Once again, and engaging in perfect Soviet styled historical revisionism, our glorious MSM presents the "truth" of how failed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was really the one who "helped" the U.S. win the Cold War. AP claims Gorby brought about the fall of the Soviet Union but this "ushered in an era of U.S. imperialism," which the AP claims is responsible for "many of the world's gravest problems." So, according to the AP Gorby helped the U.S. win the Cold War, but his good deed is now the cause of all the world's ills? How losing the game can equate to an assist to the winners is anyone's guess.
Every couple of months the left leaning western MSM dusts off this old loser to beat up the United States. And with this one the AP mixes their hero worship of Mikhail Gorbachev with their hatred of the U.S.A. in a crescendo of far left double speak that is just incredible for its cluelessness. The very mind boggling leftist dogma of their first two sentences is head spinning.
MOSCOW - Former President Mikhail Gorbachev said Friday that the fall of the Soviet Union, which he helped bring about, ushered in an era of U.S. imperialism responsible for many of the world's gravest problems.
Amazing. So, Gorby "helped" win the Cold War? Folks he LOST the Cold War. He was not trying to "help" anyone but himself and the leaders of the Politburo! There was NO benevolence in his actions. By the AP's logic -- or lack thereof -- the Axis powers that lost WWII should be lauded for their efforts to "help" the allies win. By the AP's logic, Tojo and Hitler should be names we celebrate as heroes that helped "win" WWII... by losing it.
Then, they follow that piece of falderal with the claim that the U.S.A. beating down the oppressive and murderous Soviet regime was somehow bad because the U.S. is now the cause of all the world's "gravest problems?"
What can you say to this AP leap of stupidity? It's simply mind boggling.
And that was only their first sentence! There is more propaganda to follow.
Gorbachev is lauded in the West for ushering in democratic reforms but widely despised in Russia for paving the way to the economic free-for-all of the 1990s, which brought fabulous wealth for a well-connected few while plunging much of the country into humiliating poverty.
Yeah, "lauded" by socialists and fellow travelers. Gorby is treated like a hero by western leftists, of course. But, Gorby's so-called reforms were merely a last gasp effort to keep control. He would never have kept those "reforms" in place should the Soviet order had retaken full control. Can the AP spell r-u-s-e?
And, only the AP could claim that capitalism is a bad thing like that. Where did they find this Alex Nicholson? As a beat reporter for the Communist Party house organ?
From those two sentences the AP goes into Gorby's criticism of the eeeevil U.S.A. I won't bother Fisking his doggerel because he is a doddering old fool who is completely irrelevant and has been since Reagan turned him into an international laughing stock. His criticism is a meaningless amalgam of failed communist assumptions and the grasping for public notice of a hasbeen who is so constantly pumped up by a fawning media that it is simply tiresome.
Still, as the AP lauds loser Gorbachev they also report how he has lined up as a four square backer of the repressive Putin power grab.
He has since became a supporter of President Vladimir Putin's assertive foreign policy and resistance to American power — calling occasional news conferences to praise Putin's policies...
Well, what is Gorby, then, AP? To be lauded a "reformer" or a supporter of an oppressive Putin? Putin, who is merely emulating and making his best efforts to return to certain of the more oppressive of old Soviet practices, is NO "reformer," it must be realized.
So, with Gorbachev's solid support of Putin, he is proving 100% that he is similarly no reformer and that he is still supportive of old style Soviet oppressive power grabs for the state. He reveals with this support that he most surely would not have kept the "reforms" in place that the AP and leftists everywhere bestow praise upon him for and that they claim he made to the Soviet system. Supporting Putin proves that Gorby is still an old Soviet murderer at heart and never was anything else.
Yet, the AP still clings to the myth that Gorbachev is a hero of the Cold War era.
After contemplation of the AP's untenable position on Gorby, though, it is so easy to come to the conclusion that they have no interest in Gorby except in that he can be used as a club with which to beat about the head of the United States. So, contradictions about Gorby are completely immaterial to their position.
Gorby is great not because he is a "reformer" or a peace activist but because he hates the U.S.A.
It's just that simple for the AP and they just don't want logic and consistency to get in the way of their agenda.
Editor at Large
Comments Policy
Now that I think about it
July 28, 2007 - 05:27 ET by tracheostomyNow that I think about it Mr. Huston, you're right.
It's pieces like this that sort of go under my radar, and after about the umpteenth time of seeing statements such as this, you start to wonder if there's something screwy about it. I'm now convinced that this is a bonafide example of MSM bias.
Good call. I would have completely missed it otherwise.
-PJ
"Trake: Your lofty convictions are another blemish on the rump of congregational sectarianism." -Tumbler 5/15/07
I love my job!
July 28, 2007 - 05:35 ET by Warner Todd HustonI love my job!
Saying Gorbachev "helped"
July 28, 2007 - 07:31 ET by motherbeltSaying Gorbachev "helped" to end the Cold War is like saying the holed-up criminal "helped to end the standoff" by coming out peacefully when surrounded by the SWAT team. This is why Rush Limbaugh calls the MSM's infatuation with this guy "gorbasms."
But they have to credit Gorbachev with ending the Cold War, because if they don't, the credit goes to Reagan. They also love him because he is now a champion in the "green" movement. He, like Bill Clinton, is working hard to rewrite his "legacy." And his willing accomplices in the media help him any way they can.
You are right, he is trying
July 28, 2007 - 07:52 ET by Gat New YorkYou are right, he is trying to rewrite history and his legacy. He did preside over the change but he did not foster, encourage, or make the change. The person who the media downplay did and that was Boris Yeltsin. With Gorbo once a commie always a commie.
Gorbachev was flotsam on the Soviet Empire's wave of collapse.
July 28, 2007 - 10:36 ET by acaiguanaHe had no choices left.
The reality of Empires is that over time they experience a drain of hard currency from the 'mother' country to the colonies (vassel states) that ultimately leaves the mother state with nothing.
Hence, Britian introducing Opium to China for hard currency, as an example. But look at Rome, Greece, France and all the Empires of History.
Empires don't work.
When the Soviet Union fell apart it left shells of factories; useless workers under a bankrupt production system; undertrained and under used agrairian workers and potential; lack of infrastructure maintanance with deteriorating Oil Production; rusting machines in their military; unpaid soldiers; zero hard currrency base; worn out production lines; political chaos; no legal infrastructure for the ownership of property or businesses; no thriving industry; and...
a country full of drunks.
All in all a complete failure of a misguided and poorly thought out economic system based on Marx and Lenin and dependent on thuggary and brutality to keep the people in line.
But to the Journalist who sees everyone as a victim and longs for the ideal of Utopian 'sharing' of the wealth; the Journalist who has no clue as to how wealth is created; the Journalist who is ignorant of basic economics; the Journalist who is 'intellectual' and above the pitiful unwashed masses; the Journalist who in his arrogance sees the USSR as the 'real experiment' in the new Wave of Social Order, rather than the American 'experiment' of Democracy coupled with free markets and free men; to this Journalist...
America is evil and the Stalinists are just poor victims of bad leadership.
And if we could just all get along...
The real lesson of the USSR is that you can only steal everything once. That is what the Revolution did. It stole everything. When it came time to fix the problem, it had spent everything.
ACA
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Quoted from: 'Acaiguana Notes from the Bomb Shelter' (soon to be a movie at theaters near you)
Comrade Gorbachev like Comrade Carter
July 28, 2007 - 12:12 ET by Lame CherryPeople please consider this:
NEVER before in the history of all the world was there ever an empire leader who literally lost an entire empire without a shot being fired or a head rolling off a trunk.
Gorbachev lost an empire of two continents and worldwide proxy nations in a few weeks. Think about that in the high priest of GlobAl Warming what an absolute failure he knows he is and why he rants on like Jimmy Carter.
Carter being the second worst failure in history who unlike Nero did not fiddle when America burned, but instead went on television and blamed Americans for Jimmy Carter's faults.
It is why these 2 communists are still trying to regain their frittered away empires.
PS* I see old Gorbachev's Soviet birthmark is now shrunk to the size of a pimple........fitting as that is about as much as he amounts to now.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
I hope you are not pleading
July 28, 2007 - 12:41 ET by Warner Todd HustonI hope you are not pleading for us to feel sorry for Gorby!?
Shoe Business
July 28, 2007 - 12:57 ET by stratmanLooks like Gorby's going for the "Kruschev" look in that photograph.
His kingdom for a shoe... to pound on a desk.
Next we'll have the NYTimes write that Stalin was a humanitarion.
Killing them with kindness isn't working. Time to get scrappy with the Donkeys.
Just another Gorbasm by the freedom-hating liberal MSM
July 28, 2007 - 13:45 ET by Dave RGorbachev could only stand by and watch as seventy-plus years of internal rot finally brought the USSR to its knees. It still would have collapsed even if that other darling of the American left, "Uncle Joe" Stalin himself, had still been running the show.
Communism is the most murderous form of government the world has yet seen, a form of government that the liberal MSM embraces to this day. They will never give Ronald Reagan the singular credit he deserves for bringing about the Soviet Union's demise for three reasons:
1) Liberals essentially hate the United States of America, mostly for the freedom it represents, among other reasons.
2) Liberals hated Ronald Reagan and everything he stood for.
3) Liberals are, at heart, communists themselves.
What the supporters of this hideous evil seem to have never figured out is that all the former USSR really was was an oppressive, murderous and backward third world country that just happened to possess nuclear weapons.
Help Fred defeat everybody.
ACA
July 28, 2007 - 15:47 ET by Gary HallACA .
I had to do that. Thank you. (;~> gary
Thanks Gary, that one is mine. ACA
July 28, 2007 - 16:24 ET by acaiguana:-)
ACA
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Quoted from: 'Acaiguana Notes from the Bomb Shelter' (soon to be a movie at theaters near you)
I think irrelevances like
July 28, 2007 - 19:20 ET by fitzfongI think irrelevances like Gorbachev, Gore and Carter come out of woodwork just to prove to the world that they still have pulses. It's like a few years ago when Abe Vigoda started showing up in public to dispel persistent rumors that he had died. At least Abe Vigoda has had a meaningful life.
Gorbachev visits Reagan in D.C. - I witness American Genius
July 29, 2007 - 08:53 ET by robertjacob1992 - Gorbachev came to Washington D.C. - remember? Well this is the story
of the greatest American entrepreneur I ever witness. I was in D.C. on business
- walking to lunch down the street from the Russian Embassy. The Russian and
U.S. flags hung from every lamp post, and in the distance I heard sirens.
Gorbachev’s motorcade was coming, and by luck he was going to pass right in
front of me. As the cars approached I noticed a bunch of people with money in
their hands trying to buy something from what I presumed was a street vendor. I
went over to see what was going on - and this guy was selling rubber Gorbachev
birth marks for $10. People were going nuts trying to buy these things. I asked
this very elegantly dressed gentlemen what was going on, and he said: “we’re all
going to put these things on our foreheads and wave as he goes by”. Only in
America - right? I bought one - are you kidding me? In a matter a minutes
we saw the motorcade and with military precision we all, I’d say there were at
least 25 of us, lined the sidewalk on the streets edge, licked our rubber
birthmarks, slapped them on our foreheads, and waited to greet the Russian
leader. I was laughing so hard I could hardly stand. The motorcade approached,
pretty slowly, motorcycles first (D.C. cops) and one cop noticed our prank - you
should have seem the smile on his face. The limos passed, we all stood and waved
- I have no idea if Gorby saw us - but it didn’t matter - we all had a story for
life - and I had witnessed the greatest American entrepreneur I have ever seen.
My favorite story.
Wow, that is inspirational.
July 29, 2007 - 09:01 ET by sarcasmoWow, that is inspirational. :) I wonder if ol' Gorby actually saw them?? About how close did the cars pass? It would be great if you could hear from someone who was inside one of those limos (or the laughing biker-cop) today.
JMR