When the Chinese President came to a state dinner with President Obama last month, the pianist played a song which first appeared in an anti-American film in 1956 about the Korean War (which had us on the wrong side of China, remember). Some of the lyrics include, “greet [the American] jackals with hunting rifles.” Since discovering this bit of arcana, some American commentators have been (not quite literally) up in arms over it, with a sort of “How dare they!” sneer at the ivory-veiled insult. But given that this song has taken on a folklore, nationalistic sort of value well beyond its original context, it’s entirely likely that 28-year-old (!) pianist Lang Lang is telling the truth when he says he had no idea of the original lyrics. This is a common error people make in the secular world and especially in Christian circles of trying to find an insult (or demonic connection) to something because of its origins when the better test is what people are using it for now. It’s one thing to find such history interesting, but it’s another thing to simultaneously lament that people don’t KNOW the truth about something history and then turn around and hold them accountable for the knowledge you just criticized them for not even having.
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