Rock in Afghanistan, Via China

I’ve written/griped about rock in Afghanistan before (my gripe not with the music there but the coverage thereof), but I couldn’t resist revisiting the topic when I discovered that China Central Television has deemed the subject worthy of inclusion on their spine-tinglingly amazing program Culture Express. People talk about hurling things at the television, but I’d never felt that urge until I tuned in to CCTV-9, the Central broadcaster’s English channel, home to such amazingness as Yang Rui, who achieved recent noteriaty for his anti-foreigner/Semitic rantings on air and -microblog but who, throughout his time as host of Dialogue, never ceased to amaze me with his smarmy, clueless and downright patronizing-despite-a-lack-of-knowledge-on-any-subject-upon-which-he-was-interviewing-on ways.

(Note, please, the completely objective use of the word “amazing” above: “Amazing,” in this context, refers to the astonishment that this stuff is on the air; not ‘good,’ necessarily, but astounding in the way that only Chinglish and slick-TV-with-Chinese-characteristics can be. CCTV-9 has the amazing capacity to simultaneously inspire [you couldn’t make this stuff up, it’s so amazing!] and inflame [this crap has to stop!] that part of me wonders if it’d be better for the network to go off air or to be beamed into more homes across the globe.)

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