Glenn Beck is clearly on a roll. First he exposes the radical past of Van Jones, who was until September the Special Advisor for Green Jobs for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. It was heavily due to Beck's coverage of Van Jones on his Fox News Television show (and his radio show) that Jones resigned from his position. Now Beck has unearthed footage of Obama's White House Communications Director Anita Dunn at a high school graduation last spring praising Mao Tse-Tung as one of her two “favorite political philosophers.”

Dunn said in a high-school commencement address:

The third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa. Not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is you are going to make choices, you are going to challenge. You are 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 are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Tse-Tung was being challenged from within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, Chaing Kai-Shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities. They had the army. They had the air force. They had everythign on their side. And people said, “How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?” And Mao Tse-Tung said, “You fight your war, and I'll fight mine.” And 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 and paths. Okay? It is about your choices and paths. You fight your own war. You lay out your own paths. You figure out what is right for you.... Everybody has their own path.

Dunn said she intended the statement as irony. "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," she told CNN on October 16.

It may be irony to juxtapose Mother Teresa with Mao Tse-Tung, as the latter was literally the Guinness Book of World Records record holder for mass murder when Guinness was keeping such records. But calling Mao a “favorite political philosopher” is neither irony nor humorous. If a Republican were to say at a high-school commencement address that Adolf Hitler and Mohandas Gandi were his favorite political philosophers, the quote would rightfully be all over the news. But finding Mao as a hero just may be a bit worse, since Mao killed about six times as many helpless civilians as Hitler did.

Beck's high profile and relentless efforts to break news stories like the Dunn story have drawn the fire of Obama administration officials, who have called the Fox News Channel an “opponent” and “not really a news station” in recent weeks. The specific White House objection, according to White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod on NBC's Meet the Press for October 18 is that “the only argument Anita was making is that they're not really a news station, if you watch — even — it's not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming, it's really not news. It's pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way, and we're not going to treat them that way. We're going to appear on their shows. We're going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”

Click here to read the rest of this article, posted as "The White House War on Glenn Beck" (reposted under the title, "White House vs. Glenn Beck" on JBS.org with permission) on TheNewAmerican.com.

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DDW said:

And once again The "liberal" left shows it's penchant for lying and dissembling. I honestly believe that the two favorite pastimes of the "liberal" left are lying and stealing. The comment by Obama that Fox "is not really a news station" sounds exactly like what Lani Guinier said way back during the Clinton regime. She stated that conservative blacks were not authentic blacks. Anyone remember that one? I think she disappeared from view shortly after that.

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October 21, 2009
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