You probably remember in Animal Farm<\/i> the pigs\u2019 campaign for revolution included a damnation of two-legged oppressors \u2014 old MacDonald, I think. I’m relying on memory here. \u00a0When they take over the farm, it is not long before the pigs proclaim that four legs are good, but two legs are better.<\/p>\n
The allegory leaped to my mind as I read the story today of China\u2019s celebration of Chairman Mao\u2019s 120th<\/sup> birthday. No one can doubt that Mao would view the onslaught of capitalist running-dogs in command of the so-called People\u2019s Republic with a disapproving eye. But this paragraph from the LA Times story<\/a> by Julie Makinen with a Beijing dateline is beyond the pale:<\/p>\n \u201cIn Mao\u2019s hometown of Shaoshan, a solid gold Mao statue on a 3-foot tall jade base \u2014 said to cost more than $16 million \u2014 went on display this week. Leading up to the anniversary, a caravan of 120 camels was marched from Mongolia to Shaoshan over the course of 200 days to build anticipation for the event.\u201d<\/p>\n Maestro, a drumroll for Mr. Orwell if you please.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You probably remember in Animal Farm the pigs\u2019 campaign for revolution included a damnation of two-legged oppressors \u2014 old MacDonald, I think. I’m relying on memory here. \u00a0When they take over the farm, it is not long before the pigs proclaim that four legs are good, but two legs are better. The allegory leaped to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1208,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions\/1208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}