FLASHBACK: How the Media Covered the Demise of the U S S R newsbusters.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsbusters.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The late talk radio star Rush Limbaugh coined the phrase “Gorbasm” for the ecstasy that many reporters felt when covering Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev, who died at age 91 on Tuesday. It’s true that Gorbachev was obviously less brutal than previous communist rulers. But his Soviet Union was hardly an enlightened, peace-loving democracy.
The Olympics only last a few weeks, so this ridiculous exercise in rhetorical gymnastics will fade. But the imprisonment and injustice lasts as long as the Chinese communists remain in power.
Anyone under 30 today has no idea what it was like to live in America during the Cold War. That includes the reflexive tendency of liberals and leftists to insist repeatedly that we really shouldn't lecture the authoritarians in the Soviet Union or China for gross abuses of human rights because the United States isn't much different.