By Geoffrey Dickens | November 9, 2009 | 12:02 PM EST

Reporting live from the Berlin Wall NBC's Tom Brokaw, on Monday's "Today" show, never once mentioned Ronald Reagan's name and his role in helping to end the Cold War, but did find time to praise Mikhail Gorbachev and "Today" co-anchor Matt Lauer even wondered if it was "a little egocentric" to look at the fall of the Wall as an "American victory," as seen in the following exchange:

MATT LAUER: I know, I think it may be a little egocentric but I think most Americans look at that event and they think of it as an American victory. When you talk to Germans today, do they view it that way?

TOM BROKAW: Well, they certainly think that the United States played a major role. But the real payoff came later when Germany was peacefully re-united. I said at a dinner last night, the remarkable thing is that no tanks rolled that day, no shots were fired, no East German leaders were hanged in the streets of East Berlin. And you have to give Mikhail Gorbachev a great deal of credit for that, Matt. Because he was in Moscow and he didn't send in the troops and he said to the East Germans, "You need to learn how to reform."[audio available here]

The following is the full segment as it was aired on the November 9, "Today" show:

By Rich Noyes | November 5, 2009 | 10:48 AM EST
As readers of Cal Thomas’s latest syndicated column already know, the Media Research Center is releasing a new report today on the media’s coverage of communism, timed to coincide with the 20 anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Monday. Sad to say, but before, during and after those momentous events two decades ago, many in the liberal media continuously whitewashed the true nature of communism, or suggested free-market capitalism was somehow worse.

For our report, Better Off Red?, Scott Whitlock and I combed through the MRC’s archives; the quotes (and 19 audio/video clips) we pulled together show some liberal journalists utterly failed to accurately depict communism as one of the worst evils of the 20th century, and often aimed their fire at those who were fighting communism rather than those who were perpetuating it. The full report has more than 70 quotes; here's a sample from the Executive Summary:

■ Before it collapsed, these journalists insisted those enslaved by communism actually feared capitalism more. "Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy," CBS anchor Dan Rather asserted in 1987.
By Ken Shepherd | October 9, 2009 | 6:13 PM EDT

<div style="float: right"><object width="240" height="194"><param name="movie" value="http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=GdSUnzSU8z&amp;sm=1"></para... name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=GdSUnzSU8z&amp;sm=1" allowfullscreen="true" width="240" height="194"></embed></object></div>No wonder why Chris Matthews is always positively tingly over Obama. It's just a neverending <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_072707/content/01125107.gues... target="_blank">Gorbasm</a> with a different leftist object of lust.<br /><p>Today on &quot;Hardball,&quot; Matthews favorably compared the president to former Soviet dictator and Nobel Peace Prize recipient <a href="http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1990/" target="_blank">Mikhail Gorbachev</a> (MP3 audio <a href="http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2009/10/2009-10-09-MSNBC-HB... target="_blank">available here</a>):</p><blockquote><p>CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: When Gorbachev became chairman of the [Communist] Party and ran, took over Russia [sic], a lot of us in this country said, this guy, by his very fact of coming to office has so changed Soviet history, Communist history. I love the guy. Because he came in there and knocked off that whole history of Andropov and Stalin and all those bums. He comes in there as an open door.</p><p>MATTHEWS: Isn't the statement's he's [Obama has] made about torture, his opposition to the Iraq War, his statements of approval of the rest of the world, after Bush's chauvinism and cheap shots about French fries. After eight years of that nonsense, doesn't the world have a right to say, &quot;Thank God, America is back to being America again&quot;?</p>

By Tom Blumer | June 8, 2009 | 1:31 PM EDT

GorbachevIn the second half of his op-ed in the Washington Post today, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev entirely credits himself and fellow countrymen for the end of his country's Communist dictatorship, and claims that it's the Western capitalist model that is currently failing.

In the process, he espouses positions that seem to have been copied from the Democratic Party's past few platforms, as well as from U.S. Dear Leader Barack Obama's governing model.

Following Gobachev's ridiculous rewrite of the Soviet Union's final decade (you know it's ridiculous because the name "Reagan" never appears; he doesn't even believe that the break-up should have happened), here are key passages from the former dictator's admonishments of the West (the most obvious direct lifts from Obama and Dems are in bold):

By Brent Baker | December 30, 2008 | 12:57 AM EST
Taking adulation of Barack Obama on a looney left trip through idolization of Mikhail Gorbachev (Obamagasm + Gorbasm = Obamagorbabasm?), far-left Boston Globe columnist James Carroll dreamed that Obama will fulfill Gorbachev's 1988 pledge to achieve “the demilitarization of international relations” and change the world “from an economy of armament to an economy of disarmament.” In his Monday column, “Gorbachev's model for Obama,” Carroll, who fully credited Gorbachev with the fall of the Berlin Wall and dismantling of the Soviet Union, trumpeted Obama's opportunity: “By the grace of God, it is not too late to match the greatness with which Gorbachev acted 20 years ago, an overdue acceptance of his historic invitation.”

Fretting about America's “refusal to dismantle its Cold War military economy,” Carroll yearned for “yes we can” responses: “Is it too much to expect Barack Obama to change history? Make peace? Transform an economic system? Rescue the Earth? Build a political program around the truth? Restore a great nation's decency?” Justifying his faith in Obama, Carroll recalled: “On the cusp of this decisive year, it will do Americans well to recall that just such a transformation took place once before, even if we declined to respond with transformation of our own.”

(Just below Carroll's column, in the newspaper owned by the New York Times, readers were treated to an op-ed piece that carried a Tripoli dateline and the byline of “the leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” -- yes, that would be Muammar Gaddafi -- titled “Provoking Russia” and which began: “Once again, the West's policy toward Russia and its addiction to interfering in the affairs of other countries is having dangerous effects on the rest of the world.”)
By Warner Todd Huston | April 21, 2008 | 6:19 PM EDT

If they had a reality show for international politicians called "Biggest Loser" the most popular nominee for the title would be Mikhail Gorbachev, the man that lost his whole country, not merely an election. Yet, every once in a while and for some untenable reason, this communist loser is trotted out by the US media as some sort of expert on international politics. Unsurprisingly, his opinion is always sought to act as an attack on a Republican politician or policy. This time it is the All Headline News service trotting out old spotty in order to wag a finger at GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

Back on March 18th, McCain reiterated his idea of creating a new international organization styled as a "League of Democracies." McCain imagines this organization as a chance to renew the commitment of the world's democratic nations to the concept of helping others grow as well as lending more support to those already so formed.

By Scott Whitlock | October 27, 2007 | 9:42 AM EDT

Aren't they Grand?

On Wednesday's "Early Show," Harry Smith gushed over Bill and Hillary Clinton and how two "idealistic kids" transformed themselves into "political rock stars." Smith also took pains to point out that the Clintons are a "still-young couple." Over on ABC, Clinton-fan Kate Snow fawned over Bill and Hillary for being "masters at turning bad news into good." In general, she seemed to be impressed with the 2008 candidate's ability to spin the American public.

Global Warming: The Answer for Everything

NBC, predictably, kicked off the media blame game and assigned the cause of the California fires to, you guessed it, global warming. "Nightly News" host Brian Williams wondered, "Are these fires somehow a result of climate change?" CBS echoed a similar theme on "60 Minutes." CNN also used the tragedy in California to speculate about global warming. A CNN special, "Planet in Peril," which aired this week, failed to mention that one of the climate change scientists featured also happened to be funded by George Soros.

By Tim Graham | October 22, 2007 | 5:48 PM EDT

Two years ago, Time magazine did a story implying China was selling out on dictator Mao Zedong's communist legacy -- with a picture of Mao covered in Louis Vuitton bag logos. So it's a bit strange to turn around to the back cover of the October 29 edition of Time and see an ad that's -- why, it's former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev selling Louis Vuitton bags.

By Tim Graham | October 17, 2007 | 7:14 AM EDT

In Time's 'Verbatim' section on page 21 this week, our democratically elected government is scolded by a former dictator of the former Soviet Union as he visited post-Katrina New Orleans:

By Warner Todd Huston | July 28, 2007 | 4:35 AM EDT

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.