Glenn Beck makes it unanimous: Obama hatred is mostly about race
President Barack Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture [Sic].” So says Glenn Beck, the often unstable Fox News and right wing radio talk show host. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
From the birthers, to the tea partiers, to the Jeremiah Wright controversy, to the Palinites who toted stuffed monkeys to the campaign rallies and screamed “sit down, boy” and “kill him” (referring to Obama), to the outcry over Sonia Sotomayor, to the raw, on-the-record racism of Rush Limbaugh, the racist, violent (but curiously anonymous) Freepers who regularly describe the first lady as an ape, and recently described the pre-teen Obama girls as ghetto whores, and now Beck, does any sane person doubt that Obama Derangement Syndrom is really just unrepressed racism on steroids, practiced by people who are frustrated that they don’t live in an era when they can just lynch the people they hate, or force them to sit in the colored section of the bus? What we’re witnessing — and it was probably inevitable with the election of the first Black president — is the unleashing of frustration by unreformed racists boiling under the restrictions of the modern world. They’re very much like the Taliban, in that they’re fighting against modernity with everything they’ve got, but they’ve got to do it online, with anonymous screen names, in order to keep their jobs (and keep from getting the shit kicked out of them by normal people, black or white.)
Each of the dust-ups we’re seeing on the right, from the presidential campaign onward, has had a common thread — the object of their hatred: Barack Obama and everyone he appoints, associates with or knows, especially if they aren’t white and Christian, are aliens, who didn’t win (including the election) or earn anything they have — they stole their accomplishments from white men, and are deep into the process of stealing away their very country. And yet in the addled minds of these throwbacks, the foreign implants hate their white “victims.” According to Beck, Obama even “hates white culture!” (What is white culture, by the way? In America, our culture, from jazz to rock and roll to television and indeed radio, are an amalgam of European, African and Latin offshoots. Even country music is a mix of gospel, soul and bluegrass … so to what “white culture” does Beck refer?) Ironically, at one time in this country’s history, people like Beck would have said the same things about the Irish, or the Italians, or Jews, who each have taken their turn in American history at “not belonging here.” Even more ironically, Barack Obama, whose mother was white and whose entire family growing up was also steeped in “white culture,” since he didn’t even meet the African branch until he was an adult, doesn’t even carry a legacy of slavery in his personal history. If he “hates white people,” doesn’t it stand to reason that he hates his own mother, grandparents, and himself??? Somebody out here needs a shrink (and I think his name is “Beck.”)
They may use different formulations (he’s foreign, he’s a Muslim, he’s going to put people in “concentration camps,” he’s the one who’s “racist…”) but it all boils down to what Roger Simon said so succinctly last week on CNN: there are simply some people who can’t accept that a Black man is president of the United States. And what’s really frightening, is not that there is a racist fringe out there, but that it extends into what was supposed to be the respectable portion of the “conservative movement” and the Republican Party. The Birthers, for instance, haven’t yet lost Michael Steele, have only recently, finally, lost Michael Steele, who’s got to be the most awkwardly positioned Black man in America.
Meanwhile, to the substance (as it were) of Glenn Beck’s rant, which you can watch below:
Beck, on “Fox and Friends,” insisted that Obama “has a problem” with “white culture” because he “immediately jumped on the police” regarding the Gates arrest (never mind that he didn’t volunteer an opinion, he was asked about the case at a press conference. Well, what does it mean that the very white Miami police chief, John Timoney, also said the Cambridge cop was in the wrong??? EURWeb recently collected a series of quotes from high ranking police offocers around the country, all of whom are as white as Timoney, and all of whom, including Timoney, have spent their careers patrolling streets a hell of a lot meaner than Cambridge, Massachusetts. Said they:
– Miami Police Chief John Timoney told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd: “There’s a fine line between disorderly conduct and freedom of speech. It can get tough out there, but I tell my officers, ‘Don’t make matters worse by throwing handcuffs on someone. Bite your tongue and just leave.’ ”
– San Jose, California’s retired police chief, Joseph McNamara, told the Los Angeles Times: “The law is clear. You can’t be guilty of disorderly conduct simply because you are saying bad things to a police officer.”
– Jon Shane, 17-year veteran of the Newark, N.J. police department who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, tells TIME magazine, “…a police officer can’t go out and lock you up for disorderly conduct because you were disrespectful toward them. The First Amendment allows you to say pretty much anything to the police. You could tell them to go (expletive) themselves and that’s fine.”
– Norm Stamper, ex-chief of the Seattle PD, told the L.A. Times that Sgt. Crowley “lured (Gates) outside…and cuffed him up.” Stamper added that Dr. Gates’ anger at Crowley was typical of “a true American” with “a healthy skepticism about authority.”
Dr. Richard Weinblatt, a former North Carolina police chief who oversees the education of would-be police officers as director of Central Ohio Technical College’s Institute for Public Safety, studied Crowley’s arrest report and concluded that the sergeant provoked Dr. Gates by continuing to question him after he established that Gates was inside the house legally. Weinblatt wrote on his blog (http://richardweinblatt.blogspot.com): “While perhaps the Professor was overly agitated, it was the police presence that was creating the agitation. Remove the police presence, and the agitation is gone.”
Weinblatt believes that Sgt. Crowley lost sight of his duty as a peace officer.
“We in policing are supposed to be professional problem solvers…We are supposed to deescalate situations even if it means walking away,” Weinblatt writes. “While I believe in officer discretion, I do not believe that it was executed wisely here. I feel that (Sgt. Crowley) should have seen that the big picture of what we do and why we are here was forgotten for the heat of the moment. We in law enforcement are supposed to be above that.”
Weinblatt believes that Sgt. Crowley’s actions will damage the public image of police, making it harder for cops to do their jobs. He closes his blog by lamenting: “Officers nationwide will have to contend with folks that have yet another seed of discontent with law enforcers. All because the big picture was not heeded here.”
And throw in Andrew Napolitano, the Fox News legal analyst, who goes even further, saying Sgt. Crowley violated Professor Gates’ Constitutional rights.
Do these men hate white culture too, Glenn? And by the way, this is the same Glenn Beck who back in 2007, didn’t think Barack Obama hated “the white culture” at all. On the contrary, he found Obama to be “very white” and “colorless,” adding that “you don’t notice that he is Black, so he might as well be white.”
BTW, we await Mr. Beck and El Rushbo’s pronouncements of racism against the even blacker (than Obama) Gen. Collin Powell, since he criticized the Henry Louis Gates arrest, too.
UPDATE: Fox News executives, ever mindful of the need to hold on to advertisers, distance themselves from Beck’s comments.
“During Fox & Friends” [Tuesday] morning, Glenn Beck expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel,” Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming for Fox News said in a statement. “And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions.” [New York Daily News]
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11 Responses to “Glenn Beck makes it unanimous: Obama hatred is mostly about race”
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The race-baiting we’re seeing on the right is scary, even moreso because there seem to be so many people on board this crazy train.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing the right-wing Latin American media, where white Latin Americans rant that Chavez and Morales are “monkeys” and “dirty Indians” and other words that are as insulting as “nigger” is in the United States, you may notice some similarities in the way American right-wingers like Beck, Limbaugh, etc talk about Obama and his family. And just like with US right-wingers, Latin American right-wing media makes up all kinds of sensationalist lies about how Chavez and Morales are plotting to massacre people and steal from everyone. US right-wing media isn’t yet as bad as their counterpart in Latin America, but they’re getting there fast.
Wow. Scary thought. But not surprising, given that I still see, in 2009, blackface and afro wigs on Spanish-language TV.
Not to mention the way women are portrayed…
Here in the West, somewhat less racist than the East and South, we see the thinly disguised racism of individuals in viralent letters to the editor in the newspapers on a daily basis. Republican efforts to ‘defeat Obama’ in the health care issue are partly political and a lot racist. If it were not so disgusting it would be pathetic.
What is white culture, by the way?
Hmmm… twinkies, bologna sandwiches on white bread (with mayo, of course), Enya, cowboy hats, Cheez-Whiz, bowling, the Turner Diaries, and bedsheets with eyeholes in them.
That’s all I’m coming up with at the moment.
@Cynic
LOL
If you think Beck is a racist, you are a fool and a tool for a propaganda machine.
So, if you question an administration you are suddenly a racist… Got it, boy, that means there are a ton of racist people against Republicans! Care to explain GWB then? Oh wait, that is different!
How about on the left everyone screaming that GWB is a “fascist” “hitler”? Well, does that mean Obama is? After all Obama has CONTINUED everything GWB has done, as well as, expanded Governmental control WITH finance, industry and banking. Gee, does that mean, with health care and being pro-union he IS the greatest example of Italian Fascism?!
Sure looks that way, oh golly gee wiz, suddenly I am a racist for using the damn dictionary and my brain. Oops, I will turn my brain off, must obey… Must obey…
Think for yourself, quit being a freaking sheep, four legs good, two legs bahhhhd!
Grow some balls and question authority, I respected quite a few of you during the Bush years, now you are clueless hacks. Perhaps deep down you are Fascists or perhaps Communists… Oh wait, does that make me a racist?!
Um… I don’t see any evidence that you’ve used a dictionary. If I had a red pen and your post was a term paper … you’d fail on punctuation and “gee wiz” alone. The english language is best used by those who have learned it outside the confines of the trailer.
But have a nice day though!
Typical Liberal Bull, Question Obama on policy you’re a raciest. sound like that is all they got….short and sweet that all this article is worth…..
Um … did you mean, “your momma?” Gad, wingers are stupid. Can ANY of you spell?