Please, count me out

Tonight, barring a miracle, those who dare watch television (as a recovering TV addict who has gone cold turkey I will be either swimming, cooking or riding a train at the time)--you will have a chance to witness what looks like a visit to the Marianas Trench of bathos.


What we all really need to see--a dramatic recreation (guaranteed to be tasteful, believable and not at all maudlin) of the life of Yokota Megumi.



Can the families of the abducted please give the rest of us a break? It is bad enough that they get not only a cabinet-level post and one of the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister posts dedicated to their hopeless cause...but they also are the first non-politicians the new prime minister deigns to meet.

However horribly the government of Japan treated the families of the abducted--and they were treated horribly, do doubt about it--do the rest of us have to have our noses ground into the dirt over it? [No, not really--we could just not watch the program when it airs on Nippon Television (Channel 4) at 21:00 tonight]

Do the surviving family members realize how far beyond the pale they have pushed their complaint? I am so sick of the stranglehold the families and their handlers have on any aspect of North Korea-related policy I am finding myself--Amaterasu help me--in agreement with Gregory Clark.

Eeek!