stop the rise of the oceans just by getting more votes than Hillary Clinton.
7.17.2009 3:55pm
Asher (mail):
But, um, when you click through to the article from which this quote is pulled, it's not at all clear that this stuff actually happens in the movie, or whether it's just the writer's joke.
7.17.2009 4:02pm
rick.felt:
It's funny to think of the writers trying to decide how many holes in one he got on his first time out. Eighteen? Preposterous. Two? Pedestrian. Eleven? Just right.

It makes him look inconsistent! He was 38 under? Okay so he shot a 34. Now we know that 11 of those 34 came on 11 holes, so on the remaining 7 holes he shot a 23. So that's five 3's and two 4's.

Obviously, he can't get just par on any hole, so both of those 4's had to come on par-fives. So he got a hole in one on all four par threes, plus seven par fours. So...

A guy who got a hole in one SEVEN times on par-fours also twice took four strokes to reach the pin on par-fives. What gives?
7.17.2009 4:10pm
MCM (mail):
So how come he didn't do the loaves and fishes thing when they had a famine?


He did the giant rabbits thing instead.
7.17.2009 4:19pm
ReaderY:
Don't forget, his incredible appetiteness ate the giant rabbits to help celebrate his birthday. Surely a mere famine shouldn't be permitted to interfere with the festivities.
7.17.2009 5:55pm
traveler496:
cp277:

If you're not impressed that his birth was marked by rainbows and stars, and that he can make it rain by shouting, is his being really, really good at golf going to wow you?

A double rainbow, supernova and cloudburst vs 11 holes-in-one in his first round ever?

cp277, either your humor is very dry or you need to get out more:-)
7.17.2009 7:36pm
whit:

I actually had to work on a giant monster movie produced by Kim Jong Il (with a kidnapped actor and director). Ironically, the film had a strong anticommunist moral and was immediately banned in North Korea...


i'm pretty sure i saw that movie. i rent a lot of asian movies. some of the korean and japanese flicks are awesome. infernal affairs (yes, that's how it's spelled( is one of my favorite movies ever. fwiw, nearly every time i rent ANY movie of european origin, i am profoundly dissapointed. nearly every asian film i am pleased. although i did like "let the right one in" which was from sweden or finland or something like that.
7.17.2009 7:57pm
zippypinhead:
...the North Korean News Agency has an English language website.
Ok, if you think you need to prove your manhood by topping a puny little 11 holes in one, go ahead and prove how macho you are - click on a North Korean website from any work computer with an employer whose server logging is turned on (especially a public-sector employer) -- can you nevertheless keep your job? Now THAT would be impressive!
7.17.2009 10:25pm
Randy R. (mail):
All those abilities, but and yet everyday remains a 'bad hair' day.
7.17.2009 11:50pm
PeteP (mail):
'...And when he farts, the lighting shoots out of his arse' :-)
7.18.2009 9:05am
Tom952 (mail):
All we have to do to solve the problem is publish the ridicule of this tripe to the North Koreans.
7.18.2009 12:26pm
Toby:

Come to think of it, "loaves and fishes" puts him in a junior role: I shoulda said "the manna thing."

I understand many N Koreans spend time gathering small objects off the ground to eat...
7.19.2009 3:09pm

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