Glenn Beck, Fox News' very own demagogic combination of Howard Beale and Father Coughlin, has outdone himself. Yes, after ranting about President Obama's racism, Nazi health care and indoctrination in schools, he has taken on the world of art.
In a bit truly stunning for its tinfoil-hat craziness, Beck railed against the supposed Communist and Fascist art (what, they couldn't make up their minds?) installed at New York's Rockefeller Center more than seventy years ago.
Rockefeller Center is home to MSNBC - and also to Fox News, as Keith Olbermann gleefully pointed out on his own show. (You'd think Fox would catch something like that. But it's more likely that Beck has no one at all tasked with stopping him from making a jackass out of himself.)
And when Beck howls that people "need to see things that are hidden in plain sight," one should mention that other people see things no one else can see, and they have to take a lot of pills for it.
Many have wondered before just how connected Beck is to reality, but this one really takes the cake. People who actually know something about art history hooted in derision, and even some mainstream conservatives are starting to see him not as a voice of the populist masses but as a paranoid and increasingly unhinged conspiracy theorist.
Every time he starts shrieking about a (misspelled) oligarchy or how an elected president is about to "seize power," he sucks everyone connected with him, even tangentially, into the same nutty black-helicopter crowd. His advertisers are fleeing in droves, and one wonders just how much of a liability he'll have to become before Fox News realizes there's no upside in keeping him on the schedule.
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Not since Joe McCarthy shuffled off this mortal coil in 1957 has anyone made a career by accusing people of being communists. Glenn Beck has resurrected the practice. Not only has he found a cabal of secret communists, he has uncovered an entire communist corporation chock full of commies. The name of this company, you may ask?
THE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY!
You heard me right, boys and girls. The network that gave us Uncle Miltie and Ma Perkins has apparently been secretly sending subliminal messages endorsing Marxist doctrine since it was formed in 1926. This would make perfect sense to me. Every time I watched the Rockford Files I had an unexplainable desire to read Das Kapital. But seriously, folks. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, red baiting not only seems silly, it's also kind of nuts. It's not-at-all surprising that an organization would give this idiot a forum (after all, he's on FOX Noise). What's really stunning is the fact that his ratings are relatively high and that so many Americans take his word as gospel.
All kidding aside, half-witted ideologues are a dime a dozen. What separates Glenn Beck from his peers is the fact that he is doing some serious damage to the country he professes to love so much. For all of the comparisons to the Nazis he likes to make with respect to Liberals, Beck's program has much in common with Adolf Hitler's 1923 screed, Mein Kampf. Eighty-six years ago, Hitler attempted to arouse the anger of his fellow Germans by spouting half truths and utter nonsense - exactly what Glenn Beck is doing in 2009. So much of the insane dialogue that has been spewed forth at these Town Hall meetings across the country in recent weeks might have been lifted straight from a transcript of Beck's program.
Beck and his twisted ilk have done the impossible. They have deflected the blame for America's current economic distress (from where it should be aimed) toward a man who is trying to clean up the mess that was created - in large part - by people like Glenn Beck. They have also let loose with a vengeance the very worst angels of the American nature. Opening this Pandora's box was relatively easy. Closing it might prove to be a bit of a problem.
Deep in their hearts
They do believe
That they shall undermine someday....
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
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