Chubby Asshole. Classy.

Listen, I think its’ great whenever anyone disagrees with Beck. But to go so far overboard as to suggest that he’s responsible for the worst actions of his listeners is to stray dangerously close to his own tactics.

Thats Glenn with two N’s. One for Neanderthal, the other for Numskull. God told me Beck is one of his idiotic children.

Nevermind the $5 million that was raised for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation thanks to Beck and his event.

Here’s some interviews some college students calling themselves New Left Media conducted with the “Restoring Honor” attendees.

The Magic – Bird analogy is funny, but with respect to the character of their public persona I think President Obama (especially AS President, less so when he was Candidate Obama) is Larry Bird to Glenn Beck’s “Showtime” Magic.

Never did Beck clarify what he believes his followers should do with their considerable energy and resources.

Well, most likely, he wants them to keep listening to his television and radio shows so he can continue to earn a good living by being an attention whore. Once a morning zoo radio DJ, always a morning zoo radio DJ.

And hey, if they want to buy gold coins or survival seeds from his sponsors, that’s gravy.

Bobby, I’m not saying Beck should be personally charged as an accessory to a highly unlikely crime of passion. But if he just wants people to vote Republican or Libertarian, say it. When King or Ghandi advocated rebellion, it was explicitly and inherently non-violent. By intentionally taking traditional politics out of the equation while injecting the Almighty and advocating a kind of revolution, Beck is insinuating things that are not just in my head. That’s how abortion doctors get shot.

Thanks for the comment, though!

“That’s how abortion doctors get shot.”

Where’s the personal responsibility? I think you’re making a gross miscalculation by putting the blame on strident anti-abortion advocates rather than the guy, you know, holding the gun.

Beck is an intellectually dishonest demagogue, sure. But you’re letting the fact that you disagree with him cloud your judgement. There’s intellectual dishonesty and demagoguery on both sides, and I don’t think you want to say that your side is blameless because they’re not as bad as the republicans.

Bob – my only point is that distinctions should be made between explicitly non-violent and violent uprisings. Glenn Beck and other conservative leaders have decided not to clarify what they want their followers, many of whom are armed political neophytes, to do.
Consider what happened yesterday up here in Silver Spring. An environmentalist took Discovery Channel hostage with a gun. Every other environmentalist in the country rolled their eyes. A gun? Really? Did he think he was actually doing something positive for the environment? Guns are not part of that movement and violence always takes us a step backward. In this sense, he is also an enemy of environmentalism.
On the other hand, anti-abortion activists are frustrated by the difficulties inherent in overturning Supreme Court precedent. Many of these people also into guns. After all the violence perpetrated by these activists over the years, their leaders should reinforce restraint and non-violent means, but they almost never do.
Palin with her bulls-eye congressional districts. Sharron Angle with her “second amendment remedies.” These leaders need to make sure these revolutionaries keep their shit cool and nonviolent, just like Martin Luther King.
To be fair, Discovery guy didn’t know the difference, so you’re correct to equivocate on some level – there are violent enviromentalists. Someone could just as plausibly blame Al Gore for stoking fear. But if Al Gore held a rally for 500,000 people, he would tell them to recycle, convert to clean energy, vote for Democrats, clean up a beach, give to Sierra Club, turn off the lights, buy sustainable food, etc. He wouldn’t say “turn to God” (wink, wink) to save the country. That’s the difference.

Look, I don’t like these people either. The bulls-eye flyer was clearly over the line, I agree that they fight dirty and that their audience tends towards the dumb and armed.

But I think you’re wrong for three reasons. First, a deceleration that “you shouldn’t do anything violent in support of the ideas I’m arguing for” from Beck and his kind would have 0% likelihood of deterring the type of nutjobs that listen to him and might actually get violent; heck, such a declaration might actually put the idea in someone’s head. Second, it’s not really fair to expect someone to make that type of declaration except in extreme circumstances — it’s sort of an insult to 99% of their audience. “Now, don’t y’all go pulling out your shotguns, but these democrats have got to be stopped!” Third, I think actual violence is pretty rare and without a pattern from these people. There is a history of racist and homophobic violence, a really ugly rash of incidents involving abortion doctors… but lately? Guy showing up to rallies with guns do not count if they don’t shoot anyone and are licensed.

Excellent article, Jimmy. One of the elephants in the Glenn Beck room is that HE IS A MORMON. He never mentions it. Many of his groupies are convinced that Islam is some kind of cult, with very little history and no real standing in the world of “real religion.”
But Mormonism is more recent, far more cultish, and much weirder than either Islam or mainstream Christianity. The Beck crowd just ignores their leader’s own religious views.

Jimmy, eloquently put as usual… But the reason Beck can’t clarify what he wants his followers to do is because I think he legitimately doesn’t know. But the funny thing is he doesn’t need to. He’s the perfect leader for the Tea Party movement because they don’t have a fuckin clue what they want either.

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that I think embodies the Tea Party movement to a T: It was a make-shift Obama campaign sticker that read at the bottom – Change It Back. CHANGE IT BACK??? To what? Bush? That seemed to go so well the first time?

I’m not sure what they’re pulling for the return of in that situation: waterboarding and torture? maybe a few naked human pyramids? how bout a some naked dudes with their nuts strapped to a car battery? Can I interest you in another bank bailout? How bout another preemptive war with a country that posed no threat to you and some nice empire building in another country in the middle east? Or how bout a return to a president that is incapable of admitting a mistake and hasn’t read a book in 10 years, unless you count the time he did lines off of one?

When the ‘movement’ first started a few months after the 08 election, I remember being in downtown Orlando and getting bum rushed by a small band of these Tea Party creatons who were passing out literature.

The pamphlet was scatterbrained, jumping from Ron Paul babble about eliminating the Fed, meandered over to the Birther movement, then plopped into gun rights protection before shitting out another 9/11 government conspiracy theory.

There’s no unifying concept of thought to this movement at all except that you can tell all of them like to fancy themselves patriots with their cute little wigs and revolutionary get-up, still insist that their support of Bush the previous eight years was righteous and that now all of the bad things that are happening to America are the fault of Barack Hussein Obamma.

These Tea Partiers like Rand Paul, the anti-masturbation, pro-witchcraft candidate Christine O’Donnell and Beck are simply fanning the fire of rage emanating from a population of sore losers pretending to be disenfranchised.

The scary thing is it appears to be working if you believe the media coverage, primary results and polling.

You would think that people would learn from eight disastrous years of Bush and realize that way of governing didn’t work and has led us to where we are now. But the memory of the digital age lasts about as long as it takes for this web site to update.