Try to See It Under Lights

I haven’t commented about the hacking of Sony followed by the exposure of recent motion pictures and embarrassing company emails. Debra Saunders remarks:

“You’re giving material aid to criminals,” Sorkin scolded. And: “First, salaries were published. Not by the hackers, but by American news outlets.” Sorkin directed more umbrage toward the “American journalists helping them” than he did toward the hackers, who reputedly are linked somehow to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

There is something precious about Sorkin’s outrage toward the Sony leaks. Sorkin notes that the Guardians of Peace have threatened Sony families. OK, the same can be said of a spate of national security leaks, which threaten to expose U.S. intelligence assets abroad.

It says something about this country’s lack of seriousness that the Hollywood left can applaud hackers who purloin sensitive national security information but can find outrage after leaked emails reveal that Hollywood honchos — as opposed to tea party activists — can be racially insensitive. CNN’s Don Lemon confessed that he is “torn” about the Sony story. Lemon asked, “Do you want people gaining information that way?” How else does Lemon think this happens?

This is neither a news blog nor a gossip blog but the story touches on several common themes here so I’ll weigh in. First, like most companies Sony simply does not have a culture of security. That much is obvious from the many reports of internal complaints about lax security that have been published since the breach.

And Sony is not benign. It is not simply a profit-maximizer like other companies. It’s a profit-maximizer with other objectives.

The title of this post is from Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones’s musical, The Fantasticks. An aged actor pleads with his patron not to see their shabby production as it is but to “try to see it under lights”, to see it as they intended. Theater and motion pictures are about illusion. What illusions is Sony trying to preserve by attempting to squelch the publication of salaries, nasty remarks from studio execs, etc.? That studio execs are raking in enormous amounts of money without doing much for it? That abuse of men, women, and children including sexual abuse has been central to the industry since its very beginnings? There’s a long list of possibilities.