Will Beck condemn Bush for recommending a Mao bio to Rove?
October 15, 2009 6:17 pm ET by Matt Gertz
In the wake of Glenn Beck's rather bizarre one hour rant, in which he played a clip of White House communications director Anita Dunn calling Mao Tse-Tung one of her two "favorite political philosophers," along with Mother Theresa, the following excerpt from a December 2008 Karl Rove column in the Wall Street Journal seems relevant:
Rove: President Bush "encouraged me to read a Mao biography."
With only five days left, my lead is insurmountable. The competition can't catch up. And for the third year in a row, I'll triumph. In second place will be the president of the United States. Our contest is not about sports or politics. It's about books.
It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, "I'm on my second. Where are you?" Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.
By coincidence, we were both reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." The president jumped to a slim early lead and remained ahead until March, when I moved decisively in front. The competition soon spun out of control. We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book's pages -- its "Total Lateral Area."
We recommended volumes to each other (for example, he encouraged me to read a Mao biography; I suggested a book on Reconstruction's unhappy end). We discussed the books and wrote thank-you notes to some authors.
Goldwater adviser: "in all ... campaigns where I have served as consultant I have followed the advice of Mao Tse-tung."
Here's another relevant passage, from Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics:
In his recent book, How to Win an Election, Stephen C. Shadegg cites a statement attributed to Mao Tse-tung: “Give me just two or three men in a village and I will take the village.” Shadegg comments: “ In the Goldwater campaigns of 1952 and 1958 and in all other campaigns where I have served as consultant I have followed the advice of Mao Tse-tung.” “I would suggest,” writes senator Goldwater in Why Not Victory? “that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not.
Personally, one of the best paragraphs I ever read on political activism was about Communists and was written by J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover spoke about how Communists would handle people who walked in the door. The commies put their new recruits to work immediately. They handed the volunteer a bunch of pamphlets and directed him to a street corner where they could start passing them out and proselyting immediately. I read that and I'm like "Yeah, yeah, that's the way to do it!!!"
And what exactly have all these White House advisors done that is either unethical, illegal, immoral or otherwise corrupt? Sounds like Beck simply has a problem with well read, intellectually sophisticated people whose views are different from his.
Not surprising that so many idiots fell for the smooth-talking 'Hawaiian'
he also managed, for good or bad, to organize a massive country. done that lately? i'm thinking 'no'.
i've never like brett farve, but that doesn't mean a fellow quarterback would not benefit from studying him
For the sake of argument, let's assume Brett Favre bribed referees, took steroids, and extensively cheated to become the NFL's most dominant quarterback (afterall, he is the only QB to have beaten every single NFL team). Assuming Favre was a scumbag like that, this would be like the NFL commissioner saying Favre's philosophy of how to win a game is one of his favorite sports philosophies.
Organizing a country is one thing, doing so with total disregard for human life is, as you say, "all bad"
That is why Beck won't cover this story, because it is just ridiculous, without any other context that Bush likes those people, or has said anything good about them overall (unless someone wants to correct me, of course).
Full context shows the thoughtful idea of individual action upon things which are important to the individual. Seeing paths which take you were you desire to be. That Mao and Sister T happen to be people would walked the walk merely make them good examples. Not overal role models for what one should do using their whole lives, not as road maps for everyone's life path.
less you got something your afraid to give any details on, its that same old song of, guilt by association for anyone of a liberal stripe.
I think it answers the question is Beck going to report Bush? No. If Bush recommended the philosophy of Mao, what would people be saying? The Hitler/fascist comparisons would have skyrocketed, his opponents would be angry, core diehard supporters defensive, other supporters willingly ignorant. Is it possible that me or anyone is over-reacting or under-reacting because of bias? I hope not. It isn't serious enough to resign over (which as I understand she had been planning on doing this for at least a day now). But explain this? Please.
Its what they do.
In reference to Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa, Anita Dunn said they are "the two people I turn to most".
To be fair, it could be interpreted that she looks at these two people the most as examples of how to live and act (Teresa), and how NOT to live and act (Mao).
In my opinion, she looks up to Mao as a role model or hero. My reasoning is there are whole lists of historical people who have done amazing things that we can look up to. Hundreds of people have done things that would have fit equally into the point Anita Dunn was trying to make. Why pick Mao over George Washington? When he was fighting the British, it looked hopeless, yet he also overcame impossible odds (Read "Washington's Crossing").
You are welcome Mediamatters.org :)
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/19740/
" GLENN: Oh, FDR. Hitler loved FDR. Mussolini was loved by FDR. I mean, it's -- you know, I went and I looked some stuff up in Mein Kampf. Do you know that Hitler wrote about the American civil war and states rights?
STU: No.
GLENN: Did you know that?
STU: Didn't reed Mein Kampf.
GLENN: Oh, you didn't?
STU: That's not on my Kindle.
GLENN: Oh, you should read Mein Kampf. It will blow your mind.
STU: It's poorly written, isn't it? I've always heard it's poorly written.
GLENN: But it will blow your mind, Stu, at how clear everything is and nobody really paid attention to it. And it sold more copies than the Bible. So everybody was reading it. Because I read it. When I first started trying to figure out what I believe in, I went back, because I am -- Beck obviously the last name and German, German descent although my people were over here in the 1800s and -- we saw it coming. And so I go back because I thought, what did the people that I'm obviously related to, what did they -- did they know? How do you do that? How do you go down that road? So I went and I read Mein Kampf. It's been 15 years. It will blow your mind. It will blow your mind. And in it he talks about, you know, the American civil war, or he has writings on the American civil war where he talked about the state creates -- the regime creates the states; the states don't create the regime. And he flipped it all upside on its head. And he was trying to do the same thing.
I mean, there was a tipping point for Hitler, and at what point did people say, "You know what, I shall say something," but they didn't. And then they said, "Gee, now it's too late." And the other thing that I thought of in watching that movie is -- and I don't know if you noticed this, Stu. Did you notice how many people were willing to step gladly to the table to topple that regime but only when they thought they were winning? If it didn't look like they were going to win, they were on the other side, strongly on the other side. "I'm against you, unless you're winning. Then I'm for you."
STU: I took that more as they actually did believe Hitler was bad, but they were just afraid.
GLENN: Oh, terrified."
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/19740/
Call for massive LAWSUITS against the agitator and demagouge Glenn Beck!...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck_v._Eiland-Hall
I've read biographies on many historical figures but never found myself quoting Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. Even when I thought removed from the context of their evil deeds it might help make my point. If Dunn was being ironic then she is extremely bad at irony.
The real problem is that when public figures are surrounded by adoring like-minded fans they forget they are still being heard by their opponents. They tend to let their guard down and get sucked into the moment. They may even try to revv the crowd up by saying something they'll later regret. We've seen it time and time again. It is truly hard to know from this single incidence if Dunn meant it or not. Let's examine her other speeches, her writings, her political activities, and her friends. Do we see a pattern?