China Disses Obama In Song

Here in the United States, we’re used to artists doing flaky things. Whether they’re wearing an outfit made out of meat, having a “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl, or making outrageously stupid statements about politics, we just accept it. It’s musicians being musicians.

However, it’s not exactly the same in China — especially when a musician is tied in with the government. If you’re a musician in China who offends the government, you can end up in prison or at the bottom of a rock quarry somewhere. They’re not good people and that’s just how they roll.

So with that in mind, there’s zero chance that this was an accident,

If the significance of the tune that pianist Lang Lang played at last week’s state dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao escaped the White House protocol staff, not so the Chinese.

The patriotic ballad “My Motherland” comes from a 1956 movie that was set during the Korean War, depicting brave Chinese soldiers battling brutish Americans.

…”When we heard they played this song at the White House, we burst out laughing. We just couldn’t believe it,” said Wu Renchu, a Shanghai film critic.

“The song is very popular, but there is no denying that it came out of a film in which the Americans were the bad guys. To sing it at the White House, that was not a good thing,” Wu said.

The 28-year-old Lang Lang, who was born on a military base in northeastern China but has lived much of his adult life in the United States, has insisted in numerous interviews that there was no anti-American message intended.

“I selected this song because it has been a favorite of mine since I was a child. It was selected for no other reason but for the beauty of its melody. I am, first and foremost, an artist,” he wrote on his website.

That explanation has been rejected by many Chinese.

“It’s impossible that he didn’t know,” said Wen Yunchao, a prominent Chinese blogger who writes under the name Bei Feng. “Anybody who went to elementary school in China knows this song very well.”

Artist and dissident Ai Weiwei, on a Twitter posting, simply laughed off Lang Lang’s explanation. He wrote “Not political?” – and then dismissed the suggestion with an unprintable expletive.

The song was composed for the film “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.” The lyrics, which weren’t sung in the piano rendition at the White House, includes the verse: “When the friends come, fine drink is offered. But if the wolves come, what greets them are the hunting rifles.”

That song? There’s no chance it wasn’t preapproved by the Chinese government beforehand. Know why? Because if Lang Lang played that song and they weren’t okay with it, it could conceivably mean the end of his life as he knew it.

So, what does it say that the Chinese government greenlighted a song about killing Americans for a state dinner at the White House? Certainly, it was meant to be a deliberate insult to America in general and Obama in particular. The Chinese wanted him to know that they have no respect for him whatsoever — and is it any surprise? We’re in debt to them up to our eyeballs, Obama’s a weakling who bows to them — why would they respect him as a man or a leader? They wouldn’t, they don’t, and it’s not good for our country to be in this position.

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