I am on record, multiple times, complaining about Glenn Beck trying to make people think the Obama administration is peopled with crazypants commies. And then something like this turns up. Watch this address from earlier this year in which Interim White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, with no apparent irony, approvingly quotes one of her self-described "favorite" political philosophers, Mao Zedong:
Mao Zedong, as you know, was a communist tyrant who killed between 20 million and 40 million of his own people. Do I think that Dunn is a Maoist? Of course not. But it is morally insane for her to give a speech praising this monster, and citing his determination as an inspiration. What the hell? Who in their right mind thinks this way? If Tony Snow had given a talk approvingly quoting Adolf Hitler, you know perfectly well what would have happened, and what should have happened. Honestly, this is indefensible. This Dunn idiot now makes Beck look responsible. As Nick Gillespie over on Reason's blog writes, "I admit it. I want my reality back. I don't know when it went missing. But I want it back."
UPDATE: You know what the problem is? Anita Dunn probably moves in circles where saying and believing something like that is by no means out of the ordinary. Of course they don't really believe that mass murder, Cultural Revolution, laogai and all the other horrors wrought by Mao's revolution is, you know, okay, but many left-liberals downplay the evils of communism, and in fact are far more sensitive to the supposed dangers of anti-communism. Do I think Dunn is a Maoist? No. But I think she is typical of a certain kind of liberal nitwit who is blind as a bat to evil that comes from any direction but the right.
UPDATE.2: Look, I agree that Beck is a histrionic nut, and I don't think the Obama administration is a nest of Marxist revolutionaries. But I'm having a tough time finding any justification for brushing off Dunn's offensive remarks. Again, if a top White House official in a Republican administration had made similar remarks in praise of Hitler, is there any context in which that would be any less than outrageous? Seriously.
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Cilantro Joe -
The Anita Dunn quote came from LEE ATWATER. How's that for ironic?
---------------
Obama aide fires back at Beck over Mao remarks
By Ed Hornick
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- White House communications director Anita Dunn fired back at criticism from TV commentator Glenn Beck on Friday, saying that a Mao Tse-tung quote Beck took issue with was picked up from legendary GOP strategist Lee Atwater.
"The Mao quote is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me," Dunn told CNN.
As for Beck's criticism: "The use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat -- at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing."
Also:
It's hard not to believe Dunn's isn't pandering to her audience (reportedly the graduating class of St. Andrew's Episcopal School) in her reference to Mother Teresa (Teresa's non-Episcopalianism notwithstanding). It's hard to imagine that anyone who genuinely regards Mother Teresa as a personal influence would consider her a "political philosopher". Additionally, I question that Mother Teresa would find much with which to identify in Dunn's philosophical espousements.
To JerryS:
Ironic, maybe, but irrelevant.
When I write my book, "Choosing Your Own Path: Don't Let the External Definition of 'Murderer of 30 Million People' Define How Good You Are Internally--Unless it Means 'Internally Good at the Brutal Annihilation of Human Life on an Unimaginable Scale'" (my editor tells me the title's too succinct), I'll make sure to mention that I got some quotes from Anita Dunn.
Also, don't miss my motivational video, "Finding Your Own Calcutta: What to Do When Mother Teresa Won't Let You Slaughter the Real One".
Even if Anita did get the quote from an unnamed twenty year-old "article or bio [she] read", and didn't, as Occam would certainly and alacritously insist, cobble together a post-culpa "but a Republican said it TOO" defense: the points I made in my first post apply identically here as well.
Here's the thing: I am not a GOP apologist. While the Right defends our "Liberty" from governmental control, it's been unvigilant about the gradual loss of our Liberty to a cult greed, consumerism, and purposeless ambition. We have an obligation to our fellow human beings. I oppose socialistic ideology not primarily because we become slaves to a Nanny State (or worse), but because we abdicate our obligation to our neighbors by outsourcing compassion to an institutional bureaucracy which can't possibly administer it as effectively, efficiently, or transformatively (yes, I mean that in a hamfisted spiritual way) as people making the conscious choice and taking conscious action to help those who are suffering.
Great. After all that, I feel a bit guilty about my afore-expressed snarkiness--but not guilty enough to retract it. Baby steps.
Richard Bottoms,
The laughter of everyone else here the next time your try to play the race card will drown out your hollow, mirthless, joyless, and soulless laughter at me merely for calling a sharp-edged rectangular garden tool a sharp-edged rectangular garden tool.
As I said before, perhaps it is time to retire your one-shtick-pony show as Richard Bottoms, The Blackest Man Alive, since if you are not willing to extend any common decency toward 50 million people who were murdered, then you can't expect anyone to give you what it is that you are asking for by posing as The Blackest Man Alive -- i.e. leeway to behave here as an abusive boor who would never be cut so much slack for any other reason than people's fear of being dealt the race card.
But if you have no shame about laughing in your hollow, mirthless, joyless, and soulless away from on top of Mao's pile of corpses, then why should anyone else feel shame about not treating you differently than they would treat any other abusive boor, merely, as I said before, because you share the skin tone of people who were subjected long ago to suffering which you yourself have not shared.
In any event, by your logic, even the suffering long ago of those who share your skin tone ought not anymore to qualify as any sort of card one might play with any rhetorical force, since much more recent and much more severe suffering, at Mao's hands, on the part of people with a skin tone different from *yours* can be blithely dismissed as mere anecdotage, mere words in an unread history book, words no more relevant and no more morally compelling than the words describing the exploits of Jesse James.
Perhaps Hollywood should make a science fiction film in which Malcolm X and Martin Luther King travel back in time as deputy sheriffs from the future to track down Frank and Jesse James.
By your lights, what would be wrong with that?
Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and every other African-American person who lived before the magic number of forty years ago are -- like Frank and Jesse James and like the fifty million people Mao killed -- just musty, dusty old words on an unread page, musty, dusty old words on an unread page that we can believe in or not as we so choose.
So screw 'em -- right?
Uh, good morning. I see this thread has been busy overnight. I think it's done its work, and can safely be closed for business.