American Prospect rips NBC's Sochi house gays

Tvol, via Flickr

Nancy Goldstein concludes that "NBC's pinkwashing is working," thanks to the network's use of Johnny Weir and Thomas Roberts. She quotes Queer Nation's Duncan Osborne: “NBC’s strategy is to cast doubt that things are as bad in Russia as we say they are.”
     From her piece:

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NBC has been dodging attempts from activists to hold them accountable since the laws were enacted. A letter from the gay lobbying group Human Rights Campaign’s president asking NBC to include news of Russia's human-rights violations alongside their standard Olympics coverage elicited a mealy-mouthed response from the network, which said it would “provide coverage of Russia's anti-gay laws if the controversial measures surface as an issue during the upcoming Winter Olympics.” As though the fact that Neo-Nazis keep luring gay men to hotel rooms by baiting them online, then kidnapping and torturing them and posting their videos online isn’t an issue at all so long as no queers are actually forced to drink their own urine in front of NBC’s cameras during the snowboarding finals.

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