未经证实的消息说国家广电部为了给主旋律电影《孔子》留出足够的市场空间，强迫让2D的阿凡达下线。我认为这可能是谣言，因为我坚信以中国纳税人养活的广电部公务员的智商应该不至于作出如此愚蠢的决策。

First of all, I have tremendous, yes, tremendous, respect to possibly one of the greatest philosophers of mankind and the first teacher, Confucius.  His teachings literally built the foundation of the Asian culture and enhanced our understanding of ourselves, the universe and the government.  Since Han Dynasty, he had been worshiped and glorified as a devine god.  Spectacular memorial ceremonies of his birthday every year had been one of the most important events of the courts throughout Chinese history, only to be interrupted for several decades from beginning of the 1900 to the 1990s.

Now here comes the irony.  Since the establishment of the People's Republic, until late 1990's, for about half a century, Confucius was deemed an anti-revolutionary, belonging to the feudalism past, what the Communists considered immoral and inhumane and tried to replace with a much more advanced, moral society.  We have actually experienced couple of anti-Confucius movements during the Mao-era.  

Now, still under the Communist rule with supposed the same revolutionary doctrine, all of a sudden, Confucius becomes a hero again and somwhow his teachings are aligned with the official thinking. Obviously, something must be wrong here.  For if the Communists were right 20 years ago by launching an anti-Confucius champaign, then they must be wrong by re-establishing Confucius to such an official status, or vice versa.  But seems the Party is not bothered to offer an explanation or anything like that.  In fact, I do have a very good explanation for this.  Avatar is a movie made by the US, about something unrelated to China, while Confucius, a locally made, purely Chinese, has something that the government wants: nationalist element.  As the ruling Party has alienated itself farther and farther away from its people, the only connection they rely on is the nationalist sentiment. 

Well, in doing this, the Ministry seems to forget one thing, very vital, that people have brains and they do one thing, called thinking.  By simply shut out Avatar, you just cannot force them to watch something they don't like let along, spend their ownn money to do so.  This is stupid.  On the scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most outragously stupid, I'd rank this event at 3, slightly lower than that Green Dam debacle, that has been given a 4 on my Stupidity Scale.  and that's my memo for today.