Tue, 31 Aug 2010 6:10p.m.
By James Murray
Every day at 9:30am, 3news.co.nz chief editor James Murray will look at Google Trends. He will write a blog about whatever comes up as the number one Hot Topic. He will do this for at least a month – at which point he will have a mental health check-up. Except at the moment he checks between 10am and 11am in an effort to avoid minor US sports stars.
Glenn Beck earned US$23 million in between June 2008 and June 2009 according to Forbes magazine. It certainly pays to have a big mouth.
For those of you who don’t know him Glenn Beck has a show on Fox News, he specialises in high octane, pulpit deliverances of right wing, conservative opinion (as this transcript from one of his shows will testifaaayyy).
He also has a radio station and a popular website. He is on a big downer about the mainstream media distorting facts, seemingly failing to see the irony that he works for Fox News, a mainstream broadcaster whose values are entirely pinned on giving the news a slant. It’s their unique point of difference, it’s their raison d’etre.
Last Saturday he staged the Restoring Honor rally in Washington on the 47th Anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream Speech’. It was even at the same location – the Lincoln Memorial.
The event was designed to “restore honour in America” – “a celebration of America’s heroes and heritage” – and raised funds for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.
The liberal media took the bait and unleashed a storm of criticism for what they saw as an attempt to twist Dr King’s legend to support Beck’s neo-conservative message.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews summed up the feelings best.
“Can we imagine if King were physically here tomorrow, today, were he to reappear tomorrow on the very steps of the Lincoln Memorial? I have a nightmare that one day a right wing talk show host will come to this spot, his people`s lips dripping with the words interposition and nullification. Little right wing boys and little right wing girls joining hands and singing their praise for Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I have a nightmare.”
This television review is perhaps the best piece of writing I could find about the rally. Aside from the left vs right argument that is slicing a bloody gash through US politics ,as mid-term elections approach and the Democrats look to lose control of Congress and the Senate, the review underlines much of what I think about the US right wing as they stand.
It’s like outlandish, conservative opinion has completely taken over to the point that American politics is not based at all on fact any more. Obama has made two big changes to the American system surrounding health care and student loans. Both of which, I believe are sensible measures that will lead to a fairer, happier society.
But the criticism that comes back is always completely off-the-scale bonkers. There is no moderate analysis from Obama’s opponents – instead he is described as a murderous bureaucrat by Sarah Palin who claims his reforms will introduce death panels that decide on the delivery of health care based on a person’s “level of production in society”.
Politifact.com’s Truth-o-meter exposed that assertion as a whopper, but it’s a whopper Beck and his ilk took to heart and propagated over and over and over until I was physically sick of reading it, so sick in fact that I would have been first in line for one of Obama’s death panels.
This general nuttiness is doubly strange if you consider the right wing parties in the UK, New Zealand and to a lesser extent Australia have moved to the political centre and all of a sudden their leaders, the male ones!, are taking parental leave and changing nappies. You wouldn’t spot Beck doing that – especially not on a webcam.
Liberal journalism has got to be strong against this sort of rabid rhetoric. Yes, it can fight back with its own witty opinion, but at the end of the day nothing will beat a thorough examination of the propaganda that Beck and his ilk peddle.
Politifact.com has done a truth-o-meter review of Glenn Beck and suffice to say he was revealed to be a bare-faced liar.
To watch Glenn Beck just before the Restoring Honor rally click on the YouTube video below. Postscript It turns out this video was broadcast about six weeks before the rally, apologies for the inaccuracy.