Glenn Beck (cc photo: Gage Skidmore)
“I played a role…in helping tear the country apart,” Glenn Beck confessed Tuesday to Fox News host Megyn Kelly (The Kelly Files, 1/21/14). Beck was lamenting the divisiveness of his Fox News show (Glenn Beck, 1/2009-4/2011.)
Indeed. Beck has much to regret, but not just from his time at Fox. There’s also years of talk radio broadcasts, and a stint at CNN‘s Headline News—not to mention his work at his current outlet, The Blaze.
On his long-running syndicated radio show, Beck made a name for himself as a vicious foe of the Iraq War’s critics, hoping on-air that Dennis Kucinich would burn to death and fantasizing about strangling Michael Moore with his bare hands (FAIR Blog, 11/10/10). Immigrant-bashing bigotry was another specialty, as when Beck listed the reasons why undocumented would want to come to the US (4/27/06): “One, they’re terrorists; two, they’re escaping the law; or three, they’re hungry. They can’t make a living in their own dirtbag country.”
Any reel of low-lights from Beck’s CNN years would have to include his warning that “Muslims will see the West through razor wire if things don’t change” (Headline News, 9/5/06), as well as his question to to newly elected U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim: “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies” (FAIR Action Alert, 12/5/06).
During his time at Fox, Beck called Barack Obama “a racist” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people” (Fox & Friends, 8/28/09), fantasized about personally poisoning Nancy Pelosi and became the inspiration for a extremist, would-be mass murderer, who was captured after injuring two California Highway Patrol officers (FAIR Blog, 11/10/10).
Through the years, while remaining faithful to the standard hard-right politics of conservative talk radio—immigrant-bashing, bigotry, warmongering and Islamophobia—Beck has occasionally tried to sell himself as a uniter. Like when he hosted an special during his Fox days, You Are Not Alone (3/13/09), which he claimed was in the unifying spirit of “9/12″—a reference to the way Beck said everyone came together the day after the 2001 attacks. But the special was chock full of apocalyptic “us against them” scenarios. (“It seems like the voices of our leaders and special interests and the media [are] surrounding us,” said Beck during the special. But “the truth is, they don’t surround us. We surround them. This is our country”—Extra!, 6/09.) In any case, Beck seemed to have have forgotten that his own warm feelings on September 12, 2001, turned quickly to loathing, as he admitted on his radio show on September 9, 2005: “You know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims’ families?”
Beck’s recent regrets have come with promises to be less divisive. He’s made recent statements denouncing homophobia, for instance (Advocate.com, 1/21/14). But his words are belied by what happens at the media outlets he owns, Blaze TV and The Blaze website. One favored Blaze source is leading homophobe Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, whose statement blasting the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality ran unmediated on The Blaze (6/28/13).
Just yesterday, after the attorney general of Virginia announced he would not defend the state’s same-sex marriage ban, Fred Lucas, The Blaze‘s White House correspondent, wrote an entire article based on ultra-conservative former US Attorney Joe diGenova’s opinion that the AG action is “impeachment material.”
What to make of all this? Just more Beck blather? Who knows, but it was amusing to see Beck suggesting on Thursday that his Fox interview had left the media “shocked” to find that he wasn’t “some anti-gay, racist nutjob.”
Easy, big guy—nobody went that far.
Anyone who would deliberately perpetrate that kind of diviiveness & hatred is definitely a nutjob – of the worst kind. If it quacks like a duck & waddles like a duck…
Glenn really is a divisive lunatic. Personally resent his use of the Alamo to bash Latinos and Mexicans. The divisiveness is Glenn’s stock-in-trade. Many Latinos fought with honor, courage and conviction with my relatives and finding that whack job there was just Perry pandering to the right wing looney bin. These people are all full of hate, and they serve no good purpose other than trying to divide people to not see the big rip-off in progress from a corrupt system.
If only saying something would make it so, we would all be saints–or perhaps geniuses. Until that happens all that such fantasies can work effectively on is the credulity of those who do not know better. Like politicians media celebrities will say whatever they have to say to get “votes.” Thus there is nothing in this “news” that would suggest that Beck’s words are authored by anything other than one of his alter egos that emerge now and again when least expected. In terms of results, it matters very little whether this alter ego emerges consciously or unconsciously. But the more unexpected it is the more it looks like another transient possession, this time by the “good caring little boy spirit who a mother has to love” and who conservative old ladies want to hug and call “son.”
In the end there is no reason to believe that this new face, and new voice, is anything but a casting of the media net back to the other (caring) side in the interest of gathering a larger spectrum of untutored Americans (i.e., those tutored in American schools) whose memories are not long enough to see the essential inconsistency and deep duplicity in Beck and who, like him, are in their hearts not offended by hatred, etc. Like the official media in general, instead of lifting people up from their confusion and ignorance he exploits it and in the process confirms them in their folly. This is what he does and this is his primary sin–and it is a very terrible one!
At this point we have to state the old folly killing maxim that nothing is more rare than change. Is change possible? Of course; that is what real teachers bank on and seek to effect. But is this “news” an indication that Glenn Beck has changed? Let’s look at it this way: When a men says, as he has said a thousand times before, “I have quit smoking,” saying so is a very very good indication that nothing at all has changed, eh? Personally, I want to see him (Beck) not just in the blue jeans and dressing down for the common man, but in sack cloth and ashes kissing lepers–and consistently too, let’s say for about 3 years! Personally I hope that Beck has changed, but he has racked up warehouses full of bad karma and only a real warrior has the guts to face a thing like that and, unfortunately, one doesn’t become a warrior overnight!
In conclusion, we all know that the devil uses a little truth to tell a very big lie. So, what is the truth in this case? Well, that is simple: Beck, as he now confesses, has worked for his entire career to divide and weaken the nation and its spirit–a nation and spirit which, as conceived and evoked by the Founders, was One/Unum as we see formulated in the claim and “self evident truth” of the Declaration that all men are created equal.” A man or woman who truly sees and believes this principle does not give their lives over to dividing their neighbors from themselves and from each other. But then, that is just, well, “elementary,” isn’t it? JWC
I listened to a number of “shows” on Fox Noise at the request of a good friend of mine—to give Beck a fair hearing. In two weeks of listening to him, I found NOTHING of value—divisiveness, one sided reporting, illogical reasoning, and biased statements. So I quit watching a reported my findings to my good friend, who was appalled I had found Beck to be such. Now tell, me–if what he is now saying is what he truly feels and meant when I listened to him—what does that do to those who truly —like my friend—believed what he said then?
He is just sorry he is not getting the attention anymore I have no idea of his ratings on radio or cable but he is not been getting media attention and that his only concern. So here he is saying things that will get some coverage.
He either really thinks people can’t remember what happened five minutes ago, or he himself can’t remember what happened five minutes ago. The first one, I think.
This is the first step in his attempt to re-brand himself, which is what all media personalities do, when their first presentation bombs with the public.
No one here, move along. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…
Lightening Joe: I don’t know how fast you are but you are pretty sharp on this one. It is refreshing to see that there are people out there that know that sometimes formulating things into an either/or can help them(and others) to see. Good first paragraph. JWC
Well of course. I think we would all be shocked to find that. bring it on.
What to make of all this? Just more Beck blather? Who knows, but it was amusing to see Beck suggesting on Thursday that his Fox interview had left the media “shocked” to find that he wasn’t “some anti-gay, racist nutjob.”
The dog smells it’s own turds, and thinks they smell like roses…..