Korean dictator could pump film’s sales

In times past, the Catholic Church could bestow “best seller” status on books by banning them as a threat to moral order as defined by the church. People who would have ignored the book bought them just to see what all the fuss was about, risking damnation in the process.

Is North Korea the new champion of banning, boosting attendance at movies they decide are a threat to their hermit kingdom and its paranoid leader, Kim Jong Un?

Now that Sony will show the denounced film, “The Interview,” after hesitating following Kim’s threat to do harm to the theaters, the same dynamic is sending many to see it who otherwise would not have, to see what all the fuss is about, and to flout a tin-hat dictator.

Apparently, some people don’t understand the dynamic called reverse psychology. And Kim’s sycophants need to explain to him the meaning of the word “comedy,” which is what “The Interview” is, after all.

Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park

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De Blasio no friend of cops at first

No one in their right mind defends or condones police brutality. The problem for many of us with Bill de Blasio and the protesters is that they have hitched their wagons to criminals who resisted arrest. And, despite your Wednesday editorial’s attempt at revisionist history, de Blasio (along with Eric Holder and Barack Obama) came down firmly on the side of the protesters and against the police in polarizing fashion. Now de Blasio is calling for calm. Where were his words of support for law enforcement BEFORE two officers were brutally assassinated by one of the protesters he was so chummy with a week ago?

Don O’Keefe, Evergreen Park