Today’s episode of the Glenn Beck program on Fox News was one of the best examples of the celebration of ignorance that defines his show and his appeal. It is downright mind-boggling how anyone can take this garbage seriously.
From the very beginning he reaches for the most egregious numbskullery. He begins the program by calling Delaware senate candidate Chris Coons a Marxist. He doesn’t bother to explain the genesis of that insult, but I happen to have heard his explanation previously. It concerns an article Coons wrote twenty years ago in college that described his return to the U.S. from a humanitarian trip to Africa. Here is what Coons wrote:
“I spent the spring of my junior year in Africa on the St. Lawrence Kenya Study Program. Going to Kenya was one of the few real decisions I have made; my friends, family, and professors all advised against it, but I went anyway. My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe the strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists.”
Every rightist media outlet, including Fox News, jumped on the last few words of that excerpt to twist it into what they called an “admission” from Coons that he was a Marxist. Of course, it would require someone with the comprehension skills of a fern to arrive at that conclusion. Coons clearly stated that it was his friends who were joking about his change of heart and ultimate reemergence as a Democrat. Neither he nor his friends regarded him as a Marxist. Nevertheless, that’s the demonstrably false accusation with which Beck opened his show.
The next imbecility Beck alighted upon concerned his assertion that someone (progressives, Obama’s czars, Raelians) was orchestrating a global redistribution of wealth that was focused on the international oil trade. At the peak of this incoherent rambling Beck pointed to the fact that we in America get our oil from Saudi Arabia and they get our money. Then he actually asked why that is. His answer, surprisingly, was not the obvious reality that Saudi Arabia and the Middle East is where most of the world’s oil is located, and if we want some we have to buy it from them. No, his answer had something to do with a cabal designed to “redistribute” our wealth to the Saudis. That’s a conspiracy theory that doesn’t even measure up to bad episode of the X-Files. And if he’s so disturbed by American dollars ending up in Saudi wallets, then why is he so hostile to developing alternative sources of energy that can be produced domestically? In the very same rant he alleged that that was also a conspiracy.
But the overwhelmingly idiotic premise espoused by Beck today was a frighteningly dumb mischaracterization of the role of unions. He defined their purpose as having something to do with providing equal benefits and security. He said it was about evening out the differences between strong workers and weak ones. The truth, of course, is that unions are there to even out the differences between strong companies and the labor force that would be far weaker were it not for collective bargaining.
Beck’s version of unions is to protect workers from themselves. Reality’s version is to protect workers from greedy employers. But Beck continued his clueless analysis by castigating former union leader Andy Stern for recognizing that the struggle for worker’s rights is now a global struggle. This is an argument that Beck has tried to make many times before. He simply doesn’t understand that by improving labor conditions in South America or China, it benefits American workers by making them more competitive and raising their wage scales. If Chinese workers make only $1.50 a day they will always be a threat to American jobs.
The sad part of all this isn’t that Beck is an ignoramus. After all, he’s made a fortune on his asininity. It’s his viewers for whom I sympathize. The poor slobs actually believe everything he spews. They will repeat it to their friends. They will thump their chests with pride as they disgorge his factless bromides, never realizing that they are making asses of themselves.
In the end, the question in the headline of this article isn’t really important. What matters is who is hurt most by this festival of feeble-mindedness? The answer is that the cumulative effect of this mass dispersion of nonsense is ultimately harmful to the country, to the practice of democracy, and to the very people who suffer from the greatest exposure to it – his viewers.
