America hasn't gotten to the bottom of the story yet, but the recent North Korean hack of Sony Pictures and subsequent withdrawal of "The Interview" has raised a number of troubling questions and challenged more than a few assumptions about how we conduct our foreign and domestic affairs.

Here's one scenario: Imagine the product in question isn't a dumb comedy but a toy. A bobblehead doll that makes the Korean dictator look even more ridiculous than he already does in real life.

And let's say the North Koreans, with the backing of the Chinese (who looked the other way while the doll was being manufactured in China), hack into the systems of the toymaker and release damaging information about racial and ethnic slurs contained in e-mails; the fact that the doll has a 500 percent markup or other trade secrets; and the salaries of the top eight or ten executives at the toy company.

Then, the Hermit Kingdom drops the T-bomb, warning Wal-Mart, Target and other retailers that if they stock the doll for Christmas sales, terrible things will happen in their stores and that they are placing their customers in harm's way. Not wanting that zombie stalking their aisles at Christmas, the retailers demur on the doll.

Now what? The toymaker doesn't sell direct, and it risks destroying its entire business if it attempts to sell the bobblehead over the Internet or through other non-traditional channels. There are more than a million dolls sitting in a warehouse, and the company faces a major financial hit as well as serious public embarrassment.

Here's the rub: While maybe not the greatest artistic expression ever conceived by the mind of man, the doll is a creative product, an expression of speech. We wouldn't suppress its distribution here because of our values, nor would we come down on a similar doll mocking the president, or depicting the president as Dennis Rodman.

Who will come to the toymaker's defense? The Toy Industry Association, which, though it is nearly 100 years old and represents a $22 billion industry, has only 750 members and nobody ever heard of them?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce? This toymaker is a blip on the screen of the $17 trillion U.S. economy, and chances are that they have never spent a single night in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House or been invited to a State Dinner.

I don't know all of the answers to these vexing questions, but I do know that the Obama Administration was late to the game on the Sony Pictures imbroglio.

Perhaps it was their notoriously poor staff work, or because the President was focused on the Cuba deal, or even preparations for Christmas in Hawaii, but the results, and the "Hey, I could have done something—you shoulda called!" disclaimer after the shooting was over leave us with little assurance that the U.S. government is fully aware of these commercial threats and actively doing something about them.

As for Hollywood, this is hardly the first time they've pulled a punch or scotched something they thought would offend somebody (oh, if only Louis B. Mayer were still around to comment). Like when they changed the ending of "Gone With the Wind" for example, or Michael Douglas shot Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" because the original ending tested poorly.

If the so-called artistic community out there is so outraged by this incident, they'll have to come up with something more than Twitter grunts. Sean Penn was on "Hardball" December 19 and actually sounded intelligent about the issues involved. Perhaps he should lead the Hollywood contingent. The studio suits are uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

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Bill Huey is president of Strategic Communications in Baton Rouge, LA, a corporate communications and marketing consultancy, and author of "Carbon Man," a novel about greed. He can be reached at [email protected].