What If Anita Dunn Had Said: "Two of My Favorite Political Philosophers, Hitler and Mother Teresa"?

As noted in my prior blog entry, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, one of Obama's top advisers, told June 2009 high school graduates:

". . . the third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa . . ."

Although Mao is thought to have murdered some 70 million people, more than even Adolph Hitler, this remark has been largely ignored by America's news media, except Fox.

Yesterday, after I posted my prior blog concerning Dunn's declaration of affinity for Chairman Mao, I had a lengthy conversation with a politically aware person with a doctorate, who was unfamiliar with Dunn's remark. This person, who voted for Obama, subscribes to the Boston Globe, reads The New York Times online, but does not watch Fox, was astounded:

"What if Dunn had said that Hitler was one of her favorite political philosophers?"

Exactly. What if Dunn had referred to Hitler instead of Mao? Would this have been less politically correct? Is Mao a "more benign" mass murderer because he starved most of his victims to death instead of gassing them? Is Dunn's comment acceptable because there is no museum in Washington commemorating Mao's victims? Or is Dunn's remark being hushed because the United States cannot afford to offend Communist China with its "mao-tain" of dollars from slave labor?

Is the press, other than Fox, refusing to cover this story because it is being manipulated, or, is it simply cooperating? Note the carrot (an exclusive op-ed purportedly written by President Obama) given to The New York Times, whose editorial board sanctified Obama's foreign policy in the face of WaPo criticism and sanctioned a peculiar Nobel Prize, and the stick being administered to naughty Fox News (banishment from the press pool and derision).

Do a Google search using "New York Times Anita Dunn Mao". All I found was an item in "The Caucus, The Politics and Government Blog of The Times", which states:

"The video has sparked an uproar in the conservative blogosphere".

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/white-house-vs-fox-chairman-mao/#more-48237

Is that all The Times sees "fit to print"? Why are its editorial page pundits entirely ignoring this issue and the attempt to ostracize Fox? Adulation of mass murderers and freedom of the press are just "conservative" issues?

Moreover, this New York Times "blog" inaccurately states:

"On the left side, Media Matters, which tends to monitor all right-leaning sentiments, points to many Republicans, including Barry Goldwater, who have cited the Chairman Mao’s declarations as inspiration."

However, if you click on the Media Matters link, Barry Goldwater is not said to have cited Mao's declarations as "inspiration"; rather an aide is quoted as saying that he "followed the advice of Mao" while working for Goldwater and in his other campaign work: "Give me just two or three men in a village and I will take the village." Goldwater is quoted as suggesting "that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not.(Harper's Magazine, November 1964)"

(http://mediamatters.org/research/200910160001)

There would seem to be a small difference between Barry Goldwater suggesting that we "analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy [emphasis added]", and the avowal of Dunn that Mao is one of her "favorite [emphasis added] political philosphers." How can you call anyone who murdered 70 million people a "philosopher", a word, lest we forget, which derives from the Greek "philos", i.e. loving?

Again, listen to Anita Dunn at a January event focusing on Obama’s media tactics and hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development, in which Dunn discusses how Obama controlled the media during the 2008 election (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGNhAnwp_Y):

"One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe [Obama’s chief campaign manager] videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters. We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it. . . . very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control."

Listen as Dunn goes on to say:

"There is no such thing as off the record . . . . Obama himself learned that when he told a fund rasing group in San Francisco . . . about people who owned guns in small communities that ended up of course costing us a lot of votes in rural Pennsylvania. . . . Anything you say you should expect to be on You Tube."

When Dunn spoke with the high school graduates, she obviously forgot her own advice. But more important and frightening is her message: Let's control the media and avoid telling people what we really think.

Bottom line: Obama's threats against Fox, attempts to manipulate the media, and desire to control what voters need to know are not about "change". Rather, they are a former law professor's challenge to the First Amendment, and you don't need to be a conservative or a fan of Fox to take offense.