Glenn Beck can’t (or won’t) define ‘the white culture’, touches off mini right wing civil war
Katie Couric gave Glenn Beck an unedited, long-form interview, in which he tried to sound like your calm, reasonable cousin (whose time spent in the mental institution the family doesn’t talk about during family gatherings.) He got through most of the interview without cracking up, but Katie did manage to trip him up; or rather, an email questioner did. The question: “Glenn, what did you mean by President Obama ‘hates the white culture?’” Glenn did a lot of stumbling, and in the end, still failed to answer the question, “what exactly is ‘the white culture?’” Here’s the entire interview for your viewing pleasure (and when you get tired of hearing Beck try to adopt that soothing, next door neighbor tone with Katie, click here for a bit of the REAL Glenn Beck):
Other highlights:
Beck explains that only social liberals can be alcoholics and drug addicts (sexual derelicts, on the other hand, appear to be mostly right wingers.)
Beck says just a small percentage of anti-Obama 9/12ers are racist. Well … maybe more than just a small percentage:
Mark Williams, the organizer of the national tea party movement, called Obama, on national television, a “welfare thug,” while marchers at a recent rally carried pictures of Obama as an African witch doctor. I think that’s pretty close to calling a Jewish president a “cheating landlord” or “kike banker” while carrying signs depicting Lieberman in a yarmulke running the world’s media. But there has been no outcry among Republicans, no pledges to avoid Williams and his movement.
Williams is far from alone. Republicans across the country have compared Michelle Obama with an escaped gorilla, put President Obama’s face on new food stamps covered with watermelons and fried chicken and alleged that Obama was going to tax aspirin, since “it’s white and it works.” The most prominent voice in Republican politics, Rush Limbaugh, even tried to whip up white resentment against blacks and Obama by linking the president to a school bus beating, in a way we haven’t really seen in mainstream American politics since George Wallace. (Politico.com)
Beck claims he tried to debunk the FEMA concentration camps conspiracy theory, not promote it… (here is video of Beck promoting the story, and then doing one hell of a 180)
Glenn claims he has no problem with Democrats … (here’s some video of Beck having a problem with Democrats)
Glenn claims he was just as critical of George W. Bush … I’d post links on that, but there aren’t any clips of Glenn Beck being critical of George Bush.
Glenn claims he opposes “extremists.” (Here’s Beck asking a member of Congress who is Muslim to “prove that he is not working with our enemies.”) Oh, and here’s Beck asking if Barack Obama is the Antichrist … and here’s Beck claiming the “one world government” is coming!!!! And here’s Beck indulging in his favorite obsession: exposing the evils and dangers of “Black nationalism.” Last but not least, here’s the totally non-extremist Beck decoding the communist/fascist imagery hidden in Rockefeller Center.
Kind of a different Beck when Katie’s not around, eh?
UPDATE: Beck’s attack on John McCain meets a mini conservative backlash, in the form of fellow winger radio guy Mark Levin. Now Levin might just be a bit jealous of all the attention Beck is getting, but you can’t argue with his basic premise; namely that Beck’s ravings lack a certain … consistency …
LEVIN: How can you day after day and night after night correctly rail against Obama’s radicalism, how he’s undermining the Constitution, how he’s nationalizing our basic industries, how he has Marxists all around him, and then say in an interview with Katie Couric, I think John McCain would have been worse than Obama? Quote: “How about this? I think John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama. How’s that?” That’s not good. McCain is no conservative, in fact in many respects he’s a progressive. Which is why I fought him. Day in and day out. Day in and day out behind this microphone. Not only fought him behind this microphone but wrote article after article — go ahead and Google it — rejecting his candidacy. But to say that he’d be worse than a president that’s a Marxist, who’s running around the country — I’m sorry, the world — apologizing for our nation, who’s slashing our defense budget, who’s nationalizing our health care system? To say he would be worse is mindless, mindless, incoherent as a matter of fact. There’s our 5-PMer, on Fox … I don’t know who certain people are playing to, I don’t know why they are playing to certain people … I think there’s enormous confusion and positioning and pandering. It may be entertaining, but from my perspective, it’s not. It’s pathetic.”
Listen:
Meanwhile, the Huffpo’s Jason Linkins points out that Beck’s most dominant characteristic appears to be a rather cloying need to be liked by whatever audience he’s in front of at the moment, and links to some intriguing info about Beck’s influences. Read the full post here.
Double meanwhile, Hot Air’s Allahpundit (with an assist from one Peter Wehner) gets hip to the fact that Beck isn’t really a “conservative.” He’s a “Perotista,” with all the conspiracy theorizing, Federal Reserve/New World Order obsession and general mania that entails (sparking yet another civil war, right on Hot Air’s very own blog. Hint: the Beckites are getting angry…) In fact, Beck reminds me of my former radio co-host, who is also a Perot devotee. Perot is one of those interesting guys who sounds totally rational on issues where you agree wtih him (Iraq, for instance,) but crazier and crazier the more you listen to him. In fact, during the last election cycle, the only person the right hated more than Ross Perot was Mike Huckabee (who had committed the sin of raising taxes when he was governor of Arkansas.) Interestingly enough, he’s got a show on Fox, too…
Triple meanwhile, over at The American Spectator, some agreement with Beck, and an ominous warning…
Bill O’Reilly is more of a populist than a serious conservative, but I don’t read many conservative denunciations of him. Glenn Beck might get the boot because he occasionally says things like this: John McCain would have been worse than Barack Obama.
Hard to say, obviously, since McCain didn’t become president. On the plus side, a President McCain would have probably spent a little less on the stimulus (though there would still have been one) and pushed for some of the earmarks to be taken out, would have retained the Mexico City policy, and would have appointed a Supreme Court justice to the right of Sonia Sotomayor. On the negative side, we might be at war in three countries simultaneously, cap and trade would have been more likely to pass, and there’d be more action on the amnesty front than the occasional speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
(Click here to read the AS pro-Beck response)
And last but not least, another Glenn (Greenwald) digs into the confusion on the right over just what Beck’s political orientation is, and what the “movement” he’s leading is all about. A sample:
Some of this confusion is attributable to the fact that Beck himself doesn’t really appear to have any actual, identifiable political beliefs; he just mutates into whatever is likely to draw the most attention for himself and whatever satisfies his emotional cravings of the moment. Although he now parades around under a rhetorical banner of small-government liberty, anti-imperialism, and opposition to the merger of corporations and government (as exemplified by the Bush-sponsored Wall Street bailout), it wasn’t all that long ago that he was advocating exactly the opposite: paying homage to the Patriot Act, defending the Wall Street bailout and arguing it should have been larger, and spouting standard neoconservative cartoon propaganda about The Global Islamo-Nazi Jihadists and all that it justifies. Even the quasi-demented desire for a return to 9/12 — as though the country should be stuck permanently in a state of terrorism-induced trauma and righteous, nationalistic fury over an allegedly existential Enemy — is the precise antithesis of the war-opposing, neocon-hating views held by many libertarian and paleoconservative factions with which Beck has now associated himself. Still other aspects of his ranting are obviously grounded in highly familiar, right-wing paranoia.
So it’s not surprising that confusion has arisen over someone who transformed overnight from a fairly typical Weekly Standard/Wall St. Journal Editorial Page/Bush-following polemicist into some sort of trans-partisan populist libertarian.
Read the whole thing here.
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2 Responses to “Glenn Beck can’t (or won’t) define ‘the white culture’, touches off mini right wing civil war”
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“what exactly is ‘the white culture?’
I wondered about that also. Google white culture and you get 95 million hits. Googling Black culture gets 45 million hits but Hispanic culture gets less than 2 million hits while gay culture gets 15 million hits. What’s up with gay culture anyway? Why do they get so many more hits than Hispanic culture?
The whole labels thing is very curious indeed. Do you consider yourself to be part of Black culture?
To me, a person without any culture, it seemed Beck was just doing a poor job of avoiding a gotcha question.
You make an excellent point, David. Americans don’t really have a “white” or “black” culture, per se — there are definitely different regional and ethnic variations, but culturally, it’s all mixed up — is jazz white or black culture? What about rock and roll? Or Mexican food, is that Hispanic or white? (I’ve been to Mexico. It’s definitely NOT Mexican…) We eat Italian food when we’re not Italian, and my kids, who are black, celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (in fact, my youngest son’s favorite shirt is his “Lucky and Charming” St. Pattie’s Day T.
In other words, Glenn Beck couldn’t answer the question because there is no intelligent answer. I’d have had more respect for him if he just took it back.