NPR

In 2002 National Public Radio (NPR) ran a story about Joan Hinton, an American nuclear physicist on the Manhattan Project who moved with her husband to China in 1948 to support the Communist revolution. Afterwards the Hintons started a dairy farm, which the now-widowed Joan still runs.

With no sense of irony, the interviewer encouraged Hinton to relate her marvelous experiences in the era of the Chairman Mao regime -- a period that saw various Five-Year Plans, Mao's Great Leap Forward, his Cultural Revolution, and the criminal genocide of 65 million people.

Joan talked about her happy life during the Mao years with relish (I gathered she never had to endure the routine "thought reform" indoctrination that was obligatory for native Chinese). I waited in vain, however, for the reporter to ask Hinton to elaborate on her unabashed support for her chosen murderous government. As the segment drew to a close, I realized I'd just listened to several minutes of Communist agit-prop; it is not without cause that today I still think of NPR as National Proletariat Radio.