12 Miles from World War 3?
What happened over the weekend was too close for comfort. This was not a cold war sitcom. What happened is a real tragedy.
Deceased television star Ted Knight had a lead role in a cold war-era sitcom Too Close for Comfort back in the early 80s.
Forty years later, as a Russian/American cold war sequel makes its way from the outdated box television set to our current flat screens, a reboot of sorts just occurred 12 miles from the border of Poland - that’s where Russian missiles exploded.
Too Close for Comfort 2022 - In the city of Lviv, Ukraine, where the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security is located (also known as the Yavoriv military complex), Russian missiles rained down on the area.
The weekend fighting was no sitcom, though. There is nothing funny about 35 people killed and 134 wounded in this missile attack.
A Ukrainian Governor named Maksym Kozytskyi confirmed that Russia fired 30 missiles.
Russian missiles hitting 12 miles from Poland - a member of NATO - is indeed Too Close for Comfort.
Now that Poland is a member of NATO, any attack inside their borders would obligate NATO to come to Poland’s defense.
Which, of course, would quickly escalate the Ukraine/Russian war into a “world war.”
I’m sure that’s how news anchors would label the situation.
Speaking of news anchors, another character in Ted Knight’s cold war portfolio is news anchor Ted Baxter.
Arguably his most famous character, Ted Baxter, was the vain, shallow, buffoonish news reporter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show - a hugely successful cold war sitcom produced in America from 1970 to 1977.
Ted Baxter was too self-centered and dopey to survive an assignment reporting from a war-torn area like Ukraine.
However, in our current sober reality, an actual American journalist did go to Ukraine over the weekend and lost his life.
After crossing a checkpoint, Brent Renaud, age 50, was reportedly riding in a car with other journalists when they were suddenly fired upon.
You can see he wore a PRESS badge that says “The New York Times,” although Renaud was reportedly working on a film documenting refugees and often works as a freelance journalist.
It is a shame when innocent people like Mr. Renaud end up as war casualties.
Renaud is the first journalist reportedly to have died in the Ukraine/Russian conflict.
Let’s hope he’s also the last.
With each news cycle (even discounting the government-backed MSM on both sides) it becomes increasingly more difficult to determine who the bad actors are.
Sadly it is the people caught up in this conflict, and not them, that ultimately suffer.