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