Mother Teresa and... Mao?

So there's been all this controversy lately over a video found of White House communications director Anita Dunn giving a speech at a high school graduation at St. Andrews Episcopal School in June of 2009. During her address, she stressed that students would have to "make choices", to "challenge" and to say "why not" in their futures. Her model political philosophers of choice? Mother Teresa and Mao Tse Tung. Uhhh.

Yeah, so Glenn Beck of FOX news pretty much let loose on this and ripped it to pieces. I watched the clip of her speech on Youtube, and the comments were just insane. (**Warning, profanity ahead.)

"She is speaking for the devil Obama, she has a forked tongue!
Are we supposed to follow a Dictator who killed 70 Million people?
This woman is in our White House? Someone go find her and pull her out by the tongue.....lizard lady! "

"I will host biggest party of life if this slut dies in Chinese Gulag."

" She is commi bitch. She must be conceived by Mao when Nixon visited Beiijing in 1972."

" Her husband is MAObama's main man attorney. They are starting to show their true colors. Get ready for the civil war to come soon to your community."

"This is why I believe no politicians and no spokespeople that squawk like politicians should ever be allowed to address any captive graduation audience - whether it's college, high school, elementary school, pre-K, or nursery.
Leave the kids alone. It's their graduation, their future, their lives. Butt out. "

"Say WHAT??? That lizard lady is part of Obama's staff and she admires MAO? O_O
Alright! That does it! Just when I thought Bush's second election was the zenith of american political failure... Now the white house is run by lunatics admiring mass murderers and eugenics! WTF is going on in the US? What is wrong with you people? I as a german am shocked hearing this! You are steering into almost the same terrible path my country was in! I urge you... WAKE THE F*'CK UP!!"

Three words. What the frick. People are completely crazy. Even so, Anita Dunn should have been a little wiser about her choice in words. In this day and age, she couldn't possibly have expected anyone to pat her on the back and give her a gold star for being for creative and witty with her rhetoric. For goodness sakes, she's President Obama's White House communications director; what was she thinking? She practically waxed poetic about how Mao overcame the odds against him to take over China. (And conveniently left out the part where he killed over 60 million of his own country's people.)

I have a little bone of contention to pick with the bit in which she heightened Mao's position as an underdog.

"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."

Okay first of all, they were not the the little engine that could. The Nationalist forces were already weakened and diminished by their war with the Japanese, during which the Communists had pretty much just sat on the sidelines and watched them take the brunt of the casualties. The KMT had internal corruption and were unable to manage the economy, allowing hyperinflation to run rampant. They were quickly losing support from their own people, and even the Americans stopping giving them aid. It is absolute BS to say that "they had everything on their side".

Then she said,

"And people said how can you win, how can you do this, against all the odds against you. And Mao Tse Tung said, 'You fight your war and I'll fight mine.' 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, so I'm not stupid. I know that she's not advocating an overthrow of government and genocide among the populace. But honestly, this comparison is not a good one. Following her example, it's as if she's telling the students of America, "Hey, you know, Mao dreamed big just like you guys. Everyone told him that he couldn't defeat the KMT and take over China. But you know what? He didn't listen to them! Instead, he chose to come up with a brilliant plan of his own. (insert Mao's innumerable atrocities here.) And that's how he achieved his lifelong goal of national domination. You can do it too if you put your mind to it!" Couldn't she just cite Helen Keller or something?

But I really don't want to bash on her like all those crazy people on Youtube have been doing. I understand that she was just trying to make the speech interesting for the students by providing an odd coupling for comparison. It was ironic, and yeah, it definitely got everyone's attention. It's just that she should have meditated on the implications of her words some more the night before she gave that little pep talk. Now everyone's just running around like headless chickens, squawking random nonsense about forked tongues and the the manifestation of Satan.

Contrary to the apparent popular belief, she's not a "commie devil" or a "lizard in disguise". And just because she is an advisor to Obama doesn't mean that he's "an evil fascist dictator" by association. Honestly America, grow up.