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Letters: What If 'The Interview' Trashed The U.S. Instead?

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Now for your letters. There was a lot of reaction to Melissa Block's conversation Friday with Sony Pictures' CEO, Michael Lynton.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

MELISSA BLOCK, BYLINE: Why capitulate? Aren't you effectively giving in to blackmail?

MICHAEL LYNTON: We did not capitulate. We don't own movie theaters, and we require movie theater owners to be there for us to distribute our film.

SIEGEL: The conversation happened after the company's initial decision to hold off on releasing the movie "The Interview" after Sony was allegedly hacked by North Korea. As we've been reporting today, the movie will now have a limited release.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Still, it got many of you thinking about how the U.S. would react if the roles were reversed. Geoff Levear of Mesa, Arizona, put it this way - what would we as a country be saying if some foreign country made a movie about kidnapping the Obama girls or worse? We would have a very different reaction. And that is how North Korea feels.

SIEGEL: Bill Kraske of Wichita, Kansas, lauded the conversation for the very same reason. Mr. Kraske writes this - she asked the question that's been on my mind. Mr. Kim is a current political leader, not a fictitious character or someone from the history books. I wonder what the response would be if the movie had been about the USA.

CORNISH: Finally for listener Trudy Jenkins Budd - our story about the struggle to save the northern white rhinos brought back memories of late father. She tells us he was a forestry professor at the University of Georgia.

TRUDY BUDD: My father was Dr. James H. Jenkins, known to his friends as Jungle Jim Jenkins. And he was one of the co-inventors of the original tranquilizer gun. It was named capture gun.

CORNISH: The technology allowed endangered animals, including the southern white rhino, to be moved from the wild into protected reserves. Dr. Jenkins died in 2006, but his family still sees royalty check of about $100 each month for the capture gun.

SIEGEL: Keep your comments and stories coming. Go to npr.org and click on the word contact. Scroll to the bottom of the page to find it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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