When did the Left fall out with the Soviet Union?

Controversy swirls around the rightward tilt of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As I've said before, the only TV show I watch is Stargate SG-1, which isn't on PBS, so although I suspect that the change is correcting a list rather than causing one, I'll leave that for actual viewers to argue.

Here's what snagged my attention:

Oh, but people do object, lots of them, and in the overwrought terms typical of today's polemicists. A writer for the liberal magazine American Prospect called Tomlinson a "commissar of political correctness" bent on "Soviet-style partisan patronage, cronyism, and abuse." "The conservative attack on independent journalism has begun to spread," said a columnist for the Cox newspaper chain. Writing in the Boston Globe, a host of an NPR talk show also saw shadows of "Soviet-era Moscow" in Tomlinson's quest for balanced programming.

Ten years after the breakup of the Soviet Union PBS supporters have discovered that it was a repressive regime, perhaps even -- if it's anything like the United States -- an Evil Empire?

At this rate, the Left should be discovering Kosovo in a year or two, Sudan in five or so and Castro's Cuba in another decade. You'll know it's happened when they start saying U.S. soldiers are like the KLA, that Mississippi is like Darfur, and Guantanamo (if we're still keeping terrorists down their by then) is just like, well, Cuba.

Next thing you know, they'll be comparing Bush to Stalin, which would be a change of mustache anyway.