TAR

This week on "The Amazing Race" the teams went to Hanoi, Vietnam. They have been to Vietnam in the past and things go as they normally do on the show (except that they aren't allowed to use their show's flag for clues as it resembles the South Vietnamese flag.) This episode was different. It seems they moved away from entertainment and instead decided to focus on political issues. The teams had to watch a group of Vietnamese Young Communists sing a Communist song over and over again. This communist indoctrination was very blatant and just out of place (the show doesn't do the same when they are in Communist China.) Then in the same show the teams had to get their clue at Ho B-52 which is where an American bomber was shot down over Hanoi in December 1972. The wreckage of the plane is in a lake. There was no need to have the teams (all Americans) go there. It seems to be either TAR's or a productor's way of slapping the Vietnam War into our faces as if to say: See, not only did you loose the war (we shot down your plane), but Communism is still alive and well in Vietnam. They could have also replaced the portraits of Ho Chi Minh with those of Jane Fonda since they are one and the same. It has been 40 years since the US lost the Vietnam War. It seems pretty dumb for the show to force their political views on viewers who only want to be entertained. There was one season when the show made the teams stop and reflect at one of the atomic bomb memorials in Japan - I forget which one. I am glad that the US dropped the atomic bombs since it ended the war sooner rather than later and saved thousands upon thousands of American lives. The show forgets to mention that the Japanese attacked us first and that they continued to refuse to surrender even after we dropped the first atomic bomb and so we were forced to use the second. With regards to Vietnam, the North may have won the war, but the whole country is still very poor. It doesn't seem that Communism has helped them. I'm sure it will soon go the way of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Even Cuba and China are changing how they do things so they can modernize their country and economies and push themselves out of isolation - China is doing it much better than Cuba, but they have have 40 + years longer. Why don't they say how the US beat the USSR in the Cold War whenever the teams are in Russia? Or the same about Germany in World War 2? Maybe the teams should go to Iraq or Afghanistan so we can here the show's views on those wars as well.  I would hope that in future TAR focuses on entertaining its viewers rather than force-feeding us their spin on politics and history. If they want to be arrogant and spew their politics and historical viewpoint then they should either air on CNN or the History Channel otherwise leave well enough alone.