Wait.  There’s a “Tea Party Federation” that hovers over the various Tea Party groups?  I guess there would have to be a “Federation” leader, tugging it into the direction of the corporate Republican Party establishment I’d gather.

Anyway, I had to give the NAACP some credit, after hearing and seeing some of the interviews last week.  It was a case of “Name who”, and they did indeed name who.   Matt Williams.  The “Tea Party Express” guy.  So, I guess, the “Tea Party Express” has been kicked out of the “Federation“, and that is… that?
From a point of tactical “All Hands on Deck” spittle war, this is unfortunate for “Tea Party”.  NEVER Surrender, never give up an inch — the rule that guides you to the “doubling down” dictate that if you cede ground, your enemies will demand more, and it will open you up to possible nuance, reflection and self-reflection — when you need to be on the attack — “you… you’re the one whose racist, you stupid NAA COLORED!!! P.  Eh?  Eh?”

What is with these guys and their imaginary conversations with Abraham Lincoln?

Matt Williams never signed up for the Federation.
Every Tea Partier an island.

Also, Every Tea Party success (however defined) claimed to their own sector.  Take this headline from the “Daily Paul”:

Rasmussen: US Senate Race Ron Paul Endorsed Clint Didier 48% Incumbent Murray 45%.

Leave aside the sketchiness of Ramussen as a polling unit, as well the fact that even tossing in all Rasmussen polls this fits the category of the “One of these things is doing its own thing” — wait and see, I suppose, and go to the problem with this headline.  Nobody knows Clint Didier as a “Ron Paul” endorsed candidate.  They know Clint Didier as endorsed by the politician that he’s touting with great fury — Sarah Palin!

Sarah Palin is kicking Ron Paul’s ass.  Google “Clint Didier” and “Ron Paul” and you get  34,100 results.  Google “Clint Didier” and “Sarah Palin” and you get 83,300 results.
The headline of the day:  Didier campaign tops $570,000, credits Palin boost.

Palin, creative grammatarian in the tradition of great Republican forebears like Theodore Roosevelt —
the problem with Palin’s “tweet” — is not “refudiate” — it’s that the Muslims have nothing to refudiate — whatever her nativist homeland base thinks.

Somewhat noteworthy, Sarah Palin hopped aboard the “Tea Party Express”.  She’ll either have to stick with it, but if she does she will no longer be a part of the Federation.

Generally, I am one to view the soap opera nature of the Kyron Horman story in the light that — the nature of the story increases the odds that the kid is alive, so on that perspective, I guess it’s a good thing that these things surround the story.  With the caveat that I don’t know if the various conjectures and circumstantial evidence that point the way to the Step-Mom lead inexorably to the right track or simply bellow out a whole load of dirty laundry off a side-street to a dead end, absent all that my guess would be that he’s dead — we need circumstances to suggest something else happened, and we now have a picture of what those circumstances would be.

All that aside…

And maybe to bring this up is boorish and inappropriate…
Callous, for which I suppose I apologize in advance…
but it is the thought that popped up when I read the closing notes of this Oregonian published editorial by Anna Griffin:

Kyron is still out there. He’s at the bottom of a river or screaming for help in a basement or, let’s dream a little, eating ice cream, watching SpongeBob and enjoying a respite from the messed-up world we adults made for him.

Sure.
I have no idea what Kyron Horman thinks about Spongebob Squarepants.  But, according to the t-shirt in his well published photograph of him standing next to his Frog Exhibit, he is a fan of CSI — so I guess he should be watching CSI and not Spongebob Squarepants.
Also, I’d hope his “friendly” captives are feeding him something besides ice cream.  He needs to eat his broccoli and brussel sprouts, doesn’t he?

A news quip on Obama’s low approval rating ended with the statement that it has fallen all the way down to… 50 percent.  I think this rating is on the high end of the poll of polls, but it once again brings me back to this old joke on approval rating.
No.  Seriously.

Leaving aside Charles Krauthammer’s perchance in fearing the onrush of something called “European Style Socialism”, and a gloss over of “Establishment” continuities, I do find Krauthammer striking the right note in an painting Obama’s political standing.  It is not the first time I’ve said that for Krauthammer, who appears capable of taking a step back from the on-rushing “narrative” driven 24 hour news cycle.   I reference this editorial because scanning right wing talk radio and punditary, I am struck by the easy take Obama’s unpopularity for granted schematic.  It is enough that I wonder how they will cope when Obama wins a public relations battle against the supposed on-coming Republican Congress, or we see any measurable up-tik in public support for the Obama Administration.

Reasonably entertaining, the King of Royal Dochebags, Matt Labash, skewers the uber political liberal in this centerpiece Weekly Standard cover article.  I saw the formula at work, and knew full well how this article would end: a chat with more apolitical conservative Republican neighrbors who make jokes about Obama and claim Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Clinton as good presidents — and politically uncharged conversations at the “Drinking Liberal” gathering where they all express unfavorable opinions of Keith Olbermann.

But I have an idea.  Take this article and place it alongside John Moe’s Conservatize Me — the 2006 book.  What we then need is a conservative to write a piece about living like a liberal living like a conservative.  And then a liberal writing about living like a conservative living like a liberal.   Only then will we be able to break down this blue state  / red state divide.

Leaf forward in this edition of the Weekly Standard, and there’s a decent enough article on the Connecticut Republican Senate bid of the WWE CEO and the Steroid problem which dogs her electoral pursuit.  And there’s Christopher Hitchens reviewing a book about the Dreyfus Affair.  That one is getting around the political magazines.

Interesting tidbit on the current state of Christopher Hitchens’s contrarian politics:

Today, his criticisms of political figures are entirely post-ideological. I asked him for his opinion of David Cameron, hoping for a robust critique, but he replied: “He seems content-free to me. Never had a job, except in PR, and it shows. People ask, ‘What do you think of him?’ and my answer is: ‘He doesn’t make me think.'” The younger Hitchens might have had something to say about Cameron’s sinister European alliance or his austerity economics.

Similarly, Sarah Palin is impugned not for her hard-right politics, but for her opportunism. “I think she’s a completely straightforward cynic and opportunist and I think she’s cashing out,” he said. “She’s made a fortune and she’ll make another. But she’s not actually going to do the hard work of trying to lead or build a movement.” From the other direction, he praises Barack Obama not for his landmark health-care reform, but for his “clean” presidency and his books. “I voted for Obama positively because I thought the revelation of his character in his books was admirable.”

Drat.  The whole schtik practiced by Matt Labash leads back to Christopher Hitchens.

Hm.  Not contrarian-enough for me.  I like this guy.

White, a chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, has reviewed films in impenetrable prose for years; he told Maclean’s that only people who haven’t followed him subscribe to “the infantile notion that I’m just after attention.” What brought him attention was the website Rotten Tomatoes, where movies are ranked according to an average of major critics’ reviews. Thanks to that site, readers discovered that he levels some odd accusations against big films, implying, for instance, that District 9 showed what producer Peter Jackson “really thinks about the Maori and Aborigines.” They also found that he likes to be different from other critics; when The Hurt Locker came out, he reviewed it favourably, but he started calling it “overrated” once it won the Oscar.

The last straw came last week, when White panned the new Toy Story sequel, almost solely preventing it from getting a 100 per cent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Josh Tyler at the website Cinema Blend wrote that his opinion was objectively “wrong, flat-out wrong.” A Petitionspot.com petition to disqualify his reviews from counting at Rotten Tomatoes, because “he’s been railing against the most popular and beloved movies while praising utter garbage,” had a goal of 500 signatures; it now has over 3,500. Another webpage features a long list of his opinions, revealing that he loathed The Wrestler and liked Confessions of a Shopaholic; the list is called “Armond White is Insane.”

I have not seen Toy Story 3 — likely won’t see it.  To suggest a mildly negative opinion of Toy Story comes across like undermining Pixar — who’ve performed good innovations in movie making — and moreso suggest that I somehow like the sound of decapitated children or something.  I do not belong in the general society, I suppose.  I gather such reaction against  “Arnold White” in Rotten Tomatoes land is the same form of politicization we see up above.

I do not believe that this is a very good one of these things.  I posted a couple of paragraphs from each of my previous bunch of blog posts, and came up with a different author each time.  I suppose “blogging” is not writing, or it is a type of writing which will bias everyone to certain authors over others — David Foster Wallace is an obvious skew, the footnotes within footnotes in Infinite Jest essentially a type of hyper-text.  Wallace is the first author who showed up twice.
My last post about Lyndon Larouche and the organization that surrounds him?  HP Lovecraft!  That seems appropriate somehow.

…

Regarding the Tea Party “Lenin, Obama, Hitler” sign controversy —

— leave it to prison planet to provide commenters deploring the cowardice of the movement for taking the sign down.

Also not always that difficult to find a fusion point for Larouche Inc.

I wonder how long they had to search for someone who didn’t actually agree with the sign?

So, I went over and contacted Adolf Hitler for comment on the “Lenin, Obama, Hitler” sign.
He responded with such a fury upon seeing the sign, that I had to run out of the room in fear of my life.  Quite a spectacle.  I don’t speak German, so I didn’t quite get what he said.

Such a thing as “neo-cons” and “paleo-cons” exist, don’t they? Also, quite a lot of the politically left/progressive people posting on the countless Internet forums based in the United States who use language like ‘NeoCon’ and ‘Zionist’ and ‘PaleoCon’ are either Lyndon LaRouche acolytes or have been unwittingly influenced by LaRouche’s propaganda without being entirely certain of where they picked up that language and ideology. Any time you read an Internet posting where the OP sounds like Rosie O’Donnell with a conspiracist opinion about everything, you’ve basically entered LaRouche-land.

Reaches a frustration point.

Noteworthy.  Rick Barber.  The Republican Congressional Candidate who ran a campaign where he told various Founding Fathers that “He would impeach” Obama.  He lost the nomination — 60 to 40.  Discounting intimations surrounding Darrell Issa — which remain intimations, albeit of a type you can probably find with, say, Bob Barr in 1994 — that leaves Kesha Rogers in the “Impeachment” Caucus.

… Breaking News! …

Okay, we’re done with the breaking news, we now return to regularly scheduled programming.

Update on the Summer Shields campaign!

As they were packing up, Joe E. boasted that they’d interested many locals in the LaRouche platform during their afternoon stint in front of the Post Office.   They loaded up their literature and umbrella and were off to retrieve two other true believers who had been posted in a small foothill town for the day.  In our thirty minute discussion Joe continually tapped his finger on one of LaRouche’s books as if it contained Biblical prophecy; their candidate, Summer Shields, seemed barely an afterthought.

Today’s wikipedia updates.

Well, first of all, I knew full well what this question was getting at.

But is the current picture the best we can do for this movement or is this picture a fair representative of the movement’s Political Advocacy? Weaponbb7 (talk) 17:08, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
It might be surprising that I’m not a fan of the image for that purpose, though I don’t know if the mass choral singing will get the Larouchies any better propaganda points.
Anyway, looking at Weaponbb7’s profile — I guess he’s not your HK sock puppet.  But this is the reason the  Larouchies would hate that photograph use.

Face front and smile. Maybe wikipedia can get permission for that photograph?  I don’t know.

Wikipedia is currently stumbling on how to cover the activity surrounding Obama.
Meantime, Marshal MacMahon has been removed for “Sock Puppetry“.   He’s a big fan of Stanislav Menshikov, and resents a description of the word “blather” to describe his praise for Larouche.

And this seems a bit self-serving a “solution“.

If you were to move this section because there is an article devoted to LaRouche’s views, wouldn’t you also have to move the sections on the US Labor Party, Jeremiah Duggan and Kenneth Kronberg as well, because there are articles about them? That might actually be a good idea, because this article is too long. Marshal MacMahon (talk) 12:47, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia presents some problems on certain topics.  Here’s an issue with Webster Tarpley, for instance.  By any reasonable measure, the “Kennebunkport Warning” controversy should be covered in the Wesbter Tarpley topic, as it was a demonstration of his methodology in trying to claim credence from anti-war activists such as Cindy Shehan, and in the recripocal relationship whereby anti-war activists such as Shehan ask Tarpley to buzz off.  Yet, it was a controversy which existed in a very limited universe — the 9/11 Truth land — outside mainstream media not noting it.  There was this strange instigation from this cartoon published by rense, and rense.com served up several articles on this.   So, there you go : it exists in the weird virtual space that Webster Tarpley resides in, and can shuffle things away whenever he pops his head out of the ground.
So we get this as an explanation for its deletion.

Is that right?  We passed another Crash Point of Hyper-Inflation?

Another world-historical Lyn-forecasted “crash” was to occur, too. Crash, Crash, Crash. I am for skin. For skin. No more knife fights.
I thought July 16th 2010 was date certain and with interest. He has NEVER been wrong. Never. I thought I had lived THIS history. This is living history? Is this living? Living this is, or should be.
Does bread cost $100,000 in your area today? I bought hot dog rolls last night and got a good deal — two eight-packs for $1.50. Sale price. A two-fer right before Weimar. Wow. And in see-through plastic bags. Oil was used, somewhere.

You know, David Lindsay is really odd.

In fact, LaRouche’s theory of a nefarious global Anglophile network is also held by neoconservatives. And there is more than a touch of New Labour about him, with his hysterical hatred of Britain and his incessant abuse of the Queen.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown hate the Queen?

Anyway, while I’m trying to create a political coalition as described by David Linday, it seems a moot point.  The End Game is ON!!!

More centered here.  Oh, yeah.  Dark Ages round the Bend!  Dark Ages for Everyone!  It’ll be fun.

Nope.

LaRouche (with his following) seems a throwback to the early 20th century; wherein scientists like the Huxleys also mused upon spiritualism. LaRouche claims descent from Vladimir Vernadsky, specifically. […]  Vernadsky and LaRouche remind me of Ayn Rand and other such holistic, secular prophets. LaRouche, perhaps more Randian in his interest in politics.

It’s enough to follow this: voiceofelijah2012  Says: July 14th, 2010 at 4:45 pm economy is tanking, the system is failing, but make sure you spend your money on this guy and make him rich. lol foolish people.
OR…

look my way through email spam.

My grief counselor suggested I make a list of things that might fill the sudden – but expected – void in my existence. […]

Clear out e-mail; send credit card information to Nigerian prince and Lyndon Larouche.

Help us, Commander Chakotay.  Only he can save us from the Impending Dark Ages Interval.

I went to a LYM meeting once they yelled about Cheney and then tried to get me to come back with promises of Commander Chakotay from Star Trek Voyager at the next meeting. I would have gone for Riker.

I confused LaRouche with LaVey for a second and got pretty excited over the OP but then I read on and was rather disappointed.

i wanna meet a larouche nut so i can tell him to stick a square up his rear end and double it.

I predicted this, but didn’t consider it much of a prediction.  A minor league baseball team has dropped on the world Alvin Greene Bobblehead dolls.  Or, something like them — I don’t quite know what these things are.  It’s just another twist in the somewhat uninteresting somewhat interesting but non-essential story of the Alvin Greene Senate campaign — a campaign which may be receiving attention disproportionate to its import, but which you can kind of shrug off as the equivalent of a four sentence blurb on page A11.

Is he worth following?  There is something a bit more straight-forward to that question than with the various tea party candidates that abound, that represent some electoral strength and show it in various elections, but whose presence on the national stage is representative of savvy media manipulation rewarded to shiny inflamation over dull reasonableness.  The case of Rick Barber.  The good thing about Rick Barber is I never heard of him before he came in second to force a run-off, meaning that he had to obtain some level of election success to become identified.  Then again, his conversation fever dreams with Abe Lincoln and Ben Franklin — impeaching Obama for policies began in the 1910s and concurring that Health Care Reform is Slavery — probably would have gotten him to national fame before the primary.
Some of my thoughts parallel some of Dave Weigel’s thoughts.  But you can’t ignore them — a run off is a run off which means something, 40 percent is 40 percent which means something — but everything needs to be noted with the media savviness of it all.

I don’t quite know the viability of this candidate, Ed Martin in Missouri, but again he does represent a tendency and a thought process endemic in our politics.
I thought I could explain his premise — thought it was insane, but I heard an interview with him last night on the Alan Colmes Show (yes, Alan freaking Colmes) that went in a different direction than I thought he was going in — though equally insane.  The Colmes interview wound up with Ed Martin saying that Obama and Carnahan are taking our Freedom of Religion away by promoting Abortion policies.  While he did manage to squirrel ACORN in tangentally, his main and overwhelming focal point was Abortion.  Logic eludes me, but that is probably by design.

More broadly speaking, and what I gathered his “the growth of government endangers religious freedom and the “ultimate freedom … to get your salvation” statement to mean — and work with me on this one — it’s a perverted form of Calvinist doctrine, and a bit of a descendent of some anti-Communist rhetoric.  Two directions we go with this: #1 — The omnipresence of Government is filling in the gaps where God belongs.  #2 — and more evil — it’s an argument on behalf of pain.  If we go by the premise that people find Jesus during points of desperation, then, for instance, extending unemployment insurance will ruin people’s lives because it will stop them from finding Jesus.

Rand Paul comes into that spot from a slightly different direction.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul says the poor in America are “enormously better off than the rest of the world,” citing an old Cold War film that showed even impoverished homes had color televisions.
Paul’s recent remarks at his first forum with Democratic opponent Jack Conway stirred some anger in impoverished pockets of Kentucky, where as many as a third of residents live in poverty.
The libertarian-leaning Paul addressed the issue of poverty by alluding to a decades-old, anti-American propaganda film by the Soviet government designed to criticize the free-market system.
“They filmed a building in the poorer section of New York with some broken windows and they said, `Oh, this is how the poor in America lives,'” Paul said at last week’s forum. “But it backfired on them because the Soviet citizens looked at that video closely and they saw flickering color television sets in all those windows.”
Paul went on to say that “the poor in our country are enormously better off than the rest of the world. It doesn’t mean we can’t do better. But we have to acknowledge and be proud of our system of capitalism.”

His is an argument that will tend to lead to complacency, at all junctures in our history.  I will note that this is the first time my gut has been undecided on who is going to win this Senate contest, when before I’d have sided with Paul.
A bit more parallel in thinking to Ed Martin, even if somewhat more secular, is the Unemployment is keeping people from grabbing onto perhaps more modest jobs line.

I note a contradictory point in today’s “Just Say No” Republican Party.  The very same Mitch Mcconnell whose party blames easy credit lending on behalf of Freddie and Fanny lombasts the new banking regulatory bill as “restricting credit”.  Necessary for an economic recovery to not do so, I suppose, though the credit has to flow to some productivity and grounding.  But therein lies the contradictory nature of Economics.

Say, What’s Sharron Angle up to?

Typical religious right crap.  I’m pretty sure she’ll reference the anti-religious designs of Big Gumnint next.

Hardly surprising, the “American Independence Party” is, in the state of California, the third largest political party in terms of voters’ membership.  It has more voters on the registrar than the Libertarian Party or the Green Party — and note there that the Green Party was early on irking the Democratic Party ticket of Clinton / Gore in 1996, four years before 2000.
The political party is a product of the 1968 George Wallace campaign, and has bumped off to some splintering and fusion with the Constitution Party — most notable platform item of which is the idea that “Abortionists” should be put to death, or perhaps most notable at the moment for being the old stomping grounds of Nevada’s current Republican Senate candidate.  I can say with utmost confidence that the “American Independence Party”‘s status as the third largest political party in California in voter registration is the product of an inflation from Unaffiliateds, or “Independents”.

But at least it’s a political party with a core set of principles and constituency.

The Independence Party of New York is an interesting contraption.  It’s become a vaguely defined but valuable ballot spot for Fusion Voting purposes.  It is a little difficult to ascertain the current state of affairs — and whenever I deign to look over and read the press copy of party infighting I see contradictions, but the party has been dominated, controlled, or infiltrated by a cadre of dedicated post-Marxist politico sex-therapy (“Friendosex”) cult members.  It is such a state that Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg, Ralph Nader, and Pat Buchanan have all had to kiss the ring of this Politico Sex Therapy Cult.
Interestingly enough, Pat Buchanan’s marriage fell apart as the Buchananites and the “Natural Law Party” Transcendental Meditators duked it out on who would infiltrate the party for the crass ballot access and federal funds Ross Perot had earned in 1996.

I guess things are more respectable in Minnesota, their party coming off as an outgrowth of the sucessful gubernatorial campaign of Jesse Ventura.  At the very least, Dean Barkley garnered a respectable 20 percent against Franken and Coleman and Lizard People, and is a sane man.  I think I can take a stab on what the Independence Party of Minnesota stands for.

Regarding Oregon’s Independent Party…

C’MON!
Of the three models discussed, I imagine the Minnesota Party is the most likely model to aspire to.
Okay, leaving aside the question of how nature abhors a vacuum, and the party having plenty of vacuums — a large voting pool of people who don’t know they’re members and are thus uninvolved in party politics, and a valuable asset that gives candidates “Independent” credo –  such that I wonder what safeguards are in place to keep it from being taken over by post-Marxist politico sex cults…

Okay, that’s not a fair question.

Okay.  The best light I can give them is that the voter registration inflation that comes from its inflated number of Unaffiliateds is a feature, and not a bug.  In a world where Green Party candidates are just as often as not propped up as Republican Party tricks, and where the Democratic Party gets into that act this season with various “Tea Party” affiliates — which harms the integrity of these candidacies, an easy ballot line should be grabbed.  The Independent Party is an amorphous blob of a ballot spot, readily available to someone who can amass a following — whether a Ralph Nader or an Alan Keyes or a Dean Barkley — and evade some restrictive ballot laws and the nature of party politicing in “3rd Party Spoildom”.  In the meantime, the party has to justify its existence.

A legislative agenda of clean government, you say?  Good.  A Bi-partisan political action committee would serve just as well.

They’re going to get John Kitzhaber on the ballot.  Which is a little odd, considering that John Kitzhaber is already on the ballot, which means that the original founding purpose of this party is either void or a ballot line in waiting.

I’ll be sure to put up a blog post on the accuracy or inaccuracy of my prediction that John Kitzhaber will win the Independent Party nomination, and the startling repurcussions and meaning of such a thing.  Sal Peralta justifies himself over here.

I am pretty indifferent to the NAACP and its decision to pass a resolution condemning Racist Elements in the Tea-Party.  It does not strike me as a particularly interesting story, noteworthy in any direction — it is fodder that eludes any worthwhile discussion from any direction.  Indeed, I wouldn’t think of mentioning it, except to lump it alongside three other race-related (of sorts) stories.

At least the resolution has some logic and meaning to it.  Where the NAACP embarrasses themselves, or at least a particular chapter of the NAACP, is with this:

South Carolina Democrat Alvin Greene, the man who won his party’s Senate primary last month despite not running a campaign, is set to make his first official campaign speech Sunday. 
Greene will address the Manning chapter of the NAACP.  […]
“He accomplished what many thought that was impossible,” Fleming told WFAE Radio reporter Julie Rose. “He was willing to step out and make the commitment and I admire anyone for making such a sacrifice because he wants to make South Carolina a better place.” 
“The word in the barbershop, the word on the street, the word in the church parking lots is that everyone is pulling for him,” Fleming said.
Greene is expected to have about 20 minutes to speak Sunday afternoon. Fleming said the group is looking for a larger venue to host the event given the interest Greene’s appearance is generating.  

WHY?  They didn’t hear of him before the election.  WEB Du Bois is rolling in his grave.

Perahps more flame to the fires.  So, the big stink in conservative media right now involves the clownish buffoons of the “New Black Panther Party” and that Election Day video of them buffooning it up on Election Day 2008.  I weep, I cry, I roll my eyes.  Actually, I roll the dial past Sean Hannity yesterday and hear two words “Black Panthers”, and pause for a milisecond.  It has something to do with the Democrats in Washington protecting the “New” Black Panthers.
I suppose this is more lax than I would want it to be:  While the prosecutors dismissed charges against the organization, its leader and the third member, they won an order barring Shabazz from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location in Philadelphia on any Election Day through 2012. — I preferring them not to be allowed to display a weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location from here to perpetuity…

paging a brief from the NRA for that purpose, I suppose.

In other news — David Vitter in Louisiana —

Republican Sen. David Vitter told a group of supporters last week he is in favor of groups who may want to take President Obama to court over the belief he is not an American citizen.

“I personally don’t have standing to bring litigation to court,” he said at a recent town hall meeting in Metairie, Lousiana, which was caught on video. “But I support conservative legal organizations and others who would bring that to court.”

And now I suddenly have more sympathy for the NAACP’s resolution.  But the other item that’s swirling about today…

Blegh.  Drudge.  At least she has good reason to speak before the NAACP.

Surely, this is a more appropriate image for the North Korean World Cup team?  But that looks a little too normal — a just celebration for an accomplishment in their Athletic Endevor, never mind the backstory for the nation they’re representing.

An overall focus on the team’s relationship with the country.

Seemingly randomly selected soccer matches from overseas leagues are shown every weekend on the Mansudae cultural channel (only broadcast at weekends). Average North Koreans don’t get much of a chance to see high level men’s football featuring their own national team as, quite frankly, the men’s team has been pretty terrible for years. […]
Professional footballers in North Korea don’t enjoy the same rock star level of fame as they do in England and elsewhere, but then neither do North Korean rock stars! The average person would struggle to name more than one or two of the team, and they enjoy relative anonymity on the street.
Their private lives remain outside of the public eye as well, with no news of their WAGS, any naughty off-field antics, or even reports of any rampant conspicuous consumption.
Football is never televised live in the DPRK. Games are generally shown one or two days later at prime time on the state TV channel. Thus far in this world cup highlights packages of all the games – except the South Korea v Greece match – have been shown on the state TV channel.

It was enough to cause a controversy about just who the North Korean contigency of fans in South Africa really were. 

Fifa officials and millions of television viewers were surprised when rows of red-clad “North Koreans” took their seats, believing the harsh regime had allowed its citizens freedom to travel.
But one fan, Kim Yong Chon, 43, who said he was North Korean, told reporters his group of 300 had been carefully chosen by the North Korean government.
Although they sang their national anthem loudly, the group tended only to cheer when directed by a man who stood before them like an orchestra’s conductor.
Meanwhile, another party of fans confirmed rumours they were Chinese, having obtained tickets through a Chinese sports PR agency, authorised to sell part of the North Korean allocation of 1,400 seats.
Dubbed the “fans volunteer army”, they included dancers, musicians and other artists and said they were happy to don the North Korean national colours.
One Brazilian fan said: “I spoke with them. They had come from Beijing and knew nothing about football or the World Cup. They said they were supporting their Communist cousins and were happy to be there.”

Meanwhile, in North Korea, somehow or other this fell by the wayside.