Civil rights' new 'owner': Glenn Beck

[mike r]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/27/AR2010082702359.html

Civil rights' new 'owner': Glenn Beck
By Dana Milbank

There is a telling anecdote in Glenn Beck's 2003 memoir about how the cable news host was influenced by the great fantasist Orson Welles. To travel between performances in Manhattan, Beck recounts, Welles hired an ambulance, sirens blaring, to ferry him around town -- not because Welles was ill but because he wanted to avoid traffic. Most of us would regard this as dishonest, a ploy by the self-confessed charlatan that Welles was. Beck saw it as a model to be emulated. "Welles," he writes, "inspired me to believe that I can create anything that I can see or imagine."

I was reminded of Beck's affection for deception as he hyped his march on Washington -- an event scheduled for the same date (Aug. 28) and on the same spot (the Lincoln Memorial) as Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic march 47 years ago. Beck claimed it was pure coincidence, but then he made every effort to appropriate the mantle of the great civil rights leader. Beck as the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream? And you thought "War of the Worlds" was frightening.

It's been just over a year since Beck famously called the first African-American president a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people." And now, accused of racial pot-stirring, he apparently has determined that the best defense is to be patently offensive. "Blacks don't own Martin Luther King," he tells us, any more than whites own Lincoln or Washington. "The left" doesn't own King, either, he says.

No, Beck owns King. "This is the moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement," he said this spring. "We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and, damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement because we are the people that did it in the first place." We are? Let's review Beck's history as a civil rights pioneer, a history I've studied while writing a book about Beck to be published in October...

[Doctor_J]

1. I wonder when someone is going to stop Beck

before he destroys what is left of this country.

[d_r]

3. that dude can't destory America

a lot better and worse than him have tried and failed.

[RandomThoughts]

2. He fell into the delusion of thinking he had power, if that quote is true.

That is sad.

Note something about the movie Dark City that pitches that delusion.




Also why I refuse to believe that correlation is causation, or that I do things that I do not do, because that is a trap.

I however do expect compensation for past wrongs, I don't think I do what I do not do. Nor fall for the illusion of having power like that.

Note if you did use that to steal free will, you would end up alone, since what would people be but an extension of yourself.

I find the concept to be a trap many fall into and, hard to avoid.

[AsahinaKimi]

4. Glenn Beck has

an ego the size of Manhattan. He thinks he is "all that.." Hopefully this will come back to bite him on his tail end.

[katty]

5. GB: crazyass, gettin' paid & his wet dream of nonstop attention

[Judi Lynn]

6. Glenn Beck Has a Long History of Racial Mockery on the Radio -- His Civil Rights Talk Is Pure Fraud

SPLC's Hate Watch / By Alexander Zaitchik

Glenn Beck Has a Long History of Racial Mockery on the Radio -- His Civil Rights Talk Is Pure Fraud
Despite his lame efforts to try to capitalize on the MLK legacy at an upcoming DC rally, Glen Beck can not hide his deep-seated racism.
August 24, 2010

America, the first step in your spiritual and political redemption is finally at hand.

Or so Glenn Beck would have us believe. After an eight-month build-up that began at an Orlando retirement community last November, Beck is now making the final preparations for his “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall, scheduled to begin early on Saturday morning with a salute and a prayer in front of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of the Fox News host’s loyal fans.

On a stage at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, Beck will headline a bevy of conservative guest speakers familiar to his radio and television audiences. Most notable among them will be Sarah Palin, whose political career received early and enthusiastic support from Beck. Despite the event’s sponsorship by the NRA, the host maintains the rally will be a “non-political” event, meant to honor American troops overseas and grounded in the nonpartisan themes of “faith, hope, and charity.”

Since Beck first announced the event, much critical attention has been paid to the date. This Saturday is the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” a landmark event in the history of the civil rights movement that is also enshrined in the national mythology as one of the finest expressions of American ideals. Beck claims that the scheduling is mere coincidence. But he has eagerly claimed King’s legacy, and the meaning of Aug. 28, as his own. On the May 24 edition of his radio program, he described himself and his conservative-activist legions as “the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement”; liberals, he claimed, “are perverting it.” He said he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.” Two days later, he reiterated his intent to “reclaim the civil rights movement,” since “we were the people that did it in the first place.” More recently, he has described the alleged scheduling coincidence as “divine providence”—as God’s way of telling Beck he walks in King’s footsteps.

If this is true, and a supreme being did in fact decide that Beck should hold his self-branded Tea Party rally in the shadow of Martin Luther King, then we should take this as proof that God has a very dark sense of humor.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/media/147951/glenn_beck_has_a_long_history_of_racial_mockery_on_the_radio_--_his_civil_rights_talk_is_pure_fraud/