The Olympic whitewash of Sochi;
What to say of the gormless press-agent twaddle conjured up to describe the Soviet Union? In its opening video for the Olympic Games, NBC’s producers drained the thesaurus of flattering terms devoid of moral content: “The empire that ascended to affirm a colossal footprint; the revolution that birthed one of modern history’s pivotal experiments. But if politics has long shaped our sense of who they are, it’s passion that endures.”
To parse this infomercial treacle is to miss the point, for the whole idea is to luge by the truth on the frictionless skids of euphemism.
h/t Maz2
Somewhere, Walter Duranty is smiling, knowing his skills at covering up mass murder, of burying the truth about the planned starvation of million of men, women and children can still be celebrated as New York Times style journalism.in modern day America.
Anything to advance the collectivist cause.
An extraordinary piece of writing by Jonah Goldberg and I want to thank you for bringing to my attention.
I am now 74 years old. I have a granddaughter who is only two and I love her as only a grandparent can. In reading the story of
Hava Volovich and her baby daughter, Eleonora, in the slave labour camp, it was all too easy to project my granddaughter and all of my worries about the future, into the scene. At once, my heart became unspeakably heavy.
Barbarians are truly at the gates yet, for the most part, good men do nothing. I despair for my country and my culture but, mostly, I despair for my family. I will be dead in ten years and who will take care of them?
One of the benefits of political correctness, only the vermin are encouraged to speak.
Silence from the masses, may serve a useful purpose.
Hopefully we will not wait too long before we shorten the rope.
Our Presstitutes leave no doubt which master they serve.
The BBC created an excellent 3hr documentary on the Gulag, interviewing surviving prisoners and guards.
Be warned, when the former commandant of Norilsk refuses to believe he did anything wrong, you’ll want to fly over to Russia to shoot him in the face.
.youtube.com/watch?v=iz8afvfbY8E&list=PLFCMCiFtGbxKQok9uAYEGaJON6VS1szly
or search for ‘gulag documentary’.
Gormfull discourse?
Why would anyone want to watch any of the Olympic twaddle? It’s a friggin commercialized sports contest where world class athletes get together to breed, it’s like watching fish spawning.
The contest results are all that matter and that’s covered in the news. There’s only two sports with any degree of artistry [both on ice], the rest are just seeing who can get through first/fastest without crashing.
Yawn…
OK, 3 if you count curling… is that really a sport? It’s more like bocci or shuffleboard with yelling.
This is one of the few pieces of garbage that Jonah Goldberg has ever written. It is part of the general American
attack on Russia; which is much worse, and much more malign in its intentions, than anything that appeared
during the Soviet era. Jonah mentions Hannah Arendt, but not Alexandr Solzhenitzyn; to which I say, f**k
Hannah Arendt. Her contribution to defeating the Nazis in WWII was to screw the Nazi philosopher Martin
Heidegger. And she didn’t even give him a disease.
Solzhenitsyn on the other hand, fought in the Russian army against the German army for several years and
with distinction. He
was then imprisoned in the Gulag for eight years, and spent the next several years in internal exile. His work
includes searing exposés of the Stalinist government and the Gulags. As for documentation one can’t beat
Alex Comfort’s works, especially The Great Terror.
Should present-day Russia be held accountable for the horrors of the Bolsheviks? An important question, which
Jonah should have raised, and didn’t. Solzhenitsyn certainly thought
and wrote that the responsible people should be brought to justice, and they were not. One of the leading
torturers could be encountered any weekend at the races outside of St. Petersburg, for instance.
We should not forget Jonah Goldberg’s important book Liberal Fascism, nor his many columns on
important social issues. However, the particular column under discussion is, as I said, garbage: slovenly and
written without thought.
“shuffleboard with yelling”
I’ve been laughing hysterically for about five minutes. That’s the best putdown of curling I’ve ever heard. Well done, N60. There will now no doubt be hordes of the outraged at this violation of their sport, but it’s hard to take anything seriously after that bazinga.
You made my day.
“It’s more like bocci or shuffleboard with yelling.”
Oh like there’s no yelling in bocci…!
right, there should have been a comma after bocci…
TREASONOUS KNAVE!!!
I want what you guys are drinking…:)
Curling ,the only Olympic sport to feature ashtrays
You make a great comment, and raise some great questions.
One of my great uncles died in the forest, in the snow, with guard dogs ripping at him, and a couple of other prisoners imploring the guard to call off the dogs.
Curling is like “shuffleboard with yelling”. Now that is funny.