For a few days, “tsk, tsk” was the reaction to the thoughtless content of some of the emails that passed among Sony executives. An actress or two was particularly difficult to work with, and an attempt at humor with a racist list of what movies might interest President Barack Obama. Even that the entertainment company had lost a couple of preproduction films to the computer hacking by the North Koreans.

The North Koreans? The North Koreans are denying it and have asked for a joint North Korea-U.S. investigation. The U.S. says that identifying computer signatures are obvious, and that, by the way, it is China that provides the heavy lifting in providing telecommunications for the North Koreans. (You can bet that U.S. intelligence and military are very familiar with North Korea’s communication devices and styles, monitoring a country that occasionally militarily threatens the U.S. and periodically launches short-range missiles near Japan.)

Then came the threat of unspecified retaliation if Sony made available “The Interview,” a film that mocks Kim Jong-un and was within days of being released.

In response, Sony said that it wouldn’t, and then said that it was the theater companies across the country that would not show it. Liability concerns, everyone assumes.

Those were reactions made without thought and must be undone.

Obama got it right. He firmly linked the First Amendment to what it is to be an American and rightly said Sony should have given him a call.

We agree. The sooner “The Interview” is in U.S. theaters, the better. Some shared liability coverage, perhaps, for only a brief time, ought to make that possible.

It is impossible to know what the North Korean leadership might do while they enslave and starve their own people. What makes sense to most of the rest of the world is not what makes sense to them.

People in many countries revere their leader, but in North Korea, with everything else diminished or destroyed and little else to embrace, that culture exists to the extreme. North Korea has recently proclaimed that no one else can have the same name as the country’s leader.

Meanwhile, fingers in this country are being pointed in an all-too-familiar political fashion. Why wasn’t this type of computer threat anticipated? The answer is that up to now, it has been major banks and retailers that have seen their account and customer lists hacked because that is where money can be found. Entertainment companies, not so.

It will take some imagination to make it clear to North Korea, and to any other force that is watching, that threatening Americans’ freedom to read and watch whatever content they want will not be tolerated. Perhaps part of the answer is to show Kim Jong-un that he can be mocked further – but that may be too logical.

Meanwhile, Americans will continue, undaunted, to embrace the First Amendment, no matter the risks. When given a chance, they will view “The Interview.”