I hate wasting time on Beck as he is quite simply a hack. Tim Wise writes pertinently about him and I'll source his comments at the end of my comments.
Anyone who can seriously listen to Glenn Beck is IMO simply dumb, there are no other explanations. 'Dumb' has nothing to do with potential. Dumb is defined as one or all of the following: naive, easily persuadable, unread, uneducated in life, or simply too young to know life isn't always some other person or group's creation and mistake. Life can be complex.
You need only listen to the very first YouTube in this thread to know you are in the land of exaggerated hype and distortion. When someone tells you 'they don't know, they could be wrong, they hope they are wrong' - any listener with a smidgen of sense would wonder why say something you are so unsure of you have to repeatedly qualify every word. If you think you are wrong you may just be wrong.
Then he sets up the 'Dumb' listener with five opinions (?wrong?) that become facts in his distorted world. Does he ever mention deficit spending started long before Obama and is today primarily military spending? Does he mention the healthcare bill was an attempt to reign in medicare spending - a second source of federal debt? Does he ever mention corporate taxes, outsourcing, and the enormous subsidies they get from government?
'Why the rush on Healthcare' - is he nuts? This has being talked about for 50 to 75 years in America dependent on the depth of your historical knowledge. Did he so soon forget Clinton's attempt, and the very same reaction from the monied interests? Glenn that was 16 years ago alone. Rush?
And Cap and Trade may just be the next big thing for America, it is homegrown technology, it is jobs, it is locally funded and created. Global warming is fact, and energy policy going forward needs to control carbon fuel use and work for more renewable energy sources. Make it a positive job and environment project, and stop talking corporate carbon-headed opposition nonsense.
Bureaucrats and lawyers are writing the stuff, and while they may not be perfect, criticize the HC bill based on reality not vague questions that are not relevant. Americans are reading the HC bill and the majority want sensible, affordable healthcare, again the question is meaningless. Glenn, we have the answer now tell us the solution.
Grassroots is a word and like most of his talk simply a persuasion tool. Money is supporting the opposition. Money likes money and more money. Nothing complicated here. Does he ever mention it would be a responsible act to raise taxes to pay our national debts?
Glenn Beck, like most of the right wing talking heads, are sponges on American society, they contribute not one positive thing to the dialogue nor to the nation. They make lots of money doing nothing but fighting justice and fairness for the average American who ironically listens to them. They create foes because foes bring people together, they in no way contribute to solutions to real problems. They are sadly and paradoxically as disconnected from the reality of democracy and its workings as the person who refuses to vote as nothing changes for them.
TW on Beck.
"[Beck's] demented narcissism and their cult-like devotion to the man who once said he was just “a rodeo clown,” to whom one should hardly pay attention — but who now suggests he is on a mission from God to save America — are both worthy of the highest derision.
Yet, rather than anger or contempt — however deserved — it is sadness that animates my thoughts today. Sadness that so many would feel the country so besmirched by the first 19 months of the Obama Administration that they would take it upon themselves to march on Washington. Not for jobs or peace. But to restore some vaguely defined sense of national integrity, and, to hear Beck tell it, to “reclaim the civil rights movement.”
Tim Wise Farce on Washington: Glenn Beck and the Assault on Historical Memory
Tim Wise Glenn Beck
