China’s state-owned newspaper suppressing jokes in re its phallic new headquarters

China’s state-owned newspaper suppressing jokes in re its phallic new headquarters

The People’s Daily New Headquarters in BeijingMove over, Georgia O’Keeffe. A new work of architecture is currently being — er … erected in Beijing that will dwarf your largest and most suggestive closeup of a flower’s most intimate parts. An architect’s rendering of the new headquarters of “The People’s Daily,” China’s largest state-owned newspaper, is shown at the left, though the China’s communist party, which controls the news it prints, wishes it weren’t.

In fact, the propaganda wing of the party is working overtime to suppress images and, in so doing stem, the rising tide of jokes.

If if still isn’t clear to you what all the commotion is about, the Atlantic Wire explains:

The building is massive, imposing, and, uh, currently shaped like a colossal penis. Now, as construction workers try to finish the engineering, the country’s censors are working overtime to stop Chinese people on social media from laughing at the expense of the very paper in charge of controlling the country’s message. According to The International Business Times, the nearly 500-foot tower won’t be finished until this time next year, but the war on mocking it has already begun.…

You see, China likes its censorship — remember when the country censored Men in Black 3 for talking about the country’s censors? — and the government tries to have nearly as tight a grip on its Internet free speech as it does on its newspaper headlines. Back in December, China passed a law that would allow the government to delete online messages deemed ‘illegal.’ …

The proverbial cat, however, is out of the proverbial bag:

[Y]ou have papers like The Times of India, with (unintentionally funny?) introductions to their architecture stories: ‘The new 150-meter tall headquarters of the People’s Daily, the main organ of the Communist Party.’ …

And Ed Morrissey at Hot Air quips: “Shouldn’t we be celebrating this uncommonly honest expression of art in China? Let’s hope that Beijing doesn’t go limp on us and pull out of this building.”…

Related Articles

Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook.

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

Comments

For your convenience, you may leave commments below using Disqus. If Disqus is not appearing for you, please disable AdBlock to leave a comment.