As Valentine’s Day fast approaches, it looks as though Cupid has been at work piercing the heart of one of the major U.S. television broadcast networks.
The media outlet that suffered a love blow is NBC, and from all appearances the network seems to have been struck hard. The problem is that the golden arrow Cupid flung must have originated in a country that had communist affinities.
Being head over heels for communism and its tempting tyrants is nothing new. The public has been witness to numerous love affairs that the left in America has had over the years with dashing dictators and their alluring governments. Entertainment figures in particular have gone gaga over the despot du jour including Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, just to name a couple.
However, NBC has taken the bad case of loving Reds to a whole new level in its media coverage of the opening ceremonies of the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.
The viewing audience in Fisht Olympic Stadium as well as those watching their televisions at home saw a presentation about the Stalinist era that included lavish sets and crafted choreography, which heralded the glories of industrialization. To symbolize the end of Russian Communism, a young girl poignantly let go of a red helium balloon.
The Soviet symbols of a hammer and sickle also made an appearance at the festivities, and they did so in a big way. At one point, an enormous hammer entered the stadium from one side as a giant sickle invaded the arena from the other.
Informed viewers could not have anticipated that these symbols would have been thrust into view, trademarks that for so many represent purges, forced famines, compulsory resettlements, gulags, and misery. Still, they were used by Sochi organizers as signs of industrial progress.
As bad as the images were, the NBC network, in a most irresponsible way, proceeded to laud the brutal former Soviet system. An Emmy-winning Hollywood actor, Peter Dinklage, narrated a clip that began the highly watched coverage of the games.
Dinklage portrays the character Tyrion Lannister on the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones.” The actor was used for the clip, in part, because the lengthy winters depicted in the cable television series are similar to the intense winters that take place in Russia.
In addition to references to winter and an introduction of some of the top athletes of the game, Dinklage’s voice-over was utilized to re-craft the image of an oppressive authoritarian system, which led to the deaths of tens of millions of people.
The words that Dinklage uttered characterized the Soviet Union and its reign of terror as an “empire that ascended to affirm a colossal footprint, the revolution that birthed one of modern history’s pivotal experiments.”
The statement was scripted, prerecorded material that NBC produced and subsequently aired. The network had ample opportunity to review the writings from which Dinklage read, which cavalierly referred to the blood-drenched decades of suffering under Soviet-era communist dictators as a “pivotal experiment.”
Ignoring the evils of communism and falsely attributing them with redeeming values fits with the current penchant of the left for tearing down capitalism and the free market and pushing a socialist meme.
Those at NBC who allowed the Soviet regime to be described in such glowing terms ignored the deliberate starvation of people and the human slaughter that occurred. They also ignored the reality of what the communist system was and still is, an abject failure.
The demise of the Soviet Union came with an inevitable collapse of the entire unsustainable governmental framework. Rather than the utopia propagandists had predicted, amid the ruins left in the Soviet wreckage were revelations that communism was, in fact, far worse than even its detractors had envisioned.
President Ronald Reagan didn’t mince words, when it came to his description of the Soviet Union. He correctly referred to it as an evil empire, one that employed a system that would ultimately end up on the ash heap of history.
His lips to God’s ears.
James Hirsen, J.D., M.A., in media psychology, is a New York Times best-selling author, media analyst, and law professor. Visit Newsmax TV Hollywood. Read more reports from James Hirsen — Click Here Now.
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