Jean-Claude Van Damme was in a movie with Volodymyr Zelensky and Jean-Claude Van Damme stars in Trump's favorite movie "Bloodsport."

Coincidence?

I was looking into the life story of Volodymyr Zelensky, because I was trying to figure out what language he spoke in the notorious telephone call with President Trump. This mattered as I analyzed a WaPo article about the supposedly low number of words per minute compared to a phone call between Trump and the President of Mexico.

And I stumbled into the movie "Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon," in which Zelensky played Napoleon:



Fascinating. Distracting. And there's this in the cast list:

Jean-Claude Van Damme as himself

So Jean-Claude Van Damme was in a movie with Volodymyr Zelensky. Well, what, if any, is Jean-Claude Van Damme's connection to Trump?

First, there's this, from "Trump Solo" by Mark Singer in The New Yorker, back in 1997, when Trump was "solo" because he'd just broken up with Marla Maples:

We hadn’t been airborne long when Trump decided to watch a movie. He’d brought along “Michael,” a recent release, but twenty minutes after popping it into the VCR he got bored and switched to an old favorite, a Jean Claude Van Damme slugfest called “Bloodsport,” which he pronounced “an incredible, fantastic movie.” By assigning to his son the task of fast-forwarding through all the plot exposition—Trump’s goal being “to get this two-hour movie down to forty-five minutes”—he eliminated any lulls between the nose hammering, kidney tenderizing, and shin whacking. When a beefy bad guy who was about to squish a normal-sized good guy received a crippling blow to the scrotum, I laughed. “Admit it, you’re laughing!” Trump shouted. “You want to write that Donald Trump was loving this ridiculous Jean Claude Van Damme movie, but are you willing to put in there that you were loving it, too?”

And then there's this from December 2017 (again, from The New Yorker, where I get my Van Damme news), describing a scene from just before the 2016 election:

And last October, in an interview with TMZ conducted outside a restaurant while he was holding his small dog, Van Damme said, among other things, that the next President of the United States needed to “have a vodka with Mr. Putin” and “try to make peace.” He then downplayed the attention being paid to Donald Trump’s use of the phrase “grab ’em by the pussy,” and said, though he loves his “brother Muslims,” “right now, we need Donald Trump.” In that video, and in other public moments, Van Damme has had the appearance of a man who still takes himself quite seriously....

Now, continuing with the New Yorker, look at "The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea/On the ground in Pyongyang: Could Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump goad each other into a devastating confrontation?" (September 2017):

When it came time for Kim Jong Il to choose an heir, his four daughters were ineligible, because of their gender. His eldest son, Jong Nam, was more a playboy than a statesman, and, in 2001, he was caught trying to enter Japan on a forged passport, to take his four-year-old son to Tokyo Disneyland. The next-oldest son, Jong Chul, was reserved and gentle. While in Switzerland, he had written a poem called “My Ideal World,” which began, “If I had my ideal world I would not allow weapons and atom bombs anymore. I would destroy all terrorists with the Hollywood star Jean-Claude Van Damme.” According to Fujimoto, Kim Jong Il said that Jong Chul was unfit to rule “because he is like a little girl.”

I don't know what more you need to know. Connect the dots!

"I recognize you, but take your fucking pants off... now!"

"Sacha Baron Cohen just spilled 'ashes' of Kim Jong Il on Ryan Seacrest."

A tweet from the Oscars that I am not watching.

Cohen is promoting his movie "The Dictator" and appearing in character as Adm. Gen. Shabazz Aladeen, which the Oscar folk tried to keep him from doing.

ADDED: Video.

"[D]uring the 1980s, the North Korean government embarked on a policy of radical self-sufficiency known as juche."

"Farmers were expected to overcome mother nature and grow enough crops to feed the entire population. To do it, they relied on heaps of chemical fertilizer. But that crutch was yanked away in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed."

"How Kim Jong Il Starved North Korea."

Not speaking (Kim Jong) ill of the dead.

"Smart and ruthless."/"Diplomats who dealt with him describe Kim as shrewd and calculating."/"In a demented sort of way, brilliant."/"Tactically brilliant."/"A very cunning person and very smart person."/"Was profoundly important around the world. I actually met him when I traveled there with Madeleine Albright."

A media montage put together chez Rush Limbaugh, who comments:

Bush was the devil. George W. Bush was stupid, and he was the devil. He was the devil incarnate and Kim Jong-il, now Kim Jong-dead, very cunning, very smart person, profoundly important around the world. "I actually met him when I traveled there with Madeleine Albright." Speaking of Madeleine Albright, here she is, a montage of her on Kim Jong-il, now Kim Jong-dead, between 2003-2006.

ALBRIGHT: He said that he would really have loved to have been a movie director. He knew a lot about American movies and had suggestions for Oscar nominations and, you know, he also liked American sports, he liked Michael Jordan. It was possible to talk with him. He's not a nut. I think that's the main kind of point. I think that it's important actually not to make fun. He wanted me to e-mail with him. I think the thing that's interesting, Larry, is I do not believe that he's crazy. I know a lot of people have said that. I don't think so.

RUSH: It's a montage of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talking about Kim Jong-il, now Kim Jong-dead. He was a murdering tyrant. His people are among the poorest in the world and he's spoken of here in reverent terms. The best thing he had going for him, as far as these people are concerned, was he's not a Republican, he wasn't a conservative. Hitler and Stalin both loved American movies, too. This guy loved Michael Jordan. Wow, there's really a lot to recommend him. Bachmann and Perry are stupid. Kim Jong-il, not a nut, it would be a mistake to say that he's a nut.

Real crying or fake crying?

What to make of these vast public displays of grief in North Korea over the death of Kim Jong-Il?

Real or fake?
	Fake. They're just doing what they're forced to do.
	Real. They're doing what they've been conditioned to do.
	This culture is so far gone that real and fake are basically the same thing.
	This culture is so alien to us that out of humility we should not judge.
pollcode.com free polls

Kim Jong-il... I didn't even know he was ill.

But he died. A stroke has downed the "Dear Leader," at the age of 69.

The death triad of Christopher Hitchens and Vaclav Havel deserved at better third, but... good riddance.

ADDED: "I’d like to think God let Havel and Hitchens pick the third." That's a great way to make sense of the bizarre triad. And I like the unstated assumption that God would especially love that big old atheist Hitchens.

"Kim Jong Il, the supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, deeply concerned over the soldiers’ diet."

The title of a painting from an exhibit called "“Flowers for Kim Il Sung: Art and Architecture from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.... in Vienna.

By presenting it uncritically, the Vienna museum is subtly legitimizing the world’s cruelest regime....

Like most socialist realism, this “art” is devoid of complexity. Whatever talents the North Korean painters may possess are tragically subordinated to Stalinist politics and stultifying adulation of the Dear Leader. The descriptions of the artwork underline its utterly bland, primitive, and unenlightening character: “The leaders’ closeness to the people is repeatedly emphasized,” reads the press release. “Red, internationally recognized as being symbolic of socialism, is employed most frequently.” My tour guide’s attempt to distinguish the works from those produced in other Communist societies by labeling it “Idealistic Realism” only underscored the lengths to which the MAK has had to go in order to justify the exhibition....


Could one imagine, in the 1930s, an English gallery featuring Nazi art in such undiscerning fashion?...

What about a Viennese gallery? You'd think Austria would be more sensitive.... about its own reputation.

The article, by James Kirchick, ends with this great George Orwell quote: "All art is propaganda. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art." (By the way, Orwell is calling himself a propagandist there, is he not?)

What Chip did with the Clinton-in-North-Korea photo.

It's not what I expected. I was hoping he'd make the little birds that you barely notice in the mural start flying around and maybe nipping at Bill Clinton's ears and ultimately pooping on Kim Jong-Il's head. Or maybe those big static waves would suddenly crash all over the solemnly lined-up dignitaries. Or, no. There is something about the way the 2 seated men are posing as such good little boys with their hands in the I'm-behaving-myself position that demands that what I really want to see is Bill Clinton reach over and feel the thigh Kim Jong-Il, who exclaims: "No broh job!"

Enough photos of me and Meade. Let's look at this picture of Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-Il.

Thanks to Bill Clinton for saving the journalists and submitting to this surreal photograph.

I just wish I could see the "Team America" song Kim Jong-Il sang when he heard that Bill Clinton was coming. Lyrics anyone?