I WOULD PLAY VIOLIN FOR kim jung-un, NOT FOR DENNIS PRAGER

You don’t need more than the title to get the gist of this blog.  But here are the particulars, via Joel B. Pollak’s article at breitbart.com:

UCLA professor Andrew Apter, a violinist in the Santa Monica Symphony, appeared on the Dennis Prager Show Monday to defend his call for musicians and members of the community to boycott a concert where Prager will be guest conducting the orchestra.

Prager invited Apter onto the show after he and a fellow UCLA professor and violinist circulated a letter declaring: “Please urge your friends to not attend this concert, which helps normalize bigotry in our community.”

After introducing his guest, Prager asked him if he would apply his liberal principles in all circumstances, such as the controversial 2008 visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea.

“If you were a member of the New York Philharmonic, would you play in North Korea?” Prager asked.

“Well, that’s an interesting question,” Apter replied. “I think that that’s a decision that individual musicians should make. I would go, yes, because I see that as a diplomatic, cultural mission, much the way the opening up of China took place under the Nixon administration with orchestral exchanges.”

Prager continued: “And if a North Korean conductor shared the podium and conducted one of the pieces, along with the permanent conductor of the New York Philharmonic, you would still play?”

Apter replied: “I probably would, because this is an explicitly political mission in search of common understanding.”

Prayer answered: “So one could infer from that that you deem playing under me more morally objectionable than playing under a North Korean conductor, in North Korea, the most tyrannical regime on earth.”

“No, I’d have to object to that. I think the situations are very different,” Apter said, without further explanation.

This brainiac  – a professor of Anthropology at UCLA – would entertain a deranged lunatic threatening nuclear war on the United States, but would not only refuse to play in an orchestra conducted by an intellectual/philosopher/conductor like Dennis Prager, he would encourage a boycott?

That explains a lot of things about a lot of things, doesn’t it?