How Glenn Beck rewrites U.S. history -- and the danger
How Glenn Beck rewrites U.S. history -- and the danger
As I prepare to cover this weekend's Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin rally in D.C.and for the official launch of my book "The Backlash," I've published an op-ed piece at CNN.com about a major element of the Glenn Beck phenomenon that often gets overlooked -- but it is critical to both his popularity and his success in altering America's political discourse for the worse.
It relates to the craving among Beck's audience for knowledge -- but particularly knowledge that isn't really the best info but rather alternate versions of U.S. history that play into their fears about cultural and economic change in America -- and how Beck has thrived by giving them what they want, for both political influence and profit. In his two year run on Fox News Channel, Beck has created a bizarro-world 20th Century in which the advance of rights for minorities and women was really a march toward totalitarianism, in which Calvin Coolidge belongs on Mount Rushmore while Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are suddenly America's Trotsky and Lenin -- while he's promoted the pseudo-historical denial of America's traditions of separation of church and state of the Texas textbook Taliban leader David Barton onto the political civil stage.
Now Beck will be bringing his dangerous brand of bogus revisionism to the civil rights movement, deep in the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr.:
While all these histories are too important to lose to revisionism, none represents more of a risk than the civil rights era. In 1963, King understood that his dream of equal rights for black Americans would never happen without intervention from the federal government, a concept that's such an anathema to the Tea Partiers, the Beck-sponsored 9/12 movement and the other right-wing radicals who'll occupy the Mall this Saturday.
Famously, King lashed out at the Alabama governor -- George Wallace -- who had "his lips dripping with the words of 'interposition' and 'nullification' " -- a reference to claims by Wallace and other segregationists that states' rights trumped the power of Washington to promote integration.
Yet these two maligned principles are exactly what the Tea Party wants their red-state governors to do to block health care reform and other major federal initiatives of the first black president. This contradiction is lost on the Tea Partiers, and if the recent past is prologue, such facts will matter little to the mass of people who've risen up in the backlash against the Obama presidency.
Please read the entire piece over at CNN.
Programming note: I'll be spending the day at the rally on Saturday.I should have some coverage posted here at Attytood and look for it also Monday in the Daily News. I'm also hoping to offer live coverage from the event starting 10 a.m. Saturday over Twitter, so here's where you can follow me.
So only lefties get to quote MLKJr? Why do I think he wouldn't have agreed with that sentiment?— pj katauskas
PJ, if righties were only allowed to accurately quote him in context they would NEVER quote King. Not in a million years.— Hamlet- "Did you ever imagine you would become a fascist when you were growing up, tubs?" Bill.atkins, you're now casually tossing around 'fascist' the way you did 'extremist' for decades. The funny thing is, it only proves that you can't debate on merit and you are succeeding in rendering the term meaningless. 'Extremist' meant something at one time. Now, it's a comedic tag line. Clowns like you are now doing the same thing with 'fascist'. You label people with it who disagree with you politically, and the majority of the country is laughing at you. That's what really bothers you, isn't it? Or is it just that fact that you always make it so easy to hoist you on your own damned petard?— Billy Ray Winthorpe
- Can't wait to read more liberal propoganda updates. You left out quite a lot...such as examples of Beck's inaccuracies? Or perhaps that Dr. King's niece will also be speaking at this racist, hate rally? "Now Beck will be bringing his dangerous brand of bogus revisionism to the civil rights movement" Well, at least you're covering it with an open, unslanted view. You are right about one thing, Beck does give the people what they want...the truth. Something you and your liberal brethren are incapable of. While Beck tells people to look up history for themselves, liberals boycott him and his sponsors. So, who sounds like they're hiding something? And wasn't it Michele Obama who said we need to rewrite our history? Seriously, Will, the majority doesn't fall for your nonsense anymore. I know, you think we are drones who sit on Beck's every word and wait for him to command us. Just the opposite, we are people who are fed up with political propoganda like "The Backlash". We can see with our own eyes, despite you telling us what you would like us to see. Where were you for the past 40 years when liberals were rewriting history? Of course the real history does not coincide with yours. Time to wake up my friend.— smfree31
Willy boy, please take your meds, your hyperventilating! Sure we'll read the entire piece over at CNN as you suggest. Talk about mis/dis-information! Hope to see you at the rally; maybe you'll learn something.— dogman5- "I know, you think we are drones who sit on Beck's every word and wait for him to command us." Noooooo, I never thought that...want a peanut?— Hamlet
- depends on the weather
- "How ironic is that? Leggy and porky think that Will's blog is repetitive and worthless, yet they comeback regularly to read it and comment. There ain't quite no logic like the logic of a 'conservative.'" Not ironic...masochistic. You have a problem with that?— legatus
- Metaphor Alert! Drones don't eat peanuts.— pj katauskas
- ===]]] I love to watch right wing idiots quote King. [[[=== Especially when they quote his "content of their character" remark to say that King wouldn't have supported affirmative action. Such a mistaken notion shows that they don't know squat about King's ideals, or that they are simply trying to co-opt King's messages to promote ideology and policies he would never have supported.— Talking point sleuth
- And let me guess - liberals will be the arbiters of "accuracy" and "context."— pj katauskas
- And let me guess - liberals will be the arbiters of "accuracy" and "context."— pj katauskas
- PJ, of course it's not only lefties that can quote Dr. King. So quote this if you can: "I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man." Somehow I can't see either you or Glenn Beck wanting to hitch up to this. Now I'm not saying that all good people have to agree with everything King said. I am saying, though, that if Beck really wants to claim King's legacy, he'd better know exactly what he's getting himself into.— Billy Ray Winthorpe
- ===]]] You have a problem with that? [[[=== No. Good point, leggy. I obviously share masochistic tendencies by virtue of reading the drivel some "conservatives" post here at Attytood.— Talking point sleuth
- Or try this one: "The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority." This is not the kind of thing that Beck or his Christian dominionist pal David Barton would be caught dead saying.— Billy Ray Winthorpe
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