The Walter Duranty Legacy
The New York Times just can’t end its love affair with mass murderers. Back in the 30’s, Walter Duranty wrote glowing pieces for the Times on Stalin’s Soviet Union and his show trials. One got the true “Worker’s Paradise” feel from the fiction pieces Duranty wrote about those days of terror. He was so good at it, he won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Even after his stories were uncovered as the pack of lies they were, the Times has still refused to return his Pulitzer.
Times (no pun intended) certainly haven’t changed. In the Sunday Week in Review, David Barboza of the Times wrote a fawning piece about China’s Chairman Mao or more appropriately Mao’s giant image.
“Few images created in the last century are as recognizable as the official portrait of Mao that looms over Tiananmen Square in Beijing.”
Just a quick reminder, that’s the same Square where so many freedom protestors were executed as they stood defiantly against the Chinese totalitarian government, demanding change. Who could forget the stirring image of the man who would not let the tank pass? I never have, but apparently Mr. Barboza and the Times editors don’t recall it. They’re too fixated on the monstrosity that portrays the monster and how cute it is. To me, that image looms much larger than any portrait of the tyrant Mao.
So what can be said of the Chinese people and their feelings for Mao? Does he point out how the “cult of Mao” was foisted upon the citizenry or how the communist government used him as a sort of deification of their heinous policies? No, he only notes that the Chinese “may have lost some affection for Mao” and that he still represents something “indelible and intangible”.
Yes, I’m certain he represents something indelible and intangible, like the Boogeyman or some hellspawn demon. Any individual that killed over 20 million of his own countrymen (and that’s the most conservative estimate, mind you) certainly could be said to have left an indelible mark on his people.
But this is perhaps the Coup de Grasse. Barboza notes that, while the Chinese may not have a recognizable logo like Coke, they do have Mao, and he represents a “kind of George Washington, James Dean and Che Guevara wrapped in one a historic and pop figure who continues to be hip and fashionable…” This line, more than anything demonstrates the innate mental sickness that some on the Left possess. Actually, it seems to be quite prevalent. Our own historical figures deserve denigration. Our current President, Founding Fathers, who cares, they’re all fair game for criticism. Bring up a mass killer who believed in enslaving his people as a step to enslaving the rest of mankind and who brutally executed anyone who was an impediment to his plans, and they swoon with fawning compliments of the man.
At least with Che, he comes close, if not really in total body count. Che’s was relatively low by comparison. To equate him with George Washington shows considerable ignorance as to who Washington was and even more ignorance about what Mao really was. The James Dean line guarantees this guy will be schilling for Entertainment Tonight or perhaps anchoring network news before you know it. The true pain of Barboza’s piece, though, is it is not a unique sentiment. His opinion, as I noted, is a widely shared one and that’s a sad comment on the current state of the Left. How do you start a discussion with people that equate mass murderers with the Founding Fathers, and consider it a compliment that they included the Founding Father? Oh, and who compares someone to James Dean these days?
The New York Times just can’t end its love affair with mass murderers. Back in the 30’s, Walter Duranty wrote glowing pieces for the Times on Stalin’s Soviet Union and his show trials. One got the true “Worker’s Paradise” feel from the fiction pieces Duranty wrote about those days of terror. He was so good at it, he won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Even after his stories were uncovered as the pack of lies they were, the Times has still refused to return his Pulitzer.
Times (no pun intended) certainly haven’t changed. In the Sunday Week in Review, David Barboza of the Times wrote a fawning piece about China’s Chairman Mao or more appropriately Mao’s giant image.
“Few images created in the last century are as recognizable as the official portrait of Mao that looms over Tiananmen Square in Beijing.”
Just a quick reminder, that’s the same Square where so many freedom protestors were executed as they stood defiantly against the Chinese totalitarian government, demanding change. Who could forget the stirring image of the man who would not let the tank pass? I never have, but apparently Mr. Barboza and the Times editors don’t recall it. They’re too fixated on the monstrosity that portrays the monster and how cute it is. To me, that image looms much larger than any portrait of the tyrant Mao.
So what can be said of the Chinese people and their feelings for Mao? Does he point out how the “cult of Mao” was foisted upon the citizenry or how the communist government used him as a sort of deification of their heinous policies? No, he only notes that the Chinese “may have lost some affection for Mao” and that he still represents something “indelible and intangible”.
Yes, I’m certain he represents something indelible and intangible, like the Boogeyman or some hellspawn demon. Any individual that killed over 20 million of his own countrymen (and that’s the most conservative estimate, mind you) certainly could be said to have left an indelible mark on his people.
But this is perhaps the Coup de Grasse. Barboza notes that, while the Chinese may not have a recognizable logo like Coke, they do have Mao, and he represents a “kind of George Washington, James Dean and Che Guevara wrapped in one a historic and pop figure who continues to be hip and fashionable…” This line, more than anything demonstrates the innate mental sickness that some on the Left possess. Actually, it seems to be quite prevalent. Our own historical figures deserve denigration. Our current President, Founding Fathers, who cares, they’re all fair game for criticism. Bring up a mass killer who believed in enslaving his people as a step to enslaving the rest of mankind and who brutally executed anyone who was an impediment to his plans, and they swoon with fawning compliments of the man.
At least with Che, he comes close, if not really in total body count. Che’s was relatively low by comparison. To equate him with George Washington shows considerable ignorance as to who Washington was and even more ignorance about what Mao really was. The James Dean line guarantees this guy will be schilling for Entertainment Tonight or perhaps anchoring network news before you know it. The true pain of Barboza’s piece, though, is it is not a unique sentiment. His opinion, as I noted, is a widely shared one and that’s a sad comment on the current state of the Left. How do you start a discussion with people that equate mass murderers with the Founding Fathers, and consider it a compliment that they included the Founding Father? Oh, and who compares someone to James Dean these days?
posted by Rob Beck | 6:12 PM
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