KMC Forums - David Hasselhoff, Cold War Warrior

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David Hasselhoff

Ronald Regan. Helmut Kohl. Margaret Thatcher. David Hasselhoff. Each was instrumental to the reunification of Germany. Yet one among them has been denied his proper due.

Hasselhoff has long maintained a dignified silence in regard to this historical injustice. But no more. Speaking recently to the German magazine TV Spielfim, the entertainer argued he'd helped reunite Germans by singing his song Looking for Freedom at the Brandenberg Gate in 1989. "I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Check-Point Charlie," he said. Hasselhoff has personally lobbied museum curators about the oversight - but so far to no avail.

Hasselhoff is too modest: It wasn't just his music that helped tear down the Iron Curtain, but also his work on the NBC television series Knight Rider, in which Hasselhoff teamed up with a talking car K.I.T.T. to fight evil. Between 1982 and 1986, when Knight Rider made its run, most North American viewers were oblivious to the hardcore anti-communist message it carried. But the same wasn't true in Russia and Eastern Europe, where dubbed Knight Rider episodes were circulated by dissidents.

Sometimes, the political message was obvious - such as in the January 21, 1983 Knight Rider episode, Give Me Liberty...or Give Me Death. As Soviet censors caught on, efforts were made to embed the propaganda in allegory. Thus was conceived K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R., a November 4, 1984 episode in which a treasure hunter stumbled on K.I.T.T.'s evil prototype K.A.R.R., and unwittingly looses him upon the world. The final showdown between the two cars is an unmistakable allegory for the Cold War. And as in real life, it was David Hasselhoff - aka. Knight Rider pilot Michael Knight - left standing when the epic battle was over.

A man whose cultural and political impact was matched only by his artistic integrity deserves to have his photo hung at Check-Point Charlie. And next to it, perhaps, could be a small reminder from former Saturday Night Live star Norm MacDonald: "Germans love David Hasselhoff!" Lest we forget.