“Celebrities will lecture America, but apologize – like John Cena – to China”
…is the headline of this NY Post article.
Yes, of course he apologized to China. This sort of behavior from celebrities first became particularly notable with the NBA, and it’s now clear that many celebrities know where the money lies. Personally, I don’t care what celebrities say, but I realize that – amazingly enough – some people do consider them to be role models of some kind. Although I didn’t have a clue who John Cena was prior to this, it seems to be big news:
Wrestler turned actor John Cena may look like the Rock, but when it comes to China he’s Pee-Wee Herman. Doing an interview for his upcoming film “F9” in Taiwan, he referred to that free and thriving democratic island, which has had a separate government since 1949, as a “country” instead of as a province of China.
When this led to an “outcry,” meaning it displeased the Communist Party of China, alleged tough guy Cena mewled and groveled and begged for forgiveness…
Cena volunteered for duty as a cog in the machinery of the Communist Party of China when he said, in the language of the world’s biggest oppressor, “I’m very, very sorry about my mistake. I apologize, I apologize, I’m very sorry . . . my apologies.” No 18th-century courtier, fraternity pledge or blob of plankton better exemplified spinelessness.
For me, it’s not about Cena himself. It’s about the fact that this Soviet-show-trial-style groveling has become commonplace. At least the defendants in those trials had usually been tortured and faced even worse. What’s Cena’s excuse?
The behavior of these elebrities reminds me of two statements by Winston Churchill. The first is “The Hun is always either at your throat or your feet” (see this). The celebrities like to lunge at America’s throat, rhetorically speaking, and bow down to China.
It also reminds me of Churchill’s statement to Chamberlain: “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.” To abase yourself in appeasement is to lose twice. But it seems to be a popular move these days.
Gotta protect his place at the rice bowl.
I first saw this on another site yesterday. It sounded to me like good Mandarin, but I don’t speak the language so I don’t know.
Someone on another blog pointed out that Cena never explained what he was apologizing for — he just said he was “very very sorry.”
Yes, John — you are very sorry.
I had heard of John Cena in passing before, mostly from his appearance on Saturday Night Live, and I agree: his groveling is not about him per se, but that this behavior is now normalized. One must never offend the ChiComs, and if one does, one must beg forgiveness.
The carrot is the opportunity to access a population five times that of the U.S. Potentially five times as much profit. The stick is to lose that opportunity. That kind of thinking looms large for movie makers, sports stars, and many business tycoons. They are still basking in the fond hope that China, if it becomes prosperous, will straighten up and become a nation that respects international rules of fair trade and human rights. China, still deeply Communist and ambitious, has not changed and makes it plain they don’t want to change. The hopes that they would change are now obviously naive. However, those with dollar signs in their eyes just don’t see it.
J.J.
CCP is setting up shop (runway air base facilities) an a small island the straight of Bab al-Mandab, which is between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Can you say “Chinese choke point” three times?
https://blog.usni.org/posts/2021/05/26/bab-al-mandab-and-the-persistence-of-geography
Those silly Fast and Furious movies are enormous in China for some reason, so it’s hundreds of millions of dollars at stake (maybe even billions over the long haul) . But it’s a deal with the devil. Ultimately no amount of groveling or appeasement will save those who offend an authoritarian regime like the CCP. They have no respect for human rights or all the freedoms we take for granted here in the West.
It’s a shame more people don’t realize these simple truths. It’s a shame that for so many years entire industries have offshored so much of their production to China for cheap labor. Ultimately no human labor is really “cheap”, you’ll always pay for it one way or another in the end.
Neo, the link after the first Churchill quote seems to be broken.
om, they’re Communists and ambitious. It’s their proxy for an aircraft carrier. Kind of like the progs here in the USA, they’re not even trying to conceal their intentions. Unfortunately, Biden either has dollar signs in his eyes and/or is still hoping for positive change. Joe seems to be choosing dishonor – he will probably have war
If you watch TV, John Cena is the guy riding the purple cow in the Experian ads. I don’t know if Experian has a presence in China or not, but that could be another corporate influence for him.
I guess I’m not surprised that he recanted his words. One should not offend one’s customers. The mutilated creature known now as Elliot Page went on a movie promo tour and spent it insulting everyone who doesn’t live on the east or west coast. It was foolish; her costars made it very clear they didn’t like it, and her career never flourished afterward.
But Cena’s was particularly groveling, out of character for his promoted image. And then the Chinese said he didn’t go far enough!
om,
“Gotta protect his place at the rice bowl.”
Bingo.
1/3rd of the world’s oil supply passes through that channel. Block it and the West’s economies collapse. With a nuclear armed China standing guard as deterrence from interference. One guess as to how fast the Xiden administration will bend the knee to the world’s new masters.
J. J.,
Some see it, they just don’t care.
Nonapod,
“it’s a deal with the devil”
Hollywood and Big Tech are too greedy to remember Lenin’s prediction; “The capitalists wil sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
J. J.,
“Biden either has dollar signs in his eyes and/or is still hoping for positive change. Joe seems to be choosing dishonor – he will probably have war”
Come hook or crook, Xiden has what he’s always really wanted; the Presidency.
Whether President or ‘retired’… in no way, even in the slightest degree, will a democrat administration risk a nuclear war.
Cena is one of many. The money is a big thing of course.
And making the Big Nose (to them we all look the same :P) Barbarian Bear Dance is a national sport for the Chinese Virtual Mob.
As for the Bab-el-Mandeb, just leave it to your Greatest Ally. Maybe they have backdoors in some of the Chinese Kit 😛
https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2021/02/11/breaking-israeli-missile-engineers-sold-advanced-weapons-to-china-earning-tens-of-millionsbreaks-up/
But wait, there’s more:
https://military-wiki.com/iai-lavi-an-ambitious-israeli-project-but-the-chinese-are-the-beneficiaries/
And more and more.
Zaphod:
Nations have interests some American’s interests are more aligned with CCP’s it seems or haven’t you noticed? President Bill Clinton and Loral Space sent missile/satellite tech to the CCP back when you were a school boy. But tell us more about Israel, or melanin, or neocons.
@Om Misser of Myriad Points:
The point is we can call Bill Clinton a filthy traitor about the W88 miniaturised MIRVable warhead all day.. And he is.
I agree. Nations do have interests. And do not behave according to the kind of morals we would prefer to see in our daily interactions with each other. Still, if any other country did the kind of technology transfers to peer level competitors of USA that Israel does, they’d be all over the news and up to their necks in shit. But no, it’s the Third Rail.
The USA should be interested in fossil fuel independence and nuclear energy and not be dicking around various naval chokepoints in the Middle East. Israel has its submarine school in Eilat and presumably bases some of its nuclear armed Samson Option boomers there. Let them deal with it.
Zaphod:
It was missile/satellite launch technology that Loral Space “sold” to the CCP. They don’t build or sell W88 warheads. Your point again was what?
Are you dense? What did one container ship stuck in the Suez Canal do less than a month ago to the world economy? What is upstream from the Straights of Bab-al-mandab? That would be the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean Sea, and wait for it, Europe. More than just Israel to worry about the CCP and choke points to global trade? How important are the Straits of Malacca to the economy of your little burg, Hong Kong?
What a maroon. Go back to Gab.
@om:
Dig more. Clintons let the Chinese get at and ‘steal’ the W88 design from Livermore or wherever the hell it was.
This was far bigger than any satellite launch technology as miniaturised MIRV warheads are the name of the game. Any fool can slap a single nuclear warhead on a rocket given nation-sized resources. Shrinking them down and packaging them up so they can be independently targeted off the same same re-entry vehicle is what makes you strategically invulnerable because you can fool and swamp (vast numbers + decoys) missile defence systems. Clintons gave China the Holy Grail on a platter. But if they hadn’t, you-know-who would have.. so there’s that 😀
I was already expatting in HK back when the first Long March went up with US satellite (the bus bits of which the Chinese obviously stole along the way). We all knew what it meant back then. You don’t have to agree with me, but save the snark for people who want you dead. It’s wasted on me.
The ability to do this is what the Clintons sold:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.2RaT1FjXTqvhaUyuuip11QHaFy%26pid%3DApi&f=1
Zaphod:
You don’t know if it was Livermore or Sandia? Otay, buckwheat. “Any fool?” Otay, again, buckwheat. And the CCP has how many MIRVed ICBMs and SLBMs? Show your work or save your snark for your mirror.
Zaphod is referring to the Wen Ho Lee espionage case occurring at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I think. I never connected the case to the W-88 warhead at the time, but indeed this appears to be a big element.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee
There wasn’t a great deal that was proven about the case (what do you expect from the FBI?), but I recall reading a minute-by-minute account of Lee’s actions at LANL on one key day in question. It certainly seemed to me that he took rather extraordinary actions to cover and erase his cyber trails on the LANL computer systems.
When Dr. Peter Navarro was in the WH, he estimated that the Chinese damaged our economy to the tune of $20 trillion.
We need to make the CCP pay. But Biden won’t do a thing.
So very sorry (cont.)…
https://www.timesofisrael.com/unrwa-gaza-chief-apologizes-for-saying-idf-strikes-precise-and-sophisticated/
So very sorry (cont.)…(cont.)….
https://dailycaller.com/2021/05/27/rutgers-chancellor-apologizes-antisemitism-email/
IMHO it’s all about market size. China’s market size is about 10X the market size of the US… All these celebs that grovel to China know exactly where the Yuan are.
Although kudos to him for being able to speak in Mandarin, John Cena is rather pathetic and a bit nauseating in this video.
And, I totally agree with you Neo on that last quote from Churchill:
“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
This is what Hollywood, and western companies do not understand – it will not end with a simple apology for saying the wrong thing. They are selling freedom, and not just their own freedom, for the illusion that they will be allowed to chase after a few dollars.
The problem is that until they get burnt themselves (and even then they might be too stupid to realize it), these grovelers will have no problem with throwing others under the bus to satisfy their Chinese Communist masters.
Appeasement with bullies is only a temporary solution.
It’s quite possible that the Han Chinese are the most racist, supremacist culture on the planet. The Mandarin word that we pronounce as China, Zhongguo, is usually translated as “Middle Kingdom,” but a more culturally accurate translastion would be “Center of the Universe.”
“It’s quite possible that the Han Chinese are the most racist, supremacist culture on the planet.”
I’d put them in the Top 5. Not much into actual outright hateful rhetoric, but they’re pragmatists who can take a cold-eyed look at another people and decide that Something Ought to be Done.
As for Middle Kingdom, Americans better hope those Inscrutable Orientals are reading more pirated copies of Mackinder than Mahan 😀
Poem by the man on the 100 Yuan banknote:
Perching as after flight, the mountain towers over the Yangtze;
I have overleapt four hundred twists to its green crest.
Cold-eyed I survey the world beyond the seas;
A hot wind spatters raindrops on the sky-brooded waters.
Clouds cluster over the nine streams, the yellow crane floating,
And billows roll on to the eastern coast, white foam flying.
Who knows whither Prefect Tao Yuan-ming is gone
Now that he can till fields in the Land of Peach Blossoms?
Well the Japanese studief Mahan and made his doctrines the foundation of their strategy in WWII; decisive battle (see Ian Toll’s first volume of his trilogy). Mahan doctrine had worked for them against the Russians in 1905. Didn’t work at all against the USN after 1941. So maybe the CCP will learn from that.
Can Do!
Was it unusual for actors whose behavior embarrassed a studio to apologize to Mr & Mrs America (back when there was a Mr & Mrs America)?
I noticed a change from living corruptly, lying publicly to showing off one’s warts and indulgences during my lifetime.
The studios have always wanted their charges to appear attractive to the backers and audience, but standards change and the money is in China.
China’s market size is about 10X the market size of the US…
Their nominal GDP is smaller and they’re not usually English-proficient. Check your math.