Michael Lynton was the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment when it greenlit Seth Rogen’s film The Interview. You’ve most likely never seen it because it displeased the Supreme (Communist) Leader of North Korea and led to North Korea’s hack of the company’s emails, confidential scripts, and his family’s personal information. Sony limited distribution of the film in order to mitigate the damage.
The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt of Lynton’s memoir in its February 21 Review section. In the excerpt Lynton blames the malformation of his character for what he deems a monumental corporate mistake. I was disgusted to read President Obama’s concurrence in Lynton’s assessment:
Eight months later, after it became clear that the North Koreans had hacked Sony, and after the studio had lost its relationships with many of its most important stars—including Will Smith, Adam Sandler and Angelina Jolie—I spoke to President Obama about the whole incident. Unsurprisingly, he asked the right question: “What were you thinking when you made killing the leader of a hostile foreign nation a plot point? Of course that was a mistake.”
I read the excerpt that Saturday. My first thought was I am so glad Obama isn’t president. My second thought, as to both the memoir and Obama’s contribution, was sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut. My third thought was I blame Obama — the Supreme (Communist) Leader sized him up for a chump. I was surprised the Journal published the excerpt without some reflection on its contents. It is pitiful.
Ira Stoll now provides further context and reflection in the Washington Free Beacon column “Movie Attacking North Korean Tyrant Was Big Mistake, Says Former Sony Executive” (“Lynton agrees with Obama, in ‘orgy of self-blame’ deemed ‘pathetic’ by readers”). He reports that Obama played tough at the time:
In public, Obama took a different stance than the one Lynton attributes to him privately. Obama said at a Dec. 19, 2014, news conference, “We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States. Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don’t like or news reports that they don’t like. Or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended. So that’s not who we are. That’s not what America is about. … Do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.”
Yeah, it would be like Bashar al-Assad thinking he can cross Obama’s red line with impunity.
Other readers shared my thoughts. I had missed this at the time:
Commenters on the Journal website ridiculed the Lynton book excerpt. One Journal reader, Donald Feldman, wrote, “It was a great movie and the right decision to release it. Lynton’s orgy of self-blame is pathetic. No one could have anticipated that N Korea could have hacked the information that they did. Lynton’s conclusion seems to be that appeasement is always the right decision when confronted by a grotesque bully.” That was the most-liked comment of all 401 on the Journal website.
Another popular comment was from Aaron Sawchuk: “Are you kidding me? The lesson you learned was to self-censor against a brutally repressive regime? Truly a profile in courage. Pathetic.”
Stoll comments: “What’s the point of having America control Hollywood if we can’t make a movie mocking a communist dictator?”
Of course, “Lynton did not respond by deadline to a request for comment sent via the book’s publisher.” Obama is as bad as we remember. However, perhaps not surprisingly: “The actual book is even worse than the Journal excerpt.” Read Stoll’s column here.
