We have finally gotten far enough away from the mid-aughts that people are surprised to watch a famous celebrity protests American foreign policy in a notably gauche way in 2004: PSY, the grinning face behind "Gangnam Style," ran into his first international bad press last week when someone finally realized that America's favorite novelty artist rapping about killing the "daughters, mothers, daughters-in-laws, and fathers" of "fucking Yankees" might be of interest to said Yankees.
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The story first showed up in CNN's quasi-blog iReports section two months ago; since then we've learned that the lyrics PSY performed were written by another band, and he's apologized incredibly thoroughly in what is perhaps the most important geopolitical communique ever to contain the words "Jay Leno" in it.
The apology is probably not enough to satisfy the people who were disgusted by his 2004 performance and just enough to set off the volunteer insincerity-fighters out there who were looking for a reason to declare him insufficiently serious for Real Music Fans. I have more in common with the first group than the second, but I accept the apology. I accept it because PSY deserves the opportunity to sell out--because in 2012, 1 A.P., it's the most honest thing he could do.
Don't get me wrong: Psy has almost certainly apologized because he's speaking, now, to an entirely different audience than he was in 2004, and that audience is making him millions of dollars. The author of "Gangnam Style" is, to the surprise of people who are continually surprised by this kind of thing, not an ideologically pure Korean nationalist or anti-imperialist, and never was.
