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Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book

How It's Used

“In 1970, when Abbie Hoffman appeared on The Merv Griffin Show in a flag-print shirt (after being convicted for doing the same at a 1968 House Un-American Activities Committee hearing), CBS obscured it, apparently deeming it more offensive than the items in his hands:  Mao’s Little Red Book and a joint.”

“‘What is the Chinese or Italian government buying for their sponsorship?’ asked Bob Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). ‘Will they be able to specify or influence the content of the exam, which is, in turn, designed to drive the AP course curriculum? Can they, for example, urge the inclusion of reading passages from the 'Little Red Book'?’”

“Released in France on Dec. 29, 1967, Jean-Luc Godard's 'Weekend' seems an eerily accurate anticipation of the social upheaval that was to rock France (and a fair part of the Western world) just a few months later, in May 1968. This bitterly aggressive, profoundly misanthropic film imagines the weekly exodus from Paris to the provinces (as the city dwellers rush to the countryside, to renew relations with family and nature) in apocalyptic terms, as a headlong rush from a failed, materialistic society into angry, violent anarchy - Boudu armed with a Little Red Book and an AK-47.”

“The two preferred metaphors are, depending on the speaker, that the Bin-Ladenists are the fish that swim in the water of Muslim discontent or the mosquitoes that rise from the swamp of Muslim discontent. (Quite often, the same images are used in the same harangue.) The "fish in the water" is an old trope, borrowed from Mao's hoary theory of guerrilla warfare and possessing a certain appeal to comrades who used to pore over the Little Red Book. The mosquitoes are somehow new and hover above the water rather than slip through it.”

“If you're in sales and you quote from 'the little red book,' you probably won't be mistaken for a communist these days. Jeffrey Gitomer's 'The Little Red Book of Selling' is itself selling: more than a half-million copies world-wide since it was published in September 2004. Chairman Mao's own red book may be having a hard time keeping up, even in China. Mr. Gitomer's volume has appeared on the Journal's weekly nonfiction and business best-seller lists a total of 71 times.”

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One Response to “Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book”

1. Lynn says:

   September 19, 2009 at 10:05 am

   “but if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow”
   Revolution 1, The Beatles, 1968