In late June the students, and faculty at San Francisco's Academy of Art University held a vigil to encourage the North Korean government to release two San Francisco-based journalists who are being held in prison there. You've been hearing and reading about them. The two women, Laura Ling, and Euna Lee, work for Current TV, which has its headquarters down by the ball park. Euna graduated the Academy of Arts University on 2001 with a bachelor of arts degree. These reporters are really adopted hometown gals, and merit support from all of us as San Francisco citizens.
But that doesn't mean that key players in this mess should start getting on the air, and on the blogs to rail against the people in power in Pyongyang. Not yet.
Al Gore, the co-founder of Current TV, is taking a lot of heat for not being more outspoken about the women's incarceration. They were sentenced to 12 years at hard labor for illegally sneaking into the country, and committing "grave crimes" against North Korea. That's a real reporter for you. Most people in North Korea would like to sneak out of the country. A journalist has to finagle a way to get into it. My definition of a reporter is someone who goes out into the rain without an umbrella just to be able to impart what it's like to get wet.
Vice-president Gore is doing the right thing for being circumspect, and not giving interviews about the matter, which is grimly complicated by North Korea's threats to continue nuclear weapons tests, and promises to fire missiles in the direction of Hawaii. Gore has also directed his Current TV staffers not to discuss the case of Euna Lee, and Laura Ling. They have wisely agreed. It's perfectly appropriate for the families of these two women to make public statements. The two husbands of the imprisoned women appeared at the Academy of Art U.'s rally downtown on Post St. This is their certainly their business. Laura's more famous sister, Lisa Ling, apologized earlier to the North Koreans for whatever her sister, and Ms. Lee had done, insisting they hadn't intended any harm. Lisa's language was careful, contrite. She's nobody's fool, though her kid sister may have acted a bit foolishly.
It's a tough premise to demand forgiveness from others. It doesn't work. Lisa Ling understands that, Al Gore knows it, too. It's takes time to allow someone to change his or her mind or allow providence to prevail. One example of this is the case of New York Times reporter David Rohde, who, after seven months, escaped his Taliban captors in Pakistan. The Times had kept the story under wraps, curtailing coverage about Rohde's kidnapping, which took place in Afghanistan. A little bribery may have played a role in his escape, but a big ransom, it seems, was not paid. An armed assault was considered, but then reconsidered. It looks like patience, and restraint may have worked. The rules of the game are changing in this world. Wait a minute. What rules? There is none. The Iranians freed American journalist Roxana Saberi after a lot of publicity was generated. But the North Koreans are not the Iranians. Nor are they the Taliban.
Bill Keller, the executive editor of the N.Y. Times, said, "I was relieved when I talked to David and he said, 'By the way, thank you for not making a public event out of this. We heard the people who kidnapped me were obsessed with my value in the marketplace. If there were a lot of news stories, they would have held me much tighter."
When considering Al Gore, one cannot imagine a more different vice-president than Dick Cheney.
I think it's fair to say that Dick Cheney forgot more than we'll ever know -- about Dick Cheney. I'd like to forget more about Dick Cheney, but he simply won't let anyone forget him just yet. Here's a man who has no sense of the value of remaining quiet. I'm fascinated to learn that his memoir will be released in the spring of 2011 by Simon & Schuster. Don't be surprised to see much of it redacted -- and much of it stolen by Elizabeth Hasselbeck. There's no word on what the title may be for the Cheney memoir. I suggest Disclosures From An Undisclosed Location or ... An Inconvenient Non-Truth.
Ah, but there are times when I certainly wished I'd kept my mouth shut, and let things progress in their own way for awhile. Much trouble could have been avoided, much pain might not have been inflicted.
There's a premium in holding one's tongue sometimes. When I was young and foolish, I'd try to hold other people's tongues, but that got rather messy, and awkward. I hope there's a lesson in all of this. But I doubt if I'd learn it anyway. I'm holding my tongue.
Bruce Bellingham is a columnist for the Northside, and the author of Bellingham by the Bay. Castigate him, nay, give him a tongue-lashing at bruce@northsidesf.com
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