Yesterday, while the US launched its space shuttle, oohed and aahed at fireworks (where it wasn’t raining…), and turned the country red, white, and blue, N. Korea launched the missile about which everyone was worried.
Sort of.
Actually, they’ve apparently launched as many as seven of their expensive toys, but The Big One — the long-range Taepodong-2 — failed miserably last night. (Since the seventh appears to have been fired only a few hours ago, this is still unfolding…)
There’s a great deal of international excitement, of course, and folks are “urgently negotiating“, opining, and generally raising an enormous fuss… but Polimom has yet to feel any excitement. Pyongyang’s effort yesterday / this morning reminds me of an enormous blue pill — a massive dose of Viagra — that didn’t work as advertised.
Kim Jong-il did his best to work himself (and the rest of us) up into a heated frenzy, but his equipment just didn’t match his fantasies.
Of course, the target of his affections has always been out of reach; on a good day, with perfect conditions and a guidance system that actually worked, the long-range missile might have made it as far as Alaska.
Maybe.
In the coming days, the United States will no doubt join others in massaging Pyonyang’s bruised ego. Officially, we’ll pay a great deal of attention to their effort and downplay the North Korean impotence, ever the dutiful target of affection. Unofficially, though, Polimom suspects a great deal of behind-closed-doors snickering will be going on, as the irreverent among us snicker (or even guffaw).
We’ll give a nod to Kim’s lathered, insane need to pull the world down around his ears, but we’ll all be laughing at him at the same time — and he knows it.
Is North Korea dangerous? Yes, of course they are, in the same way any frustrated, impotent, power-crazed would-be harbinger of hell would be. Eventually, they’ll either succumb to the madness or have to be put down, but in the interim… well,you know how us girls like to talk with one another, and somebody’s bound to write about this fizzle on a dirty bathroom wall someplace.
How embarrassing.