Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Honolulu Lite
THERE'S going to be a lot of unhappy hicks in Beijing now that the Chinese government has banned the TNT network from television airwaves. China’s ‘must not see TV’
The government also has banned the Cartoon Network, but that's not that big of a deal. Wile E. Coyote is never going to catch the Roadrunner.
But what are rabid Chinese professional wrestling fans going to do without Stone Cold Steve Austin?
According to news accounts, the Chinese government won't say why it's banning the networks. Some think it's because Ted Turner colorized "Gone With The Wind."
I think the answer lies deeper -- that some American shows threaten the stability of communism.
I flipped through the TV Guide to try to figure out which shows China's leaders found threatening and it turns out TNT is a hotbed of subversive anti-Communist propaganda.
The main offender seems to be "Kung Fu, the Legend Continues." Having a white guy like David Carradine playing the half-Chinese character is a subliminal message that America has better Kung Fu than the Chinese (Kung Fu being code for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles).
Reruns of "CHiPs" are an insidious attempt by the CIA to undermine Chinese political stability using the symbolic characters Ponce (Free Enterprise) and John (McDonald's franchises) racing around on motorcycles (Trilateral Commission) while dressed as police officers (Kung Fu/ballistic missiles) arresting bad guys (Home Shopping Network). In one episode, Ponce and John run a speeding bank robber off a cliff to his death, a clear reference to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan raising interest rates to protect Western dominance of global financial markets.
ORIGINAL "Wild Wild West" episodes are even loaded with coded messages to the Chinese proletariat that are so top secret we can't go into them here. Let's just say that James West's pants aren't that tight by accident.
The Chinese government also is banning the networks because it wants to come up with shows that are more relevant to China's culture, although I challenge it to find a better model of communism in action than "Gilligan's Island." The castaways live communally while constantly browbeating the greedy capitalist Thurston Howell III.
My foreign sources have sent me a list of television programs the Chinese government has in production:
"Comrades": a zany group of twentysomethings share a cabin in a re-education camp and wisecrack their way through the day making cheap plastic toys for American fast-food restaurant kiddie meals.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite