Anita Dunn Blames Lee Atwater for Quoting Mao

NewsBusters | by P.J. Gladnick | Oct. 17, 2009

“Taken out of context!”
“You just didn’t understand the irony!”
“Just kidding!”

The incredibly lame excuses those on the left come up with to try to explain away statements they made that have come back to haunt them is growing more hilarious by the day.

Robert Reich clearly stated at a 2007 Berkeley lecture what an honest candidate for president who didn’t worry about getting elected would say to senior citizens who face costly treatment to keep them alive: “It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

Reich’s excuse for this and other bizarre health care statements by a hypothetical honest candidate for president? He was being “taken out of context” despite the fact that Reich himself originally put it into perfectly clear context to the point that his Berkeley audience was applauding in approval of the brutal “truths.”

It would be hard to exceed the absurdity of Reich’s laughably lame excuse but White House Communications Director makes a good stab at it in trying to explain away why she favorably quoted Mao Tse Tung as one of her favorite political philosophers. Her unbelievably laughable excuse? She was only following in the footsteps of deceased Republican campaign strategist Lee Atwater who also quoted Mao. Before we get to Dunn’s Lee Atwater excuse bellylaugh, let us review what she said about Mao:

A lot of you have great deal of ability. A lot of you work hard. Put them together and that answers the why not question. There is usually not a good reason. And then the 3rd lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers. Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa, not often couple with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is you’re going to make choices, you’re going to challenge, you’re going to say why not. You’re going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here’s the deal, these are your choices, they’re no one else’s.

In 1947, when Mao Tse-tung was being challenged within his own party, on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side and people said how can you win, how can you do this, how can you do this against all odds against you, and Mao Tse-tung said “You fight your war and I’ll fight mine.” Think about that for a second, you don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don’t have to follow other people’s choices in the past. Okay. It is about your choices in your path, you fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what is right for you. You don’t let external definition how good you are internally. You fight your own war.

Anita Dunn Favorite philosopher Mao Tse-Tung
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXJjoruQs0Y

And now for the bellylaugh excuse from Anita Dunn as quoted at CNN:

“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.

Bill Dupray at True/Slant completely destroys that pathetic excuse:

The issue isn’t whether Lee Atwater ever quoted Mao. A simpleton knows you don’t adopt somebody’s philosophy as your own simply by quoting them. But when you quote them and then explicitly say the person is one of your biggest influences, then you make it your own. So Dunn’s lame attempt to source the quote back to Atwater and have that somehow serve as an explanation for what she said is patently ridiculous.

And what about Dunn’s description of Mao as one of her “favorite political philosophers?” Not to worry, Dunn comes up with yet another comedy line to explain it away via 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.

So you see. You peons just don’t have the mental ability to see that Anita Dunn was merely being ironic despite the fact that was absolutely nothing in her facial expression, vocal tone, nor in what she said that displayed the slightest sense of irony. In fact, she was dead serious as you can plainly see in the video of her speech.

The only thing funnier than Anita Dunn’s lame excuses is CNN not only completely buying into her bizarre explanations but also trying to actively aid her:

But it’s not just Dunn, a Democrat, who has used Mao as someone she reads.

Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group, points out that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, also a Fox News contributor, quoted Mao in a 1995 Roll Call profile.

“War is politics with blood; politics is war without blood,” Gingrich said, citing Mao.

Karl Rove, another Fox News contributor, wrote in a December 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed that President Bush “encouraged me to read a Mao biography.”

So if a conservative quotes Mao or any other communist, that somehow gives the left free reign to favorably cite the same communists? Yes, your humble correspondent on several occasions did quote Lenin describing one of his political methods as “one step back, two steps forward.” Anita Dunn can now quote Lenin approvingly as one of her “favorite political philosophers” and use me as her excuse.

What seems to be going on now is that whenever the left is quoted accurately, to their embarrassment, they come up with ridiculous excuses such as about how some Republican once used the same quote (whether favorably or not) or that they were just being ironic.

Former Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace eventually stated that he was wrong to declare “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” in his first inaugural speech in 1963. Perhaps Wallace should have later taken a cue from the way the left now operates and have claimed that he was merely being “taken out of context.” Or he could have said he was only being ironic. Claiming that he was merely quoting someone else could have been an option as well.

We are in for some very entertaining times as voices from the left try to comedically explain away what they actually say.

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