The White House’s ‘ironic’ Mao moment? Glenn Beck doesn’t get it.
You just knew the Anita Dunn-Glenn Beck feud would involve Socrates and Seinfeld, didn't you?
By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer/ October 17, 2009 edition
Atlanta
A week after White House communications director Anita Dunn declared “war” on Fox News, Glenn Beck, the feisty libertarian Fox personality, is taking Ms. Dunn on personally over what can now officially be described as her “Mao moment.”
On Thursday, Mr. Beck aired a high school commencement address from June where Ms. Dunn listed Mao — responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese during the Cultural Revolution — as one of her “favorite political philosophers,” alongside Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Dunn, a long-time Washington strategist, surprised many by singling out Fox as a public relations arm of the Republican Party last weekend. She said on Friday that her Mao comments were obviously “ironic” and that she had lifted the reference from the late and legendary Republican strategist Lee Atwater.
Yes, a lot of this is personal between Fox and Dunn.
Yet perhaps we get a tiny bit of new insight into America’s political divide from the Mao affair. Perhaps the standoff is less about left and right, socialists versus libertarians, and more about ironic speech versus direct speech.
The Oxford English Dictionary says that irony is “a figure of speech in which the unintended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used.”
The Yale- and Harvard-educated denizens of the White House surely are as familiar with irony as Seinfeld is, using it as a way to signal “I get it” without being too earnest. Fox viewers seem more interested in getting the straight dope, without the varnish.
This argument goes back only a few thousand years. Socrates, for one, saw the value of irony to gain greater insight into the truth. Yet irony, as the political scientist Jane Bennett has argued, can threaten politics by diluting moral indignation.
Indeed, the Greeks might have envisioned a latter-day Beck when they coined the term parrhesia, or “frank-speech,” as a method to favor truth over oratory to convince the audience.
“Socrates values truth above all, but the way to encourage one’s fellow citizens … to share that concern is to not be strictly truthful with them,” Mount Holyoke political scientist Elizabeth Markovits writes in an essay. “The use of irony, long thought of as intentionally deceptive, is specifically deployed to awaken people from their stupor and take control of their lives as democrats. In our own contemporary political life, where we praise ‘straight talkers,’ and Bill O’Reilly has a top-rated news program, we should hope for a great ironist rather than praise [irony’s] death.”
Still, the extent of Dunn’s irony as it pertains to Mao is certainly up for debate. Her reference to Mao and Mother Teresa as “political philosophers” could certainly be seen as an ironic statement.
Also in the clip, she claims to think of Mao “all the time.” Ironic? Hard to tell.
But she can’t be all that great of a Mao scholar, argues the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman.
The concept she credited to Mao — “You fight your war and I’ll fight mine” — is actually a misreading of Mao’s belief that “if you can win, you fight; if you cannot win, you don’t fight,” according to University of Pennsylvania China scholar Arthur Waldron, as quoted by Mr. Chapman.
Peter Wehner, a former George W. Bush policy adviser, doesn’t let Dunn off so easy for quoting one of the 20th century’s greatest villains: “Her praise for Mao — unqualified and without caveats, based on the excerpts of her speech — is quite extraordinary,” Mr. Wehner writes. “For a senior member of the White House to hold these views is more extraordinary still.”
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Comments
2. German J. Serrano | 10.17.09
All of this is a prelude to an attempt at making the US a Socialist/communist nation. What they (Obama administration)seem to keep missing is checking their czars background. I doubt they will find any that do not have a socialist history as most socialists are outspoken on their cause and carry a train of public outcry form their past.
I suggest they all read and memorize Howard Roarks closing argument from Ayn Rands The Fountainhead which clearly details the difference between socialism and the individual.
I am the son of Cuban Exiles and my parents saw this very pattern in the early 60s. The reason the US will never be communist/socialist is due to the very fact that you can not easily erase Human Ambition and instill mediocrity in its place. The US people are creators, thinkers and no matter how good a job Acorn or the Administration do of enlisting the popular vote in the end, it will not happen.
What they are doing is destroying any chance of Democrats being elected in the future.
I say do away with the current parties as we simply want honest leadership for the people, by the people. We should start fining all politicians a “Stupid tax” or ” Liar tax” that affects them directly everytime they do not live up to what they promise or when they lie.
We would now have accrued Trillions in fines and would not be in debt as a nation.
3. a2b1c3 | 10.17.09
WOW that is a strange spin to try to put on it you let he off pretty easy for liking Mao
wiki: Nevertheless, Banister concluded that the official data implied that around 15 million excess deaths incurred in China during 1958-61 and that based on her modelling of Chinese demographics during the period and taking account of assumed underreporting during the famine years, the figure was around 30 million. The official statistic is 20 million deaths, as given by Hu Yaobang.[42] Various other sources have put the figure between 20 and 72 million.[43]
according to China he killed 20mil the irony is that he really is looking like a old style socialist, cant happen? PUTIN
4. Steven | 10.17.09
I watched the video 2 times - and I didn’t detect any hint of irony. She looked very stern, serious and humorless in her delivery. And the impression she leaves was that she really admires Mao and quoted him in earnest.
So, don’t try to spin it as a sophisticated game, Mr. Patrik, ’cause the public is not buying it.
5. Steve McQueen | 10.17.09
Are you seriously equating Beck or anyone else from Fox with Socrates or the truth on any level? Seriously? Since when does overt political dogma equate with “plain speech” or “truth”? (Just because something is said slowly enough, and often enough does NOT make the truth!)
I seriously doubt Beck or any other Fox commentator or loyal viewer for that matter is smart to understand the definition of irony, much less identify it’s intentional or unintentional existence!
7. Okpulot Taha | 10.17.09
Patrik Jonsson cites a dictionary, “(irony)…a figure of speech in which the unintended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used.”
This is an exceptionally narrow definition which is often only partially true or often untrue. Making note of irony equally often requires seeking and understanding the nature of an ironic event. Irony is not inherently obvious.
You are defining a notion to fit your rhetoric needs. This is much like using a hammer to drive a square peg into a round hole.
Socratic Irony, of which you write, has absolutely nothing to do with “irony” as defined in your dictionary cite. Socratic Irony is the fine art of “playing stupid” to prompt a debate opponent to assume ignorance then drop his guard. Elizabeth Markovits is simply flaunting her ignorance of early Greek philosophers.
Anita Dunn citing both Mao and Mother Teresa is not ironic. Dunn makes no comparison, does not contrast, she simply cites the two.
However, there is a difference in context of her two cites. Dunn expresses sincere adulation for Mao and expresses devotion to Mao, much as she does for Obama. Dunn does not set the same context of admiration for Mother Teresa. Rather clear Dunn is a Maoist which is not ironic because Obama and most of those in his administration are either Maoist or hardcore socialists.
Rather ironic, though, Dunn speaks so much of Mao at what is clearly a parochial school. This points to her lack of acceptable social skills.
If true irony is to be found this is discovery, again, of a high level Obama cabinet member who subscribes to an anti-America philosophy. This is ironic but this is not surprising.
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Puma Politics
8. Adpack | 10.17.09
How can it be irony if the recipients, kids graduating from high school, almost certainly don’t have a clue as to the history of China and Mao. Sounds like we have another Bill Ayers here — an unrepentant SDS Weatherman.
If you had listened to the video, you would have noticed that no one laughed when she made that “ironic” comparison. Seinfeld indeed!! What sickening, pathetic rationalization and apologia. By the way, why do you think that Google News has pulled this entire subject from its main news page? Too damning and embarassing for their favorite administration?
9. On2u | 10.17.09
As a person who studies irony, I can say with 100% assurance that Ms. Dunn was being dead serious in her comments. It was apparent that she was attempting to justify a connection between the philosophies of Mao and Mother Theresa. One was a murderer who is responsible for the deaths of 20 million people and the other was a person who gave her life to serving God and the poor. Ms. Dunn, in my view, is delusional. Hopefully she is done as a politician.
10. John Runningwolf | 10.17.09
This strident bearch surely agrees with Mao and would like to murder the American middle class just as Mao did to the Chinese middle class.
12. Ryno | 10.18.09
No irony at all. Neither was there irony when Mao was quoted by Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, and Karl Rove. I don’t remember much objection to that. And, as Fox has pointed out to the Obama administration, their audience surely understands the difference between news and opinion. I’m not seeing that, but one can always hope.
Dondero: “The women said clearly and affirmatively she greatly admired the greatest mass murderer in human history”? Get a grip. I write specifications and contracts for a living. Nothing is clearly and affirmatively said unless those words are actually said. One of the great failures of politics and political discussions is that it often descends into talk about what people say about what people said about what people said about… instead of what is really happening. This is mere playground chatter, not political discussion.
There are real and pressing issues for all of us to deal with. I suggest that any self-professed conservative here click over to The American Conservative at http://www.amconmag.com and check in, and maybe get busy on them, instead of being distracted by entertainers and their opinions.
13. Phinease Koto | 10.18.09
I can’t believe how much like sheep Peter Wehner and some posters on this board can be, simply believing the vitriol and conspiracies put forth by Glenn Beck. Do you actually think its possible for a person, such as Anita Dunn, who has devoted their lives to public service and is obviously socially aware to embrace killing/oppressing innocents? It is absolutely ludicrous. She was using irony for effect.. and in any case what is wrong with learning from others, whether they do good things or bad? -anything else leads to close-mindedness and ignorance… something that Glenn Beck and his believers are followers of.
14. Curt | 10.18.09
Painting Mao Zedong as a purely evil man is an uncritical and juvenile analysis, lacking any true introspection into the man, his ideals, or his policies. Seeking to categorize any organism as complex as a human being as homogenously good or evil is easy, but it eliminates any opportunity to learn from the mistakes or successes by associating every policy decision with a singular characterization. Mao undoubtedly failed miserably as a state planner, but was hugely successful as a military strategist, routing a better equipped army 5 times the size of his during the Chinese civil war. As a political scientist or scholar, it is difficult not to have some level of respect for Mao’s ability to succeed in growing Chinese communism where it had failed under a Soviet model so many times before. This in no way attempts to condone his developmental policies which were responsible for the death of millions of Chinese people.
15. Gene44 | 10.18.09
Irony? I reviewed the clip three times to see her expressions as she was making this speech to judge the seriousness. She was dead serious and she never explained to a group of students why she choose to admire Mao. I also find it odd that Google has taken the clips off the internet at this date. Could this be interferring with freedom of the press on behalf of the administration? Dunn is the Senior WH Communications Director and she publically called Fox News a wing of the Republican Party which in itself has conquences under the law if she can prove it as their license could be removed. Is the the angle the administration is trying to take? All of this raises some very serious questions in my mind. Remember the case of the self avowed communist Van Jones and ACORN not being taken seriously by the mainstream media in an attempt to cover for the administration, but, if they had been on the Republican ticket the news would be all over the place in trying to attach even more scandal. Proves beyond a doubt that the media is in the tank for the administration as long as it is Democrat. Time for Ms. Dunn to go and beyond time for the mainstream media to w
16. Marky G | 10.18.09
I like Glenn Beck. But the thing I found amazing is the truly heinous thing she said just after the Mao part. That Mao basically tells us not to be defined externally, like by the mores and ethical ideals of our society. So much for ethics and morals, how like Nietzsche, the ends justify the means. not my philosophy.
18. Bill Guthrie | 10.18.09
Mao Zedunn.
Somebody needs to graft her face into the Tienanmen Square portrait and spread that around the internet. Both face and history demand it.
19. Kathy | 10.18.09
I watched the tape and the woman was not being ironic. What’s pathetic here is that those of us on the right take what Dunn said at face value and those on the Left are so incredibly indoctrinated by the media that they’ll believe the “irony” defense.
20. Scott | 10.18.09
for all those afraid of this so-called ’socialist agenda’….take a minute to read the federalist papers written by your dear-to-heart ‘founding fathers’. I’d say start with federalist #10…then compare your arrant rabble rousing to the sort of faction Hamilton, Madison and Jay (among others) admonished against. You Republicans really think we live in a sort of direct democracy where ‘vox populi, vox dei’.
To be sure, our ‘founding fathers’ thought this much: ‘Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.’
Since when has something exceptional ever been that which is most unexceptional?
21. madjack | 10.18.09
Scott,
What does fear of a socialist agenda have to do with the validation of a mass murdering, sociopath? If your intellectualizing of this issue seeks to exonerate a kindler, gentler Maoist view then you are as extreme as you paint your opposition to be.
With all the exceptional people to use as an example, you dont find the idealizing of Mao disturbing? REALLY!!!!
Perhaps you can find the greatness in Hitler’s anti-semitism and Stalin’s ethnic cleansing.
22. Carl from California | 10.18.09
“All of this is a prelude to an attempt at making the US a Socialist/communist nation.”
Um, like Bush tried to make this a facist regime with warrentless phone tapping, secret prison camps, and torture?
Fox ‘news’ calling something “truth” when it is obviously slanted toward the overthrow of the government is hardly balanced. Beck, Limbaugh, and their ilk are misguided prophets who worship the almighty dollar at the expense of liberty, fairness, and equality.
Fox news is the unofficial misinformation arm of the Republican right wing, which would like nothing better than to deny anyone who can think the right to do so without fear of being put in an internment camp (research the McCarthy hearings, they were starting to refurbish the internment camps for “liberals” ((read Jews))). As for gays, blacks, anyone with a foreign accent, foreign nationals whether here legally or not, and anyone of another faith ((other than evangelical fundamentalism)), they may go there, too if the the right wing politicos get their way.
What happened to “all men are created equal?” I guess that and all other precepts of truth and justice are thrown out the window when you look at Fox news. Take it for what it is, a glorified political action committee for facists.
23. American Patriot | 10.18.09
So, FOX challenges the Obama administration by exposing the leftists in his ADMINISTRATION and he has a problem with that? Just look at how he reacts - immediately puts himself in front of ‘freindly’ crowds for photo ops in New Orleans and in San Francisco and talks derisively about “socialist mops” and impatience over the continuing existence of “world hunger”. Obama is the most dangerous president in our generation and we can only hope to vote him and his communist cronies out in 2012 (assuming we still have the right to vote in ‘free and fair’ elections.
24. johnson | 10.18.09
“Obama is the most dangerous president in our generation and we can only hope to vote him and his communist cronies out in 2012 (assuming we still have the right to vote in ‘free and fair’ elections.”
When I read stuff like this all I can do is laugh. Does patriotism these day mean willful ignorance? Obama has accomplished nothing as president in almost a whole year. What makes him so dangerous? He’s a bland ineffectual moderate if he’s anything. The idea that he would take away the right to vote? It’s unbelievable. It’s like you’re looking at an apple and seeing a grizzly bear.
As for ‘communism’ (also a laughably silly claim) I won’t address it as it’s absurd, but ’socialism’ I don’t know. Ever been to Holland? Those poor enslaved people. I feel so sorry for them!
25. Mike Harris | 10.19.09
Dear CSM,
Dear God please pull your heads out of whatever dark space you have them in. We are in serious trouble in this country and to see newspapers, (you are aren’t you) like yours ignore or make excuses for what is obviously an administrations run amok with socialists and Marxist members, drives me crazy. You are part of the problem. You should start seeing these things for what they are, and not try to make excuses for them. Ms. Dunn was not being cute or sly, or ironic. It doesn’t take anyone with a Harvard, Yale, or any college degree to see that. How about you REPORT news, and leave the deciphering to us?
26. Matt | 10.19.09
American Patriot: why did you put quotation marks around the words “world hunger”? Is world hunger not a real thing?
27. Laurie | 10.19.09
The President has not rebutted Glenn Beck’s evidence. The President has not denied that he has surrounded himself with socialists and communists. Apparently he has some integrity in that he will not blatantly lie. But he seems to have no problem with subtle deception, hiding his true intentions to fundamentally transform America. But it is God’s law, “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall not be made known.” Thank you God for your infinite all-seeing presence!
28. mike | 10.19.09
This discusssion is astounding.
I hear that Pres. Obama is a the most dangerous man onthe planet and that the upper echelons of the government are a nest of socialists and communists! Do you people actually believe this foolishness you spread?
Was the giant bank bailout a way to “socialize” the economy? I think GoldmanSachs would say no! I guess trying to provide affordable healthcare to all Americans is straight out oc Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book? Laughable!
What about unregulayted spying on citizens? Sounds pretty communistic to me! And a educational system directed by the central government?!? Sounds aweful to me, you know, since politicians aren’t educators.
Stangely it was the Bush Adminstration that pushed those last two authoritarian measures.
Get a grip people and open you’re ears to something other than the ranting in your own heads.
29. Pam | 10.19.09
Hmm… Is it really so hard to see that:
1.) It is inappropriate to cite Mao as an inspiration without qualification and context, especially when addressing a crowd of high school students who may not detect your nuances or “irony”. (whether the irony is a lie or not) Her words were foolish at best.
2.) Glenn Beck and Fox News are fear mongering buffoons who say inappropriate things on a regular basis while addressing their audience (who largely may have the same inability to detect nuance, irony, or truth, for that matter.) His words are also foolish at best.
3.) The President and his administration are not murderous, racist, “Socialists!-OMG!”. Put away the tin-foil hats, for goodness’ sake.
Oh, more concisely: Just because I disagree with every sentence I have ever heard come out of Glenn Beck’s mouth, that doesn’t mean I must agree with whomever he criticizes, and just because I support President Obama, that doesn’t mean I can’t also disagree with him and his administration at times. (And the converse also applies).
30. Rick | 10.21.09
Tne white house is currently run by left socialist ignorants who are trying to shut anyone up who doesn’t agree with them (ie.FOXNEWS)…very disturbing
31. face | 10.26.09
Dunn is absolutely correct about saying what she said about Fox News, and you can’t really disagree with her in all seriousness.
This uprooting of Dunn’s highschool past is just another sensational ploy by Fox News to distract the public of any merit in her statement, which is that a news organization should refrain from overtly biased behavior.
As for what she said about Mao, who cares! Her history up till now has shown no vehement or socialist tendencies. This shouldn’t even be an issue. Not when we have a federal deficit through the skies and a war in Afghanistan and Iraq that’s never-ending.
Anyone who calls the Obama Administration socialist might as well call the founding fathers socialist because they believed in a nation “of the people, for the people, by the people”.
Seriously, people get a grip. When we’re calmer, we can do a lot more good.
32. Sandy Thatcher | 10.27.09
Before commentator #7 trashes Dr. Markovits’s scholarship, he might want to read her book about political irony and frank speech: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-03339-6.html. She is, by the way, currently co-Executive Director of the Association for Political Theory.
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1. Eric Dondero | 10.17.09
Are you all seriously trying to claim this as an “ironic” statement on Dunn’s part? Is that the spin you’re putting on this? Do you honestly expect anyone to buy that?
This is not about “ironic vs. direct speech.” The women said clearly and affirmatively she greatly admired the greatest mass murderer in human history.
This is all about libertarianism vs. socialism. And in that debate the Obama administration is clearly on the side of authoritarian government.
Save us the hyper-spin please. Your readers are smarter than that.