President Obama on Sony and Sony on Obama

Here is President Obama’s speaking about why he thinks that Sony made a mistake in cancelling the release of “The Interview” Obama said that he wishes Sony had spoken to him before making the decision “I would have told them: ‘Do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.’ Imagine if, instead of it being a cyberthreat, somebody had broken into their office and destroyed a bunch of computers and stolen disks and… is that what it takes for you to suddenly pull the plug on something?”

Well, that wasn’t a very good comparison to the real situation where threats to moviegoers were made if the film was released.

President Obama also said: “…if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary 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… that’s not what America’s about.”

That’s all well and good until you are talking about “somebody” who has made threats of violence but you can’t arrest that “somebody” or “somebodies”.

Sony CEO Michael Lynton later came out and said that President Obama made a mistake — it was not Sony that pulled the plug on the movie, it was the movie theaters. Sony agreed to release it to any theater that wanted to show it but, of course, no one wanted to show it.

It’s, uh, interesting, for want of a better word, how all this finger-pointing is going on. Actor George Clooney gave an interview to Deadline yesterday on “Hollywood Cowardice”, explaining why “Sony Stood Alone In North Korean Cyberterror Attack”.