A video has surfaced showing
Ron Bloom, the White House's manufacturing czar, quoting the late Communist leader Mao Zedong in a 2008 speech.
During the speech, which Bloom delivered before the Union League Club in New York, he said: "We kind of agree with Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun."
The video has gained attention in the aftermath of White House Communications Director
Anita Dunn's speech from a few weeks ago in which she referred to Mao as one of her "favorite political philosophers." What's up with politicians quoting Mao? This seems like news to me. It isn't Teabagger conspiracy stuff. It is not a Glenn Beck screed. It is the second time in a few weeks that a video has surfaced involving a top White House official quoting a man who was responsible for the deaths of
millions during Mao's revolution and the famine that followed.
Responses to Dunn and Bloom speeches
In its story about Dunn's Mao remark, CNN said
Democrats are not the only ones with Mao on their minds:
"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.' "
Rush Limbaugh criticized the Obama administration this week for its "praise" of Mao.
Newsweek, meanwhile,
reported on
the conservative media's reaction to the Mao comments.
Mixed reactions to MaoWhere are the protests from Chinese-Americans? A few weeks ago,
demonstrators gathered outside the Nixon Presidential Library to protest a statue of Mao.
The Orange County Register reported:
"Wearing T-shirts with the words 'Tiananmen Square' designed to look like blood dripping onto the words 'Beijing Olympics,' the protestors said having a statue of Mao in the library was like having a statue of Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
" 'Mao was crueler than Stalin, crueler than Hitler,' said Kuo Chiang Fung. 'Would you have a statue of Hitler in the museum?' "
I am mystified by the proliferation of Mao-logoed clothing. I suspect some people may just not know what they are wearing or what it symbolizes. There are some reports, however, that Mao's popularity is "surging" in China.
The Chicago Tribune reported on the wave of Mao nostalgia sweeping over China:
"A wave of Mao nostalgia is sweeping through China, and it crests here in his birthplace, the village of Shaoshan (pop. 1,387). The Hunan province community -- a cross between Bethlehem and Mount Vernon, Va. -- is expected to draw a record 3.5 million visitors this year, most of them Chinese pilgrims paying homage to their late leader.
"Even on a weekday, the queue to get into the mud-brick farmhouse where Mao was born in 1893 is three people wide and snakes around to the front lawn.
" 'Business is better than ever,' said Mao Juxiang, 36, a sales clerk who stands behind a glass counter stocked with bronze busts ($85), snow globes ($7) and key chains ($4.25).
"Like many of the villagers, she claims common lineage with Mao, whom she credits for China's prosperity: 'We have a brilliant life because of Chairman Mao's ideas.' "
