NBC Hires Liberal New Yorker Editor to Offer Guest Commentary on Russian Politics During Winter Olympics

December 9th, 2013 8:31 PM

Lisa de Moraes of Deadline.com reports NBC has found that somehow, Bob Costas just isn’t enough of a liberal blowhard for its Winter Olympics coverage in Sochi, Russia.

“The network announced this morning it has hired New Yorker editor (and former Washington Post Moscow bureau chief) David Remnick to provide guest commentary on the network’s air during its coverage of the Games,” which basically combines all the expected liberal Obama-loving attitude with someone who lived and reported in Moscow as the Soviet Union collapsed:

“We are facing an Olympics that have a number of issues around them — substantial, meaty, news issues,” NBC’s Olympics exec producer Jim Bell told Sports Illustrated over the weekend. “For us to be able to have an opportunity to address them with someone like David made perfect sense. We would be remiss not to rely on some of the best and brightest minds to help present this to our viewers the right way.”

Added Remnick: “I think they want to have someone who has a familiarity with Russian politics and culture, various controversies, Vladimir Putin and all these questions I have stepped in for a very long time.”  Bell said Remnick will kick off his in-Games commentary during the “creative part” of the opening ceremonies. Remnick served as a Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days Of The Soviet Empire.

NBC’s Costas, who’s known for his outspoken commentary, the other day told the Associated Press he won’t comment on Russia’s so-called “gay propaganda” law because he’s hoping to land an interview with what AP called “responsible people” (read: Russian President Vladimir Putin).

So in order for Costas to score a Putin interview, NBC will hand off the liberal advocacy to someone else for a spell? Bringing in Remnick for the Olympics is like a miniature version of "NBC Nightly News" bringing on leftist Bill Moyers to do commentary in 1995.

NBC is clearly signaling it will provide commentary in favor of the gay agenda as Russia has banned free speech for its people in favor of homosexuality. In The New Yorker in 2011, Remnick crowed in an article headlined "It Gets Better" about New York’s legislature passing gay marriage: “On the tense night of June 24th this year, the New York State Senate, that redoubt of corruption and double-dealing, roused itself to become a center of conscience...the advances made...have been remarkable, even thrilling. The struggle for marriage equality is about more than the definition of marriage; it’s about the definition of justice.”

Here are a few nuggets of commentary MRC has captured over the years:

"It is not enough for him to oppose liberalism. He must, like all demagogues, scare his listeners, get them to believe in conspiracy, rumor....Like Reagan, Limbaugh is neither curious nor brave; he would rather tell his audiences fairy tales than have them face the world; he would rather sneer at the weak than trouble the strong."
-- Former Washington Post reporter David Remnick in the Post's "Outlook" section, February 20, 1994.

“We see a lot of preposterous things in American politics....Sarah Palin’s entire career would be eliminated, would pass out of history if preposterousness were somehow disqualifying, but it’s not.”
— The New Yorker’s David Remnick, formerly a Washington Post reporter, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 9, 2010.

“There are a lot of American characters no matter what the field who make themselves, who create themselves out of what’s in the cultural air. It’s an American thing, whether it’s Mohammad Ali or Walt Whitman or Annie Oakley. And Barack Obama is somebody who grew up in Honolulu and had to learn how to be African-American in the absence of African-Americans. Racial identity is a drama that Obama had to undergo long after he had become comfortable with his own identity.”
– Remnick, “In His Own Words,” April 5, 2010 NBC Nightly News.