Monday, October 19, 2009

An Email I Received From Mitchell Blatt Hit a Nerve: Anita Dunn, Rush Limbaugh & Freedom of Speech

Today, I received an email from Mitchell Blatt who claims to be a conservative but to me his email was pretty peculiar. This particular email hit a nerve. It just sounded off a red alert in my brain that said, this doesn't sound like a conservative talking, or what a conservative would post.

Here is both the email and the post:
Mitchell Blatt said:
This week's column is about the rush to judgment political activists of both colors make when someone exercises their free speech rights to say something. (How do you like the pun? Ha, Ha, Ha!)

The pun is for Rush, of course, who was attacked with fake quotes, but nonetheless is also attacked for real quotes that are controversial, but shortly thereafter, conservatives attacked Anita Dunn for having the audacity to quote a Mao quote that was originally quoted by Lee Atwater.

This column isn't in support of Anita Dunn generally but in support of free speech. Yes, I am defending someone for free speech who attacked FOX News over free speech. That's what free speech is about.

This week's column is about the rush to judgment political activists of both colors make when someone exercises their free speech rights to say something. (How do you like the pun? Ha, Ha, Ha!)

The pun is for Rush, of course, who was attacked with fake quotes, but nonetheless is also attacked for real quotes that are controversial, but shortly thereafter, conservatives attacked Anita Dunn for having the audacity to quote a Mao quote that was originally quoted by Lee Atwater.

This column isn't in support of Anita Dunn generally but in support of free speech. Yes, I am defending someone for free speech who attacked FOX News over free speech. That's what free speech is about.

Okay, so here's the column:

Mark Steyn starts off his latest National Review column first by quoting Rush Limbaugh exercising his free speech rights then by quoting Anita Dunn, Obama administration Attack FOX Czar, exercising her free speech rights.

Naturally, his cause is to defend Rush and to demonize Dunn for quoting Lee Atwater's quote of Mao Zedong.

These two stories are all the buzz over the conservative blogosphere: Rush Limbaugh said, "The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons," (good), and Anita Dunn said, "The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa. ... You're going to make choices," (bad).

So here we are with conservatives defending Rush for comparing a mostly black league of athletes to a (mostly) black gang of criminal murderers because, well, he's just exercising his First Amendment rights, and the Left is trying to take him down with lies.

And then just a few days later, conservatives were attacking Dunn for quoting a communist murderer who also happened to be a very good political philosopher.

My thoughts are that both Dunn and Rush should go ahead and say whatever the hell they want, and we shouldn't care what they say, because maybe we should stop being so politically correct as a society?

Of course, the Right will never go along with that, despite the fact that Rush and Beck and everyone else consistently attack liberals for pushing politically correct fascism.

For activists, it's about tearing down their opponents however they can, not about standing for anything.

As Newt Gingrich said in 1995, "War is politics with blood; politics is war without blood."

(That's a Mao quote, by the way.)

Bill Dupray at True/Slant says it wasn't Dunn quoting Mao that is the problem, but that "explicitly say[ing] the person is one of your biggest influences."

But Bill Dupray lied there, just like CNN's Rick Sanchez lied about Rush saying slavery was good.

What Dunn actually said was that Mao was, "[one] of my favorite political philosophers."

And in fact, Mao was a great political philosopher.

The definition of philosophy, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition), is, "Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods."

Mao was so insightful when it came to investigating the nature of politics--i.e. how to gain and keep power--that he lead the communist takeover of China and became worshiped almost as much as our current president.

It was Mao's political philosophy that Gingrich quoted in 1995 to explain the nature of politics. There is nothing evil about thinking that Mao knows politics.

It's certainly true that Rush has been unfairly characterized, especially considering the fact that two of the quotes attributed to him last week were completely fake, but it's not like many conservative activists actually care that he was unfairly characterized. They only care that he's on their team.

If Glenn Beck cared about people being unfairly characterized then he'd stop calling Anita Dunn a Mao-ist commie, and he'd at least wait until she said something controversial before exposing his disregard for free speech and free thinking.

Then, I emailed him with my thoughts:
Mitchell Blatt,
I would say 95% of what was stated about Rush were false accusations, and 100% of what conservatives are stating about Anita Dunn is correct. Plus, theres proof, the video, in the case of Anita Dunn. Mao was a mass murderer, even worse than Hitler or Stalin. Anita Dunn said,"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa. ... You're going to make choices," (bad). Did you notice that she said MY and not a great philosopher? Plus, here is Dunn referring to Mao, "the leader's philosophies were a guidepost for her own strategy on politics." Bill Dupray was in fact correct in his statement when he referred to Mao being one of Anita Dunn's biggest influences. The fact that Mao was a mass murderer is much more relevant than the fact he may have been a great political philosopher. Dunn was talking to students who are quite impressionable and seems to have been misleading them to believe that he was a great philosopher with no record of mass murder. She was distorting reality, which is what the left normally does. She has the right to express all of her free speech rights as she pleases, but so do conservative bloggers. Mao should not be praised at all, or put alongside Mother Teresa. That was absurd. Mother Teresa is in a class all her own. She performed many great works and is a fantastic role model for others to look up to. Prominent conservatives such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and conservative bloggers have a right to their free speech and express it toward the absurd- Anita Dunn and her comments.So, give prominent conservatives and conservative bloggers the same respect that you have given to Anita Dunn with regards to free speech rights, instead of demonizing us. Plus, I am not a fan of Newt either. He has a right to speak his mind as we do to, but for him to quote Mao is absurd, too. Please remember that we ALL have a right to free speech afforded to us in the Constitution. Both conservatives and liberals have a right to express their free speech rights'.
Sincerely,
Teresa Rice

You can see Mitchell Blatt's new blog here.

I just now received this email from Mitchell Blatt: I received your email, and I don't agree that this is should be a big controversy, but that's fine, we can disagree.

Okay, his comment doesn't even make sense since he is the person making a big deal about conservatives expressing their free speech. This sparked a nerve in me, so I just had to stand up for all of our rights' to criticize others' by expressing my right to freedom of speech.

Here is Marc Steyn's latest article, that Mitchell Blatt was referring to:

A Tale of Two Soundbites
Which one sounds “divisive” to you?

Here is a tale of two soundbites.

First:“Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Second:“The third lesson and tip actually comes 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’re going to make choices. . . . But here’s the deal: These are your choices; they are no one else’s. In 1947, when Mao Tse-Tung was being challenged within his own party on his own plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-Shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army. . . . They had everything on their side. And people said ‘How can you win . . . ? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?’ And Mao Tse-Tung says, ‘You fight your war and I’ll fight mine . . . ’ You don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things. . . . You fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.”

The first quotation was attributed to Rush Limbaugh. He never said it. There is no tape of him saying it. There is no transcript of him saying it. After all, if he had done so at any point in the last 20 years, someone would surely have mentioned it at the time.

Yet CNN, MSNBC, ABC, other networks, and newspapers all around the country cheerfully repeated the pro-slavery quotation and attributed it, falsely, to Rush Limbaugh. And planting a flat-out lie in his mouth wound up getting Rush bounced from a consortium hoping to buy the St. Louis Rams. The NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, said the talkshow host was a “divisive” figure, and famously non-divisive figures like the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson expressed the hope that, with Mister Divisive out of the picture, the NFL could now “unify.”

The second quotation — hailing Mao — was uttered back in June to an audience of high-school students by Anita Dunn, the White House communications director. I know she uttered it because I watched the words issuing from her mouth on The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News. But don’t worry. Nobody else played it.
So if I understand correctly:
Rush Limbaugh is so “divisive” that to get him fired leftie agitators have to invent racist soundbites to put in his mouth.
But the White House communications director is so un-divisive that she can be invited along to recommend Chairman Mao as a role model for America’s young.

CONTINUED

22 comments:

Eric Graff said...

Fighting the left with might from the right... That-a-girl Teresa. I think a woman like you who can pound the left with such flair and passion is rather sexy. If we both weren’t married I’d have to crawl to PA and kneel before you. But alas, it’s not to be. I just love it when the right cross comes from a red woman. Bless you.

Amusing Bunni said...

Teresa, you just get better and better every day. I'm with you. Blatt does come off a bit odd for a professed conservative. Perhaps we have a wolf in sheep(les) clothing here? Stranger things have happened, esp. with this bunch.

Free speech is of course good, no matter what nut is saying stuff. It's the duty of the press to be able to REPORT everything, and let the viewers/listeners/readers make their own conclusions.
The selective editing, and downright suppression of most of the horrid things coming out of obummer's reign of terror is what the conservative blogosphere is most mad about. At least, I am.

PS: I think you have a not so secret admirer...hee hee...well deserved.

Teresa said...

Eman,
I just do my best, with all my passion. It helps that I finally found a passion-politics. Maybe, in a different time or a different place. Thanks so much for the sexy compliment. Bless you.

Teresa said...

Amusing Bunni,
He may be a wolf in sheep clothing. His blog site does give me the impression that he could be a conservative. But that could be all an smokescreen, too.

I am so sick of Obama trying to suppress the opposition's freedom of speech. I am right with you there.

Paul said...

It seems to me that all the negative vibes this blowhard (Rush Hudson Limbaugh A.KA. Jeff Christie) has been spewing over these many years has come back to blow back on his face (A classic “Blow Back”). He always tries to give off the airs that he can have anything he wants but as we all witness those with more money and more influence tossed him aside like sack of potatoes and the ultimate insult was that it was done in public (money don’t buy you everything butterball).

Now of course he blames everyone else (Michael J. Fox, Perez Hilton, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Sonia Sotomayor, Hillary Clinton, Olympia Snowe, ESPN, NFL, the media, basically people of color, the handicapped, women and gays) when of course all you have to do is listen to his show and plainly hear his daily prejudices filled sermons. So NFL, I salute you decision, job well done. And to the whaling cry baby perched on his self made pedestal, quit your whining it was your own fault. He is reaping what he has sowed, KARMA, "palin and simple" like his followers. Don’t we all feel better?

Teresa said...

Paul,
I am not quite sure why you practically repeated the same response you had in a totally different post. This article had more to do with a so called fellow conservative whining over people expressing their free speech.

But, since you showed up on my blog again, here's my response to your lunacy. You didn't respond the last time. Do you have an intelligent argument?

Rush only blames celebrities and MSM when they don't check out their facts and spread lies about him. Rush has never said anything racist. The left likes to spew lies and distortions to destroy good conservatives, instead of debating them on actual issues. Rush is a satirist. He uses people's own words against them, unlike the left who has to make false accusations along with making stuff up about him. The fact that the left likes to distort conservative's words and spread outright lies about conservatives proves how the liberals have no sense of values, morality, and principles. The fact that Sanchez and others' have admitted that there was in fact NO source for their accusations against Rush shows how liberals in the MSM lack journalistic inegrity. They only care about spewing the lefts garbage.

Since you didn't condemn the death wishes made by Chris Matthews:
The fact that you don't find Chris Matthews statement to be reprehensible says a whole heck about you and your lack of character and morality. I guess you wouldn't care, or be opposed if death threats were made against Keith Olbermann.

Ron Russell said...

Those emails were interesting Teresa and revealed someone who is not sure of his footing in Mitchell. I often see people critizing Beck and others on the right for what they consider over-the-top comments and when that happens I always remind myself that the vast middle never and I mean never starts a movement, its always those on the fringes who raise the alarm, the call to action. The middle is a vast army with not direction and little purpose and no real will to engage the wrongs they precieve. The early American patriots were not part of the vast middle, but instead came from the fringes and dragged the rest of the nation along in their struggle. Many people will never admit or much less recognize this simple truth.

Unknown said...

That guy is not a conservative. First of all he quoted my True/Slant piece without giving a link, which is here http://bit.ly/1e2Joh and then he called me a liar. I left a comment on his post with the full quote which follows.

"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."

Funny how a 'conservative' defends free speech with half-quotes and slander. He just a not-very-clever liberal with a keyboard.

Thanks for pointing out that you thought I was correct and so, of course, are you.

Light Up Your Life said...

You go girl! What was his point anyway? Because you are right--he didn't sound like a conservative to me. He sounded more like a liberal TRYING to sound like a conservative who was trying to 'bait' you.

That is the impression I got from his e-mail and post.

Andrew33 said...

Rush has every recording of every show archived and stored so that if needbe he could play the soundbyte and explain what was said and what he meant. Also He is headquartered here. The most liberal news outlet in the country is also here...the Palm Beach Post. They have been after Rush since day one. When Rush went into syndication out of New York, this was one of the first places that he was on the air. So I promise you, had Rush said that, the post would have been all over it. Every negative story that has come out about Rush has had origins from the PBP. If he had said that, they would know when and have a made up story as to why. Now, I will be straight up about the fact that my fanhood of Limbaugh has waned in recent years. He is a limousine Republican and the fact that he did those ads for GM whose products have became garbage in the last decade proved his willingness to lie for money. Had a personal experience with a 2001 GM, that stickered for 40K new. It was a piece. The flushable kind. It literally spent more time in the shop or waiting to go to the shop than not. Beck did ads too for GM, but he questioned the head of GM. Beck did his ads but wouldn't discuss GM in his shows. Limbaugh would spend half a day yapping about GM because he didn't wan to go after Bush and his massive government expansion. Also, I may be wrong, but I don't remember Beck saying that GMs are lightyears better that Hondas and Toyotas like Limbaugh. Limbaugh and Hannity are both Republican tools although they are moving away from that now, only because they are losing listeners to more independent voices. As for Blatt...don't know who he is and don't care. He has no influence here in my little part of the world but I live in a far different world than either of you so I can only trust your opinions on the person.

Andrew33 said...

As for Paul, can you give an explanation as to why your viewpoints are the right ones and Limbaughs aren't? The crickets can chirp now as Paul wonders about exactly what it is he believes. By his comment it is obvious he has no clue what he knows other than when he will take another bong hit.

Most Rev. Gregori said...

It is one thing to quote someone like Mao Tse Tung, Hitler, Che, etc. but when you say that you admire them and that they are among your favorite political leaders, that is a whole different situation. And for Dunn to have equated Mother Teresa with Mao is an utter disgrace.

Opus #6 said...

Teresa, I LOVED the email you sent back to him. You had him sputtering and coughing, to be sure. He did not answer coherently at all. You GO girl!!!!

Doom said...

Here is a quick fix that even liberals should understand, even the ones who claim to be conservatives.

Instead of writing Mao, write Charles Manson. Oddly, that WOULD get a reaction, in spite of Manson being a much smaller evil. The difference, other than numbers, is, precisely, what? Anything Rush did or didn't say becomes meaningless when compared to that.

Teresa said...

Bill,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I don't and won't ever mind sticking up for someone who is right.

Teresa said...

Ron,
Thanks for giving me a little info about history. I didn't know that the early American patriots were considered to be on the fringes. But, now that you mention it, that does make sense. I have this feeling that Mitchell is really not a conservative.

Teresa said...

United Conservatives,
He has an ebook online called Democrats Acted Stupidly which since it was cheap, I bought. I think that is the way he is luring people in. But, that's okay, I don't mind a good tango with an imitation conservative.

Teresa said...

Andrew33,
Your right. If Rush really did say any of those things that he was accused of saying that would have spread like wildfire.

I know nothing rgarding the GM deal with Rush. Sometimes there are some people that just seem to make too much out of something so innocent. It may not have been inoocent but just pointing that out. PLus, I know plenty of people that have boughe GM cars over the years, and they aren't bad cars, even the ones made recently.

WomanHonorThyself said...

Hussein is setting his evil agenda and our country is allowing it!!!..ugh!

Teresa said...

Most Rev. Gregori,
For Mao to be equated with Mother Teresa is most definitely an utter disgrace.

Teresa said...

OPie,
I thought that was kinda funny that he got a little frazzled. I'm glad you liked my email.

Teresa said...

Doom,
Your right. Mao and Manson are basically no different except in the numbers. Rush is falsely accused of saying words that he didn't but having Mao as one of your most influential philosophers is considered okay. Libs are so upside down, and plain wrong in their thinking.