1115.org

The Chinese government is engaged in the most stupidly self-defeating battle with CNN over comments made by Jack Cafferty on April 9 on “The Situation Room”.

(Jack Cafferty) called Chinese exports “junk with the lead paint on them” and lamented the large U.S. trade deficit with China. “I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years,” Cafferty said.

I’ve stopped watching this show, so I missed the comments the first time around. If the controversy showed up in the media before, I missed that too. But, by huffing and puffing the way it has, the Chinese government has made sure that the comments come to the attention of all kinds of people around the world who really weren’t paying attention otherwise.

I’m sure you can imagine how thoroughly contrite CNN is over the world-wide publicity they are getting for standing up to … well, let’s face it, they are goons and thugs. Stupid goons and thugs

CNN smoothly “apologized to anyone who took offense”, but the Chinese, deciding to keep the controversy alive, “rejected it as inadequate”. They are now demanding a “sincere apology”. We can only assume that their behavior control technicians have determined that this new demand will motivate CNN to capitulate and quickly put an end to the positive publicity that this whole incident is so unfortunately generating.

For me, the crowning touch to this whole stupid brouhaha was this statement by Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu:

“Their statement not only did not make a sincere apology, but also took aim at the Chinese government, attempting to sow dissension between the Chinese government and the people,” Jiang said Thursday. “We cannot accept it.”

Attempting to sow dissension between the Chinese government and the people? Isn’t that like attempting to make Hillary Clinton ambitious? Or attempting to give Barack Obama a little charisma?

But maybe Jiang’s English isn’t so good? Maybe he or she frequently gets confused between “sow” and “reap”?