Does Your Butt Hurt When Your Pants Are On Fire Like That?

Glenn Beck has stated, and many, including my esteemed co-writer The Average American, have tried to explain that the recent rally in Washington DC was an apolitical event.

As usual, Glenn Beck is a liar-liar-pants-on-fire type.  But what else is new?

The event was held in our nation's capital.  Were all the less political locations booked?

Mr. Beck stated the "Restoring Honor" rally was in part to "reclaim the civil rights movement."  The civil rights movement was a social and political movement.  You don't talk about political movements at your apolitical event.  And don't get me started on how racist that statement sounds, that's a different blog post.

"Today America begins to turn back to God."  Hard to discuss an entire country doing something, which a large part of the population has no desire to do, at an apolitical event.

Mr. Beck bothered to lie about holding George Washington's inaugural address in his hands.  Why talk about the founding fathers and their speeches if you're not trying to fire people up politically?  His reason for lying was as old as lies themselves: "I thought it would be easier."

And, like a lot of people at political events, Mr. Beck felt the need to tell people how many showed up.  He reported 350,000 to 600,000 initially, later settling on 500,000.  Crowd photography later revealed something more like 80,000 - 87,000 attended.

Sarah Palin was there.  I don't think of her as a politician.  But she thinks of herself that way.  She was in Iowa just this week.  And the people who attended the rally think of her as a politician.  I bet Mr. Beck does.  Why are you inviting politicians to an apolitical event?

Why does it matter if Glenn Beck lies?  What is the point?  The Average American says the left misses the boat spending so much time calling his sorry pants-on-fire butt out all the time.  But a couple of comments from his post sum it up pretty well:

"Make no mistake, however. Dr. Laura, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck are socially dangerous. They preach a hateful (yes, I used the word), divisive message meant to incite groups against non-white, non-Christian, non-conservatives. And they influence people to vote for the wrong reasons with misinformation. It's intentional, and the Republican Party doesn't shut it down or disengage from it because they need the votes. Their influence is scary, as seen on the signs and t-shirts of their followers, many of whom wouldn't know the US Constitution if it bit them on their presumptuous, self-righteous hineys."  -- Sky Girl

"Second, it absolutely matters where the information is coming from. Sarah Palin makes things up. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh make things up. Simply accepting what they say as truth is ceding reality to people who have absolutely no interest in whether or not they're correct. Calling them out on the statements they make is absolutely legitimate and not at all attacking people. These are the thought leaders of the right. They should be held accountable for their statements, should they not? "  -- Nate

The source of information matters.  Like it or not, Glenn Beck and others like him, who readily lie to make their points, have an audience.  The misinformation has to be corrected by the more informed.

SHAMELESS!!! (I'm Talking About Glenn Beck)

While I don't agree in full with the Color of Change's Turn Fox Off campaign (after all, even hate-spreading folks like Glenn Beck have 1st Amendment rights), these points they make about Mr. Beck's and Bill O'Reilly's  racist rants deserve some reprint here, given that the nut the psycho Mr. Beck is having a little shindig at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of one of the greatest civil rights speeches of all time.   From a letter circulating the Internet from the Turn Fox Off campaign:

A year ago, Glenn Beck called the President a racist who had a deep-seeded hatred for White people.1 In just over a week, he says he will "reclaim"2 the legacy of the civil rights movement by holding his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC — on the same day and place as Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech.3



You can get mad at Beck. You can protest and try to prevent him from stepping on Dr. King's honor for one day. The reality is that the next day — and five days-a-week from there on out — Beck will be back on Fox News, speaking to millions and spreading hate, lies, and fear, as he does every week.


The real problem is Fox News. Fox News gives Beck his platform, and Fox promotes his events — all despite Beck losing virtually all of his major advertisers in the last year.


Fox's rhetoric is not just divisive; it's dangerous. Last month, a heavily armed man got into a gun fight with police after he was pulled over on his way to kill people at the Tides Foundation4 — a non-profit that was little known until Glenn Beck repeatedly demonized it, claiming it to be the center of a great conspiracy.5 Last year, Kansas doctor George Tiller was gunned down while at church6 after Bill O'Reilly called him a Nazi, a "baby killer," and warned of "Judgment Day."7