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Should We Worry About Hackers' Threat Of Violence If Theaters Show 'The Interview'? Probably Not

COMMENTARY

Really, America? This is what we've come to? Cancelling showings of a frat-boy comedy movie because of "threats" from a group we don't even know exists?

Seems to me a lot of people are acting like a little cocker spaniel that falls over and piddles every time it hears a loud noise. Read the following statement, from something calling itself "Guardians of Peace," and tell me if it has YOU shaking in your boots:

"We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places "The Interview" be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to.
Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made.
The world will be full of fear.
Remember the 11th of September 2001.
We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time.
(If your house is nearby, you'd better leave.)
Whatever comes in the coming days is called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
All the world will denounce the SONY."

I'm not ignoring the very real social and economic damage these hackers (who, for all we know, are really one kid in a Midwest basement with mad hacker skills and too much time on his hands) have done with their intrusion into Sony Pictures' computer network.

I am suggesting that our reaction is way, way disproportionate to the "threat." Randall Park, the actor who plays North Korean despot Kim Jong Un in "The Interview," is the son of South Korean-born parents. He marvels at how the most powerful nation on Earth could seem so bothered by threats issued in the name of one of the planet's most backward places.

The phrase "abundance of caution" often gets invoked at times like this. Really? How about "an abundance of common sense"? When the Department of Homeland Security, the folks who insist we take our shoes off to board an airplane, indicates there's no evidence of an active plot against movie theaters, shouldn't that be enough?

See you at the movies.

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