Washington hits a sour note

No one can deny the significance and the high musical quality of the New York Philharmonics concert in Pyongyang. No one but Herr Bush & co. The Philharmonic maestro Loren Maazel hit all the high notes in his conducting and in his few, but savvy phrases in Korean. He says he was not engaging in politics but he needn't have said this. Everything carried the weight of a political and cultural breakthrough, even at one point during a 'master's class' with superbly trained North Korean musicians, he had the group of Americans and Koreans played unrehearsed a composition by a 12 year old New York school girl Farah Taslima, who had offered her music as a gift from a child's heart to overcome the barrier of hostility and discord between the US and North Korea.
The sour note Washington played, was its unwillingness to welcome the North Korean Philharmonic to play in the US. The New York based Korea Society has done much to midwife better relations with Pyongyang. Its influence reach to the highest instance of government, the intelligence community, business and high finance, and yet, it is strange, this society which has found funding for North Koreans to come study computer science at Cornell, has not the clout to raise money or matching funds for the North Korea's excellent classical orchestra to tour America. This orchestra mere presence on US soil would be well received, the hostile hecklers notwithstanding. It would draw the Americans of Korean origin and other Americans the melomane and the curious to see live and in human form Korean from the North which the US has long demonised.
Obviously Herr Bush hasn't the courage of his conviction, for the sending of the New York Philharmonic had at least his tacit approval. He always does things halfway, and as a result, he looks inept and a bumbler, to be charitable. Yet, he had the opportunity to mark the right beat but instead he settled for a false note.