from the Observer/Guardian UK:
Frances Fox Piven defies death threats after taunts by anchorman Glenn Beck
Leftwing academic speaks out amid hate campaign led by Fox News host Glenn BeckPaul Harris in New York
The Observer, Sunday 30 January 2011
Frances Fox Piven is not going into hiding. Not yet.
The 78-year-old leftwing academic is the latest hate figure for Fox News host Glenn Beck and his legion of fans. While she has decided to shrug off the inevitable death threats that have followed, she is well aware of the problem. "I don't know if I am scared, but I am worried," she told the Observer as she sat in a bar on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
"At the start I thought it was funny, but now I know that is dangerous... their paranoia works better when they can imagine a devil. Now that devil is me."
For the past three weeks Beck has relentlessly targeted Piven via his television and radio shows as a threat to the American way of life, seizing on an essay that she and her late husband wrote in 1966 as a sort of blueprint for bringing down the American economy.
Called The Weight of the Poor, it advocated signing up so many poor people for welfare payments that the cost would force the government to bring in a policy of a guaranteed income. For Piven, a committed voice of the left, known in academic circles but little recognised outside them, it was just one publication in a lifetime dedicated to political activism and theorising. ..............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/30/frances-fox-piven-glenn-beck