Flashback: The Liberal Media’s Gorbasms Over the Last Soviet Dictator

Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh coined the phrase “Gorbasm” for the ecstasy that many reporters felt when covering Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev. Journalists elevated Gorbachev far above the freedom fighters, dissidents and democratic, anti-communist leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher; indeed, the media assigned the Soviet party boss nearly all of the credit for ending the Cold War. Few, if any, democratic politicians have ever received the plaudits that were flung by journalists towards the last dictator of the Soviet Union. Here are a few examples, drawn from the Media Research Center’s archives.