America’s number one televangelist, Glenn Beck, has consistently been an advocate of traditional values. So much so that he formed a movement he calls “The 9/12 Project” based on the nine values and twelve principles that he has deemed critical for righteous living.
The second of Beck’s holy principles (following “America Is Good”) is: I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
I’m not going to speculate as to why America’s goodness trumps the Lord, but second place is still a pretty respectable finish for God. Obviously Beck considers worship to be a fairly high priority. However, it must be the right kind of worship. And to assist you making the proper spiritual choice, Pope Beck has declared a new edict for you to follow: Avoid any church that espouses “social justice.” Beck asserts that it is just a code word for communism, or fascism, or both.
“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.
Now, am I advising people to leave their church? ….. YES!”
The Glenn Beck Radio Program, March 2, 2010:
Did you hear that? Beck is begging you to run as fast as you can from any religious institution that embraces social justice. Flee now from churches that advocate for the welfare of the poor, the hungry, the sick, people enduring hardships and looking for answers. In other words, renounce any parish that practices the teachings of Jesus. Beck should recall the words of Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife:
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
It’s not enough that Beck passes such judgments on compassionate believers, the urgency for his advice is clearly and frighteningly articulated. Religious freedom is under attack and you may have only a year left to worship as you choose. So you had better start to worship as HE chooses. And how does Beck know that the end to religious freedom is so near? He doesn’t say. He doesn’t even hint at any lurking threat. It must have been revealed to him in a vision – or from the voice of his German Shepherd, Victor. [How appropriate is it that Beck has a pet that is “German” (like him) and a “Shepherd”?] And that vision probably included the figure of a haloed Kenyan Muslim floating over a dilapidated White House with hammer & sickle flag waving above the Chinese-made solar panels.
Update: Christian leaders are responding to Beck’s call to leave your church with a call to leave Beck: Tell Glenn Beck: I’m a Social Justice Christian. That seems like something a compassionate spiritual advisor would have been calling for all along. Better late than never.
Psychology Today has published one mental health professional’s diagnosis of the pathology of the Tea Bagger. Dr. Michael Bader provides an astute examination of a serious emotional malformation, complete with clinical examples and prognosis. Bader’s conclusion is that the victims of this brewing epidemic of acute paranoia warrant our sympathy and understanding.
Bader begins by describing some of the causes of paranoia as the mind’s attempt to “make sense of and mitigate feelings of helplessness and worthlessness.” The goal is to manufacture redemption and absolution. In some cases that goal takes precedence over objective reality, which is frequently more frightening and less forgiving than the paranoid inventions.
“…the tea party folks find in their paranoid views about politics a narrative that ‘explains it all,’ that reduces their sense of helpless confusion, and that channels their feelings of victimization into ones of self-righteous militancy. They go from passive victim to active agent, from guilty to innocent, but all at the price of distorting reality into one full of malevolent conspiracies.”
Many Americans have been burdened with hardships that are testing their capacity to cope. The loss of jobs, homes, and security, threaten their sense of self-worth and provoke feelings of guilt and failure. For some, the discomfort of these conditions compels them to find alternative explanations that render them innocent victims of some other more powerful, irresistible force. And, as Bader notes, the vulnerable are getting help in constructing their emotional defenses:
“For new tea-party members, however, the drift toward paranoia is facilitated by the right-wing media machine that offers several ready-made narratives perfectly designed to help its consumers clear up their confusion, understand their helplessness, absolve them of any blame, and offer a way out. The conspiratorial alliance of business and government, a growing tyranny intended to disenfranchise, disarm, and exploit ordinary citizens, secret pacts to overthrow the constitution, etc. all currently led by an un-American, godless, colored, elitist, contemptuous, foreigner – Barack Hussein Obama. A grim and frightening picture of the world to be sure.
Fox News, of course, is the foundation of this electronic therapy. They happily feed the conspiracy-primed psyches of people whose barriers to irrationality are already severely weakened. The loss of tangible assets like property and work leads to a fear that more significant intangibles like liberty and faith are also at risk. They are convinced that the human values that have been present in society for centuries are under assault and are losing the war. So they invent explanations that soothe their conscience, even while creating new dangers and anxieties. Why would they do this, Dr. Bader?
“Psychologically speaking…it offers relief from helplessness and a sense that things are falling apart. It offers a sense of cohesion and identity based on certainty, a commonality of interests, innocence, and even martyrdom. While the world of the tea-party’ers is filled with danger, it is a danger mitigated by moral certainty, clarity of purpose, and a definable external enemy.” […]
“The ‘problem’ is that tea-party activists move from legitimate feelings and normal longings to paranoid political positions that are dangerous and cruel. But because these positions serve an important psychological function, because they resolve an emotional dilemma, they can’t be changed by rational argument.”
That level of certainty, combined with delusional foes lurking behind every acorn, is a formula for fiasco. And recent events in the news bear this out in the most horrific way. The gunman at the Pentagon. The suicide pilot in Austin. The murder at the DC Holocaust museum. The shooting at the Arkansas recruiting station. The assassination of Dr. Tiller. All of these tragedies were the result of diseased minds convinced that their actions were required to right some perceived wrong on the part of entities too large to confront any other way.
Just try arguing rationally with them – or with Tea Baggers who want the government to keep it’s hands off of their Medicare. They are a perplexing group of activists who actually advocate against their own interests. They reside in a world that can’t be reached from the real one the rest of us inhabit.
The same warped reasoning is the inspiration for birthers, patriot militias, and gold hoarders. It produces contrived plots like FEMA building concentration camps, and health care being a secret plan for reparations or total control of every citizen’s body. Liz Cheney’s McCarthay-esque campaign against the imaginary Al Qaeda 7 in the Justice Department is exactly the sort of media red meat that fuels these delusions (both liberals and conservatives are now rebuking Cheney). And Fox News’ repeated misrepresentation of “reconciliation,” a conventional parliamentary procedure, as a “Nuclear Option” is purposefully designed to invoke anxiety.
Glenn Beck is the acknowledged master of delusion. He is still peddling economic Armageddon, treasonous government moles, and the fear of Obama’s clandestine army of progressives (or fascists, or communists, or Raelians) perverting our principles and our children. Just this week he aired a special he titled: “The Indoctrination of Our Kids: An American Epidemic.” He ascribed all manner of evil (his actual word) to the most mundane social interactions and studies. One book he spoke of was so abhorrent that he wouldn’t even utter it’s name, or that of the author. He called it “Eric’s Book,” and sought to portray it as another link in the chain of villainy that the government (or progressives, or teachers, or the overlords) are tightening around our throats.
For the record, it was Eric Greenberg’s “Generation We.” Beck played clips from this companion video in which he saw an assembly of depraved young Americans. What do you see?
Ghastly isn’t it? These kids, who are concerned about the future of the nation and the world that they will inherit, are obviously puppets of Obama’s robot dictatorship.
But you can’t slip this past Glenn Beck. No, he knows what’s going on:
“What’s going on? Well, there’s a battle for the hearts and minds of your children. While you’re busy trying to make a living and navigate through the daily madness piling up all around you, progressives are working on indoctrinating America’s youth, your kids.”
Beck’s paranoia is operating at full steam. There doesn’t seem to be much hope for restoring whatever sanity he may have started out with. But Dr. Bader appears to be more optimistic about the prognosis for the Tea Baggers. Perhaps it is his experience with patient care and analysis that gives him this perspective:
“It would help if we found ways to get into relationship with them, to demonstrate a genuine curiosity not about their paranoid theories but about the underlying pain and fear that is the source of them. In this way, perhaps we can figure out how to speak to that pain and fear in ways that are both authentic and comforting. Perhaps we can figure out what experiences they might need to have in order to feel safe enough to at least listen to another narrative – ours.”
That’s a worthwhile strategy, but I can’t say that I’m as hopeful as the good doctor. After all, Fox News and talk radio are still around to fire up the crazy. How will the Tea Baggers heal when they are still being fed contaminated slices of unreality? How do you replace the paranoid narrative when Beck and O’Reilly and Hannity and Cavuto and the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s messengers of malignancy are churning out fractured fables that reinforce the Baggers’ dementia?
The Murdoch cartel is explicitly designed to keep weak souls strung out and gasping for another fix. Murdoch is the pusher and the Baggers are addicted to the phony melodramas that bring them the comfort of having an enemy onto which they can project their gnawing guilt and shame. It doesn’t matter that it’s all a litany of lies. The more outlandish the falsehood, the stronger the rush and, in the end, the more tragic the consequences. To these poor suckers anything is better than facing the harshness of reality and taking responsibility. Particularly if it involves sacrifice and charity and other scary socialistic notions of fellowship. It’s much better to be distracted and confused by nefarious forces from the outside.
That’s where Rupert Murdoch comes in with his international media empire, devoid of national allegiances or personal conscience. This paranoia factory could only be run by such an entity. It requires massive resources and ambition. It works because Murdoch is a man of wealth and (dubious) taste. And what’s puzzling you is just the nature of his game.
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King spoke to over 200,000 people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. He gave what is regarded as one of the most inspiring speeches on behalf of brotherhood, liberty, and the peaceful struggle for equality. He said in part…
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
Later this year, on the very same steps, on the anniversary of that historic speech, Glenn Beck will lead his congregation of predominately white followers at a “Restoring Honor” rally to launch his next book, “The Plan,” a 100 year blueprint for undoing the progress made by people like Dr. King on behalf of equality, justice, and peace.
Subsequent to Beck’s original announcement of this event, he has latched onto a military charity to mask his profiteering with a facade of moral gravitas (and gain a tax write-off). But he has made no mention of the date’s prior association with Martin Luther King. And why would he be expected to? This is the man who recently called King a “radical socialist” and questioned whether there should be a holiday in his name. This is the man who called President Obama a “racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people.” This is the man who calls progressives (like King) “the cancer in America.” The thought of Beck usurping this cherished occasion to further the goals of his Tea Bagging 9/12ers is insulting and unacceptable.
So where is the outrage? Where are the guardians of Dr. King’s legacy? Who will organize an event in our nation’s capital on that day to honor the real meaning that it represents? Will Beck be permitted to tarnish this anniversary with his exclusionary fear mongering and conspiracy brigades?
I don’t expect Beck to endure in his crusade. He has already launched numerous campaigns that he leaves to gather dust when his attention is drawn away by some new, shiny dementia. In just the past couple of years he has announced the following TV jihads:
We Surround Them
The Re-Founding
In or Out 2010
Watchdogs
9/12 Project
The Plan
Beck’s conspiracy theories erupt quickly and fiercely and they burn out the same way. This is also true for his allegiances to principles. For several months the opening credits of his TV show included a picture of King or a reference to his words. Those are gone now. It was fine when Beck wanted to exploit the reverence for which most Americans hold King, but now Beck finds it more important to insult him and suppress his legacy.
This may be just one day in summer, but it is a day that should be reserved for uplifting recollections of our better nature – not the Apocalyptic negativity of racists and enemies of the poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The anniversary of King’s “Dream” deserves better than to be desecrated by the detestable likes of Glenn Beck and his dark and divisive hordes. It would sure be nice to see King’s supporters show up in DC in greater numbers than Beck’s disciples.
In an interview with his pals at the National Review, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes made clear that he won’t be satisfied with the slipshod propaganda techniques pioneered by the Nazis 75 years ago. Responding to a question about whether Fox News was inappropriately engaging in persistent attacks on the President, Ailes attempted to redirect the charge of bias back to the media at large:
“This little cable channel called Fox is somehow ruining your life. Keep in mind, the last two guys to get all of them [the media] lined up together were Hitler and Stalin. That did not work out well.”
So Ailes regards Hitler’s efforts to dominate the press as insufficient. Should we, therefore, assume that he aspires to do a better job of it? He’s off to a pretty good start. His network has already homogenized its coverage to fall in lock-step with a conservative agenda and is expertly regurgitating rightist rhetoric from a well-disciplined army of anchors and guests. But even that’s not enough. He also finds it necessary to lie about his record of blatant bias and disregard for facts:
Q: You have the President of the United States and others, including the extremely intelligent James Carville, saying Fox News shapes the nation’s politics. Are you pleased? Are you appalled? A: No. That’s their fault. What we do is we go on the air every day with two points of view in the news. Glenn Beck has a phone on his set that says if I make any factual errors please call me so I can correct them immediately and apologize. And the phone never rings. Because what he’s saying is apparently true. We have been thirteen years on the air – in our fourteenth year – and we’ve never taken a story down because of factual problems.
Where to start? First of all, we already know that Fox News deliberately tried to shape politics because Rupert Murdoch admitted it in public. Secondly, the two points of view Fox presents are from the Republican Party and the Tea Party. Third, Ailes’ reference to Glenn Beck (whom he said is “actually not a conservative”) beautifully depicts his absence of reason. If Ailes concludes that Glenn Beck’s acute paranoia represents the truth because the White House hasn’t dialed up his prop phone, then it must also be true that Beck worships Hitler because he hasn’t phoned me to deny it.
And finally, Ailes must not be watching his own network if he thinks that there haven’t been any retractions or corrections. In fact, they are so sloppy with facts that executives had to issue a memo declaring a “zero tolerance” policy after numerous “mistakes” were broadcast. And that doesn’t even include the intentional lies that are the keystone of Fox’s anti-journalistic brand.
Perhaps the funniest quote from the interview is when Ailes pretended to merely be a contrarian whose only interest was to balance whatever the predominant themes were in the press:
“To be honest with you, if all the media was tipped to the right, I’d be the biggest liberal in New York.”
Not exactly. He’d still be the biggest liar. To which side does he think the media was tipped after 9/11, when an idiot president whose legitimacy was still in doubt, was elevated to hero status and given a free pass to legislate away decades of civil liberties? To which side does he think the media was tipped in 2003 when every prominent network, newspaper, and reporter were uncritically supporting the Bush administration’s march into an unjustified and illegal war with Iraq? Why wasn’t Ailes directing his staff to take a contrary position then? Where was the “biggest liberal in New York” when conservative issues were being championed by the international megaliths that own and operate most of the media (as they have for decades)?
Ailes was just where he’s always been – staked out on the far right, disseminating disinformation in pursuit of his arch-conservative mission. He is marshaling his troops and enforcing strict discipline to insure their adherence to the official doctrine. And now he has even insinuated that his competition are aligned with the principles of Hitler and Stalin. So I hope people will stop complaining when I post this:
Over the past year the Tea Party phenomenon has attracted a lot of attention from the rightist media. From the beginning Fox News took the lead sponsoring and promoting Tea Party events, dispatching their anchors to literally host Tea Party rallies, and donating hundreds of hours of airtime to Tea Party spokespeople and supporters. Fox News is the de facto Tea Party Channel.
All of this got me to wondering where it will all end. With a major so-called “news” network advocating on behalf of the delusional flank of the conservative crusade, it seems to me that the right stumbled into an abyss and has consumed some mighty potent mushrooms. So, with apologies to Tim Burton, I present…
Malice In Wonderland, Fox News Through the Looking Glass:
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Later this month a new Tea Crusade will commence in the form of another AstroTurf sponsored bus tour. The thrid Tea Bagger Express will conclude in Washington on April 15. On August 28, Glenn Beck will headline his “Restoring Honor” affair at the Lincoln Memorial. That’s an ironic event considering the obvious lack of honor of the host. He just starting claiming that it’s a fundraiser for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, but he originally promoted it as the launch date for his next book “The Plan.” Also, the date is the anniversary of Martin Luther’s King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the same location. A couple of days ago, Beck called King a “radical socialist” and questioned whether we should be celebrating a holiday in his name. Now Beck seeks to muddy King’s memory by usurping this historic anniversary to hawk his book. In September Beck’s second annual 9/12 rally will take place on 9/11. This gives Beck another opportunity to tarnish a sensitive anniversary.
Expect all of these events to be aggressively promoted on the Tea Party Channel (i.e. Fox News). And expect there to be more coverage of, and interviews with, Tea Baggers and there proxies in Congress. And above all, expect more confusion, mischief, and deceit on the part of Fox and the right-wing politico-media complex.
I must say that I have to agree with Alice when she said:
“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”
Van Jones received the President’s Award on Friday from the NAACP Image Awards. In his acceptance speech he took the time to acknowledge a special someone in his life.
I can’t say I approve. Glenn Beck has been a relentless foe of Van Jones. He hounded him from the White House with a series of misrepresentations and outright lies. And even after Jones stepped down, Beck continued to smear him. Recently Jones announced that he would be joining the staff at Princeton and working with the Center for American Progress. That news was greeted by Beck with a tirade against both Jones and Martin Luther King, whom Beck called a “radical socialist” and questioned whether we should have a holiday celebrating him.
So now Jones assumes a strikingly tolerant view of Beck hoping to find some sort of unity. As much as I admire Jones, I think he is wasting his time. Beck is not about to reciprocate. He will only use this appeal to fellowship as a springboard for more attacks and ridicule. In fact, he already has in the form of a tweet:
“I love you too,Glad to all live in one country.Will it be the founders country or the one you pushed when with storm?”
Tell me Glenn, which country do you want? The founders country or the one you pushed when you were an alcoholic, drug abusing, dirtbag?
While Jones was unambiguously forgiving, Beck was predictably adversarial. Beck couldn’t resist the urge to jab another blade into his enemy. And that difference between these two illustrates what a waste of time it is to try to appease Beck. Jones ought to initiate a full-blown campaign revealing Beck’s dishonesty. He should join his former colleagues at Color of Change and pursue advertisers on Beck’s show and Fox News. He should not allow Beck to continue smearing people with McCarthyite accusations. He should expose Beck for the divisive, fear monger that he is. He should fight back.
Then if Jones still wants to be magnanimous and profess his love for Beck…whatever. I just can’t go there.
“Join me on another one of my ‘designed just to get TV ratings’ history lessons?”
The only the wrong with that statement is everything in it. First of all, nobody is joining Beck as he embarks on his solo venture across the blackboard seas of his dementia. The best you say is that his disciples can watch glassy-eyed from afar. Secondly, everything Beck does is designed to get TV ratings, despite his snarky allusions to the contrary. And lastly, his idea of history lessons leaves out a major component of the curriculum: the history.
In yesterday’s lecture, Beck sought to explain the concept of “Mutually Assured Destruction,” wherein nations in conflict proposed deterrence of aggression by threatening overwhelming retaliatory response that would effectively destroy both nations. Beck began by falsely asserting that scientists had first proposed a version of MAD that involved a “Doomsday Device,” wherein the whole planet would be obliterated. In fact, that was only proposed by analysts at an Ayn Rand think tank and Stanley Kubrick in “Dr. Strangelove.” It was not real science, policy, or history.
Then Beck reveals to his disciples the source of his historical doctrine. It’s a book called “Tragedy and Hope” written by Mormon historian Carrol Quigley. Beck describes Quigley’s thesis as MAD via a network of interconnected and reliant economies. Then he asserts that this plan has already been implemented and offers as evidence this question:
“[C]an you think of a war since [the 60’s] where there has been a clear winner and loser since then? Vietnam? The Gulf wars? Afghanistan? The War on Terror?”
Well, yes. I’d start with Vietnam and the Gulf wars. Clearly the North Vietnamese took over the whole of the peninsula after American troops pulled out. And does anyone think that Kuwait is still under the grip of Saddam Hussein, or that Hussein wasn’t toppled from power in Iraq? And there is a reason the former Yugoslavia is called the “former” Yugoslavia. And don’t forget the great battle for sovereignty in the Falklands.
This makes Beck’s accusations that “Progressives don’t want you to read real history,” particularly amusing. Clearly it’s Beck who is reading and recommending fictional accounts of history. One of his favorites is “The 5,000 Year Leap” by W. Cleon Skousen, another Mormon historian Beck fancies. Beck beseeched his disciples to heed Skousen as a prophet:
“I beg you to read this book filled with words of wisdom which I can only describe as divinely inspired.”
Skousen also read Quigley’s “Tragedy and Hope,” and found it compelling to say the least. In a superb essay about Beck’s roots and influences, Alexander Zaitchik noted the relationship between Beck, Quigley, and Skousen:
In 1969, a 1,300-page book started appearing in faculty mailboxes at Brigham Young, where Skousen was back teaching part-time. The book, written by a Georgetown University historian named Carroll Quigley, was called “Tragedy and Hope.” Inside each copy, Skousen inserted handwritten notes urging his colleagues to read the book and embrace its truth. “Tragedy and Hope,” Skousen believed, exposed the details of what would come to be known as the New World Order (NWO). Quigley’s book so moved Skousen that in 1970 he self-published a breathless 144-page review essay called “The Naked Capitalist.” Nearly 40 years later, it remains a foundational document of America’s NWO conspiracy and survivalist scene.
[T]he editors of Dialogue: The Journal of Mormon Thought invited “Tragedy and Hope” author Carroll Quigley to comment on Skousen’s interpretation of his work. They also asked a highly respected BYU history professor named Louis C. Midgley to review Skousen’s latest pamphlet. Their judgment was not kind. In the Autumn/Winter 1971 issue of Dialogue, the two men accused Skousen of “inventing fantastic ideas and making inferences that go far beyond the bounds of honest commentary.” Skousen not only saw things that weren’t in Quigley’s book, they declared, he also missed what actually was there — namely, a critique of ultra-far-right conspiracists like Willard Cleon Skousen.
“Skousen’s personal position,” wrote a dismayed Quigley, “seems to me perilously close to the ‘exclusive uniformity’ which I see in Nazism and in the Radical Right in this country. In fact, his position has echoes of the original Nazi 25-point plan.”
So Beck is now promoting Quigley’s book which he plainly fails to understand. Skousen, the authority Beck regards as divinely inspired, was castigated by Quigley as reminiscent of Nazism. Now there’s a shocker – Beck reveres a discredited, Nazi-esque academic. But it’s Beck’s viewers who are the ultimate losers as they are subjected to a plethora of disinformation. Beck’s sermons are as representative of “history” as “Alice in Wonderland.” Anyone who believes Beck’s version of the past may just as well munch down a sack of magic mushrooms in their search for reality.
A lot of jaws dropped yesterday when the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference announced the results of their presidential straw poll (pdf).
In a surprise victory, Ron Paul far outpaced his GOP rivals with 31%. Mitt Romney, who has won in several previous CPAC polls came in second with 22%. Sarah Palin, a presumed conservative favorite, trailed badly with only 7%.
So what might have contributed to these unexpected results? For one thing, it is not possible to make general representations about the CPAC attendees. Only 2,395 of them (out of approximately 10,000) voted in the poll. That means that 70% abstained. And there was no effort to develop representative sampling, so the results can’t be extrapolated to the attendees at large.
Ron Paul has fired up a certain segment of conservatives with his independent streak and appeal to anti-government types. But he is also 74 years old (a year older than John McCain) and a plurality of CPAC voters (48%) were students. Apparently that demographic split didn’t hurt Paul. It may, in fact, point to the more anarchistic bent of youth, while older establishment conservatives lean toward the comfort food candidacy of Mitt Romney.
Some analysts have attributed Palin’s poor showing to her not showing. She announced weeks ago that she would not be attending CPAC in favor of the Tea Baggers Ball in Nashville. Of course there was nothing stopping her from going to both – except that the Tea Baggers paid her a hundred grand and CPAC is a gratis affair. Also, presidential hopefuls Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee all showed up, gave warmly received speeches, and finished below no-show Palin.
Some other questions posed in the poll may shed light on the presidential numbers. For instance, most voters (53%) were unsatisfied with the current crop of candidates. An overwhelming majority cite smaller government, a key Paul issue, as their main goal. Issues championed by Palin, like traditional values (9%) and national security (7%), were far less important to this crowd. And bombast seems to be out of favor judging by the high negatives of Glenn Beck (27%) and Rush Limbaugh (27%). You would think that number would get more attention. Nearly a third of CPACers have a negative view of their most prominent spokesmen. For some reason, Palin was not included in the favorability question. Not to worry. Perhaps that’s for the best as a recent poll showed that she is not particularly welcome in the 2012 race anyway. 71% said they did not want her to run. That included 56% of Republicans, 65% of Independents, and even 58% of conservatives.
So what does it all mean? The Hell if I know. The only thing that I come away from this with is the certainty that the roster of also-rans in this poll will shortly be adopting more of Ron Paul’s policies and rhetoric.
I just thought I’d leave you with some of the wit and wisdom of Glenn Beck at CPAC. I am so tempted to leave the rest of this post blank, but…..
The man who identifies himself as a rodeo clown also says this:
“America is not a clown show. America is not a circus. America is an idea.”
Beck’s idea of America is pretty depressing:
“I have for four years now been ringing the bell. Economic Holocaust is coming. Economic day of reckoning is coming. And for a long time nobody would listen. Aw, he’s a crazy crackpot just trying to stir people up.”
Beck finds it tedious when no one listens to him:
“I’m tired of feeling like a freak in America and I know so many of you are too.”
His problem isn’t that no one is listening. It’s that they hear him all too well.
“We will be so tired. But when we put our head down on our pillow to go to sleep again that night, we can be happy because we know tomorrow it will again be morning in America.”
Awesome! We can all be happy because after we go to bed at night we will wake up and it will be morning. Who’da thunk? The problem is that Beck’s morning after is a continuation of the nightmare:
“It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding, hung-over, vomiting-for-four-hours kind of morning in America. And it’s shaping up to be kind of a nasty day.”
One thing you have to admire about Glenn Beck is that he never gets tired of fomenting the same fear and paranoia that made him what he is.
Even before today’s speech at CPAC, Beck teased his keynote with a video on his web site. He promised that he would discuss a 1938 pamphlet he found that urges Rhode Islanders to vote Communist. Now most people would struggle to find anything relevant about that to current events, but not Beck. He ties this old rag to contemporary liberals by noting that the tract uses the fearsome word “progress.” And we all know that conservatives are bitterly opposed to progress in any form. Beck’s opposition to progress is so extreme that he portrays it as a threat and likens it to virulent and deadly diseases:
“Republicans need to get away from progressives. It is the cancer in our Constitution.”
In his rush to demonize the notion of progress, Beck has now described the Constitution as a flawed and sickly document. This is a little surprising considering the glassy-eyed worship he generally extends to the Founders and their works. But now Beck regards the intellectual and political freedom the Constitution guarantees as a tumor that will consume and kill it.
In the actual CPAC address, Beck gave an audience of the faithful a warmed over version of his Fox News program. He included the cancer diagnosis. There wasn’t anything in the speech that he hasn’t repeated incessantly on TV for the past year. It’s astonishing that none of his congregation remembers that they have heard all of this many times before. Talk about short-term memory. Beck retraces the usual suspects of taxing and spending. He raises the frightening specter of economic Holocaust. He stirs nightmares of the worst of all creeping enemies: progressives. He exhumed Van Jones and introduced his blackboard to thunderous applause. He reiterated his message of impending doom invoking all the standard Beckisms and familiar cliches. He couldn’t have spent more than fifteen minutes working on this cut-and-paste job.
Beck also reprised his dramatic reading of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. That performance was first staged in Florida last November. It is a surreal misinterpretation of the poem’s meaning. In Beck’s mind those words are not an embrace of the world’s downtrodden that they may find peace and fellowship. It is a condemnation of inferiors that they may seek repair. That these diseased and broken souls may be healed. He literally described Liberty’s poem as “an insult” to foreign tyrants, rather than the appeal to hope that the rest of us heard. It is a vision that perfectly fits Beck’s fixation on creating idols and demons and saviors.
Democrats have recently been casting Republicans as the “Party of No.” That’s a fair representation based on the GOP’s penchant for obstructing every legislative proposal from the Democratic majority. Republicans have set new records for the use of the filibuster to the extent that many lazy analysts believe that 60 votes are required to pass bills in Congress and that 41 is a majority of the 100 seat Senate.
But I think there is a better name and symbol for today’s Republican Party and the rest of the CPAC crowd. A name that is in harmony with a movement that dismisses science, rejects evolution and believes that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. A symbol that embodies the anti-progress theme with which Beck is obsessed. This is a movement that celebrates ignorance and revels in stagnation. They are The Stagnatists.
The Stagnatican Party wants nothing more than to remain permanently mired in whatever mud hole they currently occupy. Stagnatism perfectly describes the party whose leaders now wear their sloth as a badge of honor. Stagnatists are against progress. And Glenn Beck spent the better part of an hour today associating progress with all manner of evil. Beck and the Stagnaticans apply an originalist’s view to everything form politics to religion. They insist that society govern itself by the standards and insights of our ancestors. Any advances we might have made culturally or scientifically must be abandoned and we must revert to the practices employed hundreds of years ago. We must behave as if time stopped in the distant past. We must forget what we know now.
Stagnatism was on full display at CPAC this weekend. We can only hope that this regressive theory doesn’t take hold. The last thing America needs is a prevailing philosophy that holds that going backwards is the best way forward.
America’s number one televangelist, Glenn Beck, has consistently been an advocate of traditional values. So much so that he formed a movement he calls “The 9/12 Project” based on the nine values and twelve principles that he has deemed critical for righteous living.
Beck’s conspiracy theories erupt quickly and fiercely and they burn out the same way. This is also true for his allegiances to principles. For several months the opening credits of his TV show included a picture of King or a reference to his words. Those are gone now. It was fine when Beck wanted to exploit the reverence for which most Americans hold King, but now Beck finds it more important to insult him and suppress his legacy.
And finally, Ailes must not be watching his own network if he thinks that there haven’t been any retractions or corrections. In fact, they are so sloppy with facts that executives had to issue a memo declaring a 
Over the past year the Tea Party phenomenon has attracted a lot of attention from the rightist media. From the beginning Fox News took the lead sponsoring and promoting Tea Party events, dispatching their anchors to literally host Tea Party rallies, and donating hundreds of hours of airtime to Tea Party spokespeople and supporters. Fox News is the de facto Tea Party Channel.
