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| Mike... |
 Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:58 pm |
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What would Mao do?
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told a group of high
school students last June that former Chinese communist dictator Mao
Zedong was one of her two favorite political philosophers, and you
could tell she was speaking from the heart. Her earnest appeal to the
teenagers to fight their own wars, as Mao had counseled when
challenged within his own party, was clearly meant as a call to
activism. "You fight your war and I'll fight mine," she quoted Mao as
saying, because apparently Mao was all about personal choice.
Of course, Mao's usual response to those who questioned his authority
was to have them killed, but mentioning that inconvenient truth might
detract from Miss Dunn anointing him a philosopher.
Miss Dunn's quotation of Chairman Mao as one of the two people she
"most turns to" has created a media sensation. A bewildered Miss Dunn,
discovering that not everyone reveres mass murderers as sources of
valuable life lessons, claimed she was only quoting late Republican
political operative Lee Atwater's views on the Chinese Communist Party
chairman. But there is a significant difference between
uberconservative Mr. Atwater making a joke about Mao and reverential
views coming from one of President Obama's mouthpieces.
"What would Mao do?" seems to be the guiding question in White House
communications strategy. Miss Dunn bragged that during the 2008
presidential campaign, "very rarely did we communicate through the
press anything that we didn't absolutely control." The Obama White
House continues this drive for control using the tools of government,
seeking to harness all means of communication and organize a Cultural
Revolution Lite.
A push for control is revealed in attempts to organize Hollywood to
help convey party messages and to use the National Endowment for the
Arts to promote Obama policy initiatives. The Federal Communications
Commission is considering content regulations on radio stations under
the guise of promoting "diversity." The White House convinced
television networks to embed themes of "service and volunteering" all
this week, and tried to rebrand Sept. 11 as a Day of Service. This
reminds us of Mao's admiration for the Soviet "subbotnik," or
voluntary (actually forced) labor program. The fact that the White
House communications director finds inspiration in the words of the
man who gave the world brainwashing is cause for concern.
The current war with Fox News - which Miss Dunn called "opinion
journalism masquerading as news" - shows the White House commitment to
controlling the press. Among Fox News' crimes was when Chris Wallace
fact-checked controversial statements made on his program by Assistant
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth. Yet to Miss Dunn, the
media should serve as what Vladimir Lenin called "transmission belts,"
simple purveyors of whatever the White House dishes out, uncritically
and unthinkingly. How dare Fox News check facts. No one fact-checked
Mao.
On "This Week" on Sunday, Obama senior adviser David Axelrod lectured
George Stephanopoulos on how ABC should treat Fox. Any news shop that
follows the White House line will be seen as an extension of Miss
Dunn's information machine. Meanwhile Fox's ratings continue to go up. |
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