From MRC [June 26, 2003]:
Martina Navratilova, the tennis star who made millions in the U.S. after she left Czechoslovakia, has denounced the values of her adopted country. In an article in a German magazine reported by Reuters and picked up Wednesday night by FNC’s Brit Hume, she complained: “Decisions in America are based solely on the question of ‘how much money will come out of it’ and not on the questions of how much health, morals or the environment suffer as a result.” She also equated the U.S. under President Bush with Czechoslovakia under Soviet domination: “The most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another.” The unbylined Reuters dispatch from Berlin noted that she “singled out President Bush’s Republican party for unusually harsh criticism. ‘The Republicans in the United States manipulate public opinion and sweep any controversial issues under the table,’ said Navratilova.”
I take it Martina expects Bush to jailed her for her comments? Or perhaps torture her like Saddam tortured thousands in Iraq? How she forgets that it was the Left that supported that Soviet domination by “supressing the free opinion” of anti-communists by with smears of “McCarthyism.” Fact is Martina is free to express her opinions; and we are free to express our opinion that to equate the Bush presidency with that of the former Communist Czechoslovakia is dishonest. If that is “suppression” in her dictionary than so be it. Stick to tennis Martina.