Nov 10, 2014 2 min read

Back when Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union and terrorized its citizens with harrowing levels of tyranny and repression, there remained some boosters within America who dismissed the gulags and executions as the inventions of Western repressors bent on stamping out what they believed was a communist paradise.

They were what we would call “useful idiots.” In fairness, many later admitted they were wrong.

Stalin is long dead and the Soviet Union is long defunct. But here we are in 2014, and the occupant of the Kremlin, while not reaching Stalinesque depths yet, has shown a propensity for autocracy. Nonetheless, he has his high-profile defenders in this country.

Steven Seagal, the faded action movie star who has lately taken on Elvis-in-the-1970s proportions while trying his luck as a blues guitarist, has offered kind words for Putin. Now, director Oliver Stone, whose work has declined appreciably since he won Oscars in the 1980s with “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” has said he is interested in making what would likely be a fawning Putin documentary.

Stone explained last week that Putin “represents a different point of view that Americans don’t hear.”

In a previous documentary Stone made about the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he appeared willing to overlook human-rights abuses by Chavez and his South American compatriots with an everybody-does-it shrug. Putin should probably expect similar kid-gloves treatment.

It’s enough to make you nostalgic for the time when faded movie stars spent their waning days jockeying for a spot on “Hollywood Squares.”