China says Christian Bale's politically motivated scuffle was bad and he should feel bad

Christian Bale’s recent attempt to visit the blind, wrongfully imprisoned lawyer Chen Guangcheng was a failure in a literal sense, but his roughing up at the hands of government guards did successfully bring attention to the way China has forbidden anyone to tell Chen’s story, even the famous movie stars that it likes this month. But if you think this latest evidence that its nation might be just a wee bit dismissive of human rights had—scoff—embarrassed China, well, you just don’t know China. (Report to reeducation at once.) “If anyone should be embarrassed it’s the relevant actor, not the Chinese side,” foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told Reuters. "He was not invited to any village in Shandong to create news or make a film.” Liu then added, “If he wants to create news, I don’t think that would be welcomed by China”—“news,” of course, being one of the primary distractions to productivity and happiness in productivity, which is why it has been replaced by less-riling propaganda and pictures of smiling children. Anyway, we’re sure that Bale’s embarrassment over making a scene is about equal to that of China’s embarrassment over being characterized as oppressive. [via New York Times]