At the end of a pretty good piece about Republicans’ lack of a coherent position on global warming is this nugget:
And Republican opinion leaders Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck deride global warming as a “scam” and a “hoax.” The Washington Post’s George Will frequently expresses skepticism about the severity of man-made global warming.
“If they come to the table, a lot of them see political suicide because of the effect of the principled punditry,” said one House Democratic aide. “A lot of the people that can unleash on them don’t think it’s a problem.”
Realistically, are we looking at a future where Republicans have to kowtow to Glenn Beck? Will there be apologies every time one of them makes fun of the Fear Chamber or the Doom Room?
I’ve gotten used to the idea that they have to do what Rush Limbaugh says and it doesn’t bother me that much, because I don’t think Rush is any crazier than most of them are. But Glenn Beck…I know he has good ratings, but have things really gone that far?
Warren Terra
The dwindling republican rump is caught up in an an ongoing and escalating game of wingier-than-thou, and some aspect of this surprises you?
My Prius rolls on dubs
Loyalty before intelligence.
Or even common sense.
Doug H.
Yes, they have. There are no adults left in the Republican Party.
Dennis-SGMM
At this rate, the next leader of the Grand Old Party will have to distinguish himself by appearing in a leisure suit made entirely of Spam.
Martin
Is this really any worse than having to kowtow to Jerry Falwell or putting Joe the Plumber out as your median supporter? I mean, how many steaming piles of stupid can you fit on the head of a pin, anyway?
Corner Stone
Am I 100% wrong for really wanting to make Ana Marie Cox my companion?
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Martin: Is this really any worse than having to kowtow to Jerry Falwell […]?
That’s about what I was thinking. The GOP has been beholden to fuckknuckles for a very long time.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
It’ll be difficult to get it to stick to the wetsuits, though.
Comrade Kevin
@Corner Stone: No, you are not. She is married, though.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
They have always been that far. (Chants) All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again.
Seriously, Beck is the just latest iteration of Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Father Coughlin. The Republicans have always been this crazy and paranoid and eager for violence. Just think about the first time some asshole got in your face, spittle flecking from his lips, as he screamed that he was right and you were were wrong because the Bible / Ayn Rand / Rush Limbaugh told him so.
My first memory of that goes back to the 80’s, but only because that’s when I went to college. Anyone older will remember it from the 70’s or the 60’s. Older than that, and it might be Bill Buckley or Father Coughlin himself whom they appeal to, instead of Ayn Rand. It’s all the same, it’s all the same.
.
Just Some Fuckhead
It isn’t true, DougJ. Limbaugh and Beck are just saying out loud the stoopid shit most Republicans think to themselves.
Dennis-SGMM
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
In the past the GOP appeared to be calling the shots and the fuckknuckles were agreeing with them. Now the fuckknuckles are calling the shots and the GOP is agreeing with them.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Dennis-SGMM: Now the fuckknuckles are calling the shots and the GOP is agreeing with them.
OK, I’ll concede that. It does seem like less of a partnership and more of a pimp/hooker relationship now, doesn’t it?
Xanthippas
Hopefully.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
More like auto-erotic asphyxiation, IMO.
JK
Rush Limbaugh is pretty damn repulsive, disgusting, nauseating, and dishonest. I see Limbaugh and Beck basically running neck and neck in terms of sheer repulsiveness, demagoguery, derangement, and dishonesty.
I think it’s a toss-up to decide whether Limbaugh or Beck is the more malignant media carcinogen within our body politic.
It’s a pathetic state of affairs that politicians have to bow down to either one of these despicable, venom spewing rabble rousers.
used to be disgusted
@11 — some fuckhead is right. Beck is just a symptom of the underlying incoherence on this issue.
It’s a cognitive dissonance thing. The Republicans have spent so long deriding anthropogenic climate change that it’s become a reflex. It’s no longer useful as spin, because it makes them look like flatearthers, but the reflex is still there, and it gets in the way of their slightly-less-crazy modes of distortion and obstruction.
DougJ
I think you’re underestimating how far out there Glenn Beck is. We’ve already had wingnut-on-wingnut fighting over Beck (Charles Johnson and some other right-wing blogger mocking him).
I think Beck may really be a bridge too far.
Llelldorin
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
I know that many of them were beholden to Falwell, but I can’t remember it being quite as crazy as this. There always used to be a reasonable number of Javitzes, Jeffords, Rockefellers, and Chafees rattling around the party’s left flank to maintain a vestige of sanity. At the moment, though, the party is overwhelmingly crazy. (With Specter, Snowe, and Collins the entire sane fragment, the Rockefeller wing is officially moribund.)
JGabriel
@DougJ:
I think you’re underestimating how far out there Jerry Falwell, the Birchers, Buckley and the rest of his NR cohort, et. al. were.
As for Johnson, I think he may have spontaneously gone sane, like John did. It happens sometimes. I wonder how long it’ll be before Johnson registers as a Democrat.
.
Dennis-SGMM
No one could have anticipated that a few decades of seeing everything in terms of political advantage to the exclusion of every other consideration would leave the Republicans looking like the bastard spawn of Monty Python and Children of the Corn.
chrome agnomen
for the foul behind the scenes masters of the universe of corruption, beck and limbaugh only serve as shiny objects to distract and be stared at by the faithful,
JGabriel
@Llelldorin:
When you think of Arlen Specter as the far left, as many wingers do, well … that’s probably a pretty good definition of crazy right there.
.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Llelldorin: At the moment, though, the party is overwhelmingly crazy.
That is true; I do still think the crazy-ness isn’t crazier than it was 20 years ago (I still shudder about Nancy’s astrologer and all that jazz), it’s just there’s no sanity to counterbalance it.
I’ve never watched Beck, either, so I’m guessing I don’t have a strong sense of just how far out there he is.
JGabriel
OT, but: when did the paragraph (p) tag stop working as a means to shut off bolding in blockquotes?
.
Zuzu's Petals
I thought you were going to mock the term “principled punditry.”
I certainly would.
JGabriel
Speaking of Johnson, The Washington Independent weighs in (h/t TPM):
Civil War Raging in Right-Wing Blogosphere
Just pause for a moment to savour the irony.
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Brick Oven Bill
Glenn Beck is not a Republican.
He is a good communicator though, which accounts for part of his popularity. But a bigger part is due to the fact that, as far as I can tell, he is genuine. This is in contrast with Limbaugh, who is tied in with the oil guys, and 98% of the political class, which represent issues to consolidate power for their own benefit, in my opinion. “Say what you mean and mean what you say” personally resonates with me these days.
But I’d say the biggest part of his success is because Beck is basing his pitch on the country’s Founding, which again was influenced by the Greeks. Beck has convinced me that the principles and values of our Founding, and of Aristotle so many years earlier, is just about as good of a social model as can be devised for man.
Beck is also very smart. He bases his position in the Constitution, a document that is very powerful on many symbolic and practical levels. I encourage you guys to attend one of the Meet-Up groups, you will probably be impressed. It is not what you find caricatured on these pages.
C Nelson Reilly
Beck’s ratings will force Rush to the right. Rush’s lurch will cause Malkin to dial it up. Malkin will inspire Jonah etc. etc. etc.
asiangrrlMN
Meh. Throw me in the “They’ve always been that crazy” camp. Glenn Beck isn’t any crazier than Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, et al. I just can’t get too worked up over Beck because he’s such a big weenie.
r€nato
@Brick Oven Bill:
You know, crystal meth enjoys a certain degree of popularity too.
jenniebee
La plus ca change, Chad Mitchell Trio said it all before (including, oddly, the tendency to congregate in mens’ rooms), etc…
Oh, we’re meetin’ at the courthouse at eight o’clock tonight
You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right
Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft
But we’re taking down the names of everybody turning left
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Here to save our country from a communistic plot
Join the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranks
To get this movement started we need lots of tools and cranks
Now there’s no one that we’re certain the Kremlin doesn’t touch
We think that Westbrook Pegler doth protest a bit too much
We only hail the hero from whom we got our name
We’re not sure what he did but he’s our hero just the same
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Soc1alism is the ism dismalest of all
Join the John Birch Society, there’s so much to do
Have you heard they’re serving vodka at the WCTU?
Well you’ve heard about the agents that we’ve already named
Well MPA has agents that are flauntedly unashamed
We’re after Rosie Clooney, we’ve gotten Pinkie Lee
And the day we get Red Skelton won’t that be a victory
Oh we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Norman Vincent Peale may think he’s kidding us along
But the John Birch Society knows he spilled the beans
He keeps on preaching brotherhood, but we know what he means
We’ll teach you how to spot ’em in the cities or the sticks
For even Jasper Junction is just full of Bolsheviks
The CIA’s subversive and so’s the FCC
There’s no one left but thee and we, and we’re not sure of thee
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Here to save our country from a communistic plot
Join the John Birch Society holding off the Reds
We’ll use our hand and hearts and if we must we’ll use our heads
Do you want Justice Warren for your Commissar?
Do you want Mrs. Krushchev in there with the DAR?
You cannot trust your neighbor or even next of kin
If mommie is a commie then you gotta turn her in
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Fighting for the right to fight the right fight for the Right
Join the John Birch Society as we’re marching on
And we’ll all be glad to see you when we’re meeting
in the John
The John, the John Birch So- ci- i- teee
b-psycho
@JGabriel:
I swear, it doesn’t get more ironic & contradictory than a political movement that tries to embrace Objectivism & Christian Fundamentalism at the same time…
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brick Oven Bill:
You mean they’re not all like you? Or were you referring to some other caricature?
SpotWeld
B.O.B. Blow it out your teabags
Left Coast Tom
I’d like to see what happens if Glenn “we surround them” Beck and Rush “oxycontin” Limbaugh disagree. Will the GOP just disappear, like matter and anti-matter?
And, yes, I think they’ve been crazy since 1978 when they made their pact with the devil, I mean Falwell. They’re getting crazier now (I don’t recall Falwell promoting “teabagging”) only because they’re desperate.
Update: OK, jenniebee’s reminder of the John Birch Society makes it clear Teh Crazy significantly predates 1978.
va
The short answer, for me, is yes, it has gone that far (and it has to be new, because lunatic Bircher Beck is pretty recent).
Longer answer, I think, is that Beck is going to flame the fuck out, and probably not in the distant future. Republicans are attracted to him right now because he’s dressed himself up with arrogance and filled a vacuum. But I think Beck will wind up destroying himself in some paroxysm of insanity, and the GOP will back quietly away, then end.
anonevent
@Brick Oven Bill:
I base my position on the two ghost brothers from the second Matrix movie, because that poster is right behind me while I am sitting here typing this. I have yet to turn invisible, though, to be honest, I’m not in a sword fight.
Jado
This is how the Republicans work right now – they are led by whomever has the best ratings. Ratings = political capital. You can’t argue with results like this…
joe from Lowell
What do the actual officeholders and leadership of the Republican Party think is going to happen – all of a sudden, the science behind global warming will turn out to be false? Global warming will suddenly end and reverse if we do nothing?
I know, it’s easy enough to point and laugh at the young-earth creationists and lunatic conspiracy-mongers who vote and protest for the Republicans, but very few of the people actually holding high office with an R after their name are stupid or deluded enough to fit into those categories.
Is it all just “live for today, let tomorrow take care of itself?” They’re lining up behind this scientifically invalid concept that will inevitably prove to have about as much real-world usefulness as ghost shirts. What do they think is going to happen next?
Dennis-SGMM
@Brick Oven Bill:
The Greeks, eh? Would you be alluding to the ancient Greeks? If so, then which Greeks: Spartans, Thebans, Eretrians, Megarians, Thracians? Oh, I bet you mean the Athenians. Right. The founders must have been influenced by the robust democracy of Athens, All of the Founders just saw themselves as the new pentacosiomedimni. Or did they worship Zeus. too?
The Athenians had democracy like Rome had a postal service.
demimondian
@jenniebee: And, you know, some things never change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oPngk3RSjc
r€nato
The only Republican I’ve heard of lately who’s making any sense whatsoever is Meghan McCain.
I can see the future of the Republican party. It will be a GOP which moves closer to Democratic positions on homosexuality and abortion and immigration and climate change and even the role of government in our society. It will be a GOP which no longer is willing to engage in the most ridiculous stunts (Schiavo, just to mention one of many) to appease the fundie base while simultaneously repulsing the much larger independent voter population. It will be a GOP which backs away from the embrace of ignorance as a virtue and considers educated elites (which happens to encompass quite a few folks like doctors and lawyers whose incomes should qualify them as automatic Republicans) as the enemy.
But first, someone or something is going to have to pry the levers of GOP power out of the cold, dead hands of folks like Gingrich and Limbaugh. When a Republican pol can actually tell Rush or James Dobson to shove off without being forced to apologize within 36 hours, then we’ll know there’s a glimmer of hope for the Republicans in the future.
Until then, they are going to continue to be a parody of a political party, a small tent party which will make a meeting of Libertarians look like a sober gathering of non-social-misfits.
Mike in NC
Coulter? Malkin? Savage? Hannity? C’mon, there’s a lot of competition for that slot.
As my Scottish mother used to exclaim, “Oy vey!”
JGabriel
Jado:
Someone needs to tell them that Paddy Chayefsky’s Network is a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.
.
Mike in NC
Given his family history, there’s an excellent chance Beck will pull a Hemingway before the year is out. Lock and load.
JGabriel
joe from Lowell:
Christian Right Ascends To Heaven
.
Violet
Republicans fall in line. Problem is, they don’t know who to fall in line behind. So they’re frantically looking around for that leader, and tend to fall in line behind anyone who looks like he might be in charge. The largest blowhards are getting the largest groups of followers as a result.
JGabriel
You’d think a party that claims its heritage from the Ancient Greeks would be a lot more open to same-sex marriage.
.
JGabriel
@demimondian:
Demi, that was wonderful. I didn’t know those guys were still around. They look younger than I thought they would.
.
jetan
Damn, that Washington Independent link is pretty amazing. What’s the world coming to if LGF pays a visit to reality?
Ash
Probably cause she’s not even Republican. The only reason she signed herself up for the esteemed R is cause her daddy got made fun of. But whatever, not like I want her on my side anyway.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@JGabriel: You’d think a party that claims its heritage from the Ancient Greeks would be a lot more open to same-sex marriage.
You’d think so, but they’re not real strong on history. Shit, their idea of the 1950s is completely off the fairway, let alone what they know about from before Jebus.
sgwhiteinfla
Michele Bachmann thinks America is a Christian nation. There has got to be a prohibition against preaching from the floor of the House of Representatives.
Brick Oven Bill
Dennis-SGMM; from what I can figure, Plato’s The Republic was probably very important in the minds of the Founders. Aristotle’s conclusions on the aggregate Greek experience would have been available and discussed among them. Evidence for this is Franklin’s quote that we should never stray far from Aristotle or Jesus.
People say, ‘oh my, political empowerment was not universal with the Greeks’. This is a legitimate observation. But the Greeks held their society together for a long time, and passed most of it off to the Romans. This is what the United States Constitution was based upon.
It looks to me that there will not be a Centennial celebration for the events of 1920. Economic realities can be delayed, not denied.
Dennis-SGMM
@JGabriel:
Most people who evoke any age before our own to make a point usually know little to nothing of history.
Brachiator
At this point, we might as well create a template which includes “the Republicans’ lack of a coherent position on ” and just add topic.
They got nuthin’
DFS
I would agree with BOB at least in regards that Beck is “genuine,” in a way. I mean, Limbaugh’s act is a shuck — it’s not hard to tell that he doesn’t really have any consistent set of beliefs or any policy goals that he sincerely wants to advance. He just has an audience that he knows how to rile up.
Beck, on the other hand, is a converted Mormon. Which is to say that he is manifestly gullible/crazy/dumb enough to mean every single word that comes out of his mouth.
geg6
Okay, I’m on the Blackberry again so I can’t post the link but if you want to see exactly why I’m thrilled to see the GOP embrace Twitter (and why anyone with a brain would shun it like the plague), run on over to FDL and check out Newt’s idea of how to mix policy critique with great comedy chops. It’s a textbook example of the perfect execution of the rare and beautiful double twisting FAIL. That word funny? I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
JGabriel
@Brachiator:
It works best to say “The Repubicans lack a coherent position on…” right before you open a Chinese fortune cookie.
JK
@sgwhiteinfla: Michele Bachmann is paralyzed above the neck.
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
Glenn Beck’s radio show is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. Some days I tune into Beck for some laughs. Today was one of those days.
Guess what he’s doing in honor of Earth Day tomorrow?
Beck is asking his listeners to cut down trees in honor of Earth Day. All afternoon long listeners were calling in to pledge that they’d be happy to cut down trees– one woman even said that in honor of earth day she’s going to burn trash on her farm! So all during his show tomorrow he’s going to be getting live calls of people cutting down trees and doing other things to prove that they in fact do not love earth/trees/nature/clean air, etc. One can only hope that darwinism kicks in and someone tries to use a chainsaw while talking on the phone to Glenn Beck.
It’s one thing to hate all environmentalists as “pinkos” and “treehuggers” and to see global warming as some big conspriacy to spread socialism and for Al Gore to get rich, however, how can you hate Earth Day? It’s nearly 40 years old, it’s a day you’re supposed to at least pretend that you give a shit about the planet.
These people are so knee-jerk that they’d pollute their own air and water supply if they believed it would piss off a liberal somewhere.
demimondian
Although I agree that the Republicans lack a coherent position, I have observed that they often seem to have a consistent stance, at least as long as they have a lobbyist behind them.
Steve V
BOB, right wingers’ notions about the constitution are, well, eccentric and ignore the reconstruction amendments. They claim to follow a conception of the constitution as it existed at the nation’s founding, a catch phrase that appeals to ignorant people who are drawn to the bare idea of “tradition” without any further thought. An example — did you know that the Bill of Rights didn’t apply to the states until Earl Warren came along in the 1950s? If you ask me, a constitution that lets state law enforcement violate my fundamental rights (which is the way it was until the ’50s) is a pretty crappy constitution. Thank god for Earl Warren.
Dennis-SGMM
@Brick Oven Bill:
But the Greeks held their society together for a long time, and passed most of it off to the Romans.
No, they didn’t. the Romans were contemptuous of the Greeks. Those Romans who affected Greek mannerisms, advocated Greek thought, or who even spoke Greek too well in public were known by the pejorative “graeculi”. The Greeks spent almost all of their time fighting each other to their collective detriment. Rome was able to easily conquer Greece by playing off the city states against each other.
The Greeks were not unified and those few city states that practiced democracy practiced it in a form that bears only a passing resemblance to our own.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@zoe kentucky from pittsburgh: Beck is asking his listeners to cut down trees in honor of Earth Day.
Heh. They’re still thinking small and cowardly – if he really meant it, he’d be firing them up to cut down those giant windmills they use for green electricity.
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
Brick Oven Bill–
You have GOT to be kidding. Glenn Beck is totally batsh*t crazy. By comparison Rush appears sane, reasonable and logical. I’ve actually listened to Beck’s radio show for a lot more hours than I’d like to admit. Why? Because the man can’t remember anything he said 5 minutes before, or at least I hope that’s true because that is the only explanation for the twisted ways that he contradicts himself every 5-10 minutes.
For instance, one minute he’s railing against all democrats because they’re really all secret socialists who want to destroy everything that is good about America. Five minutes later he’s practically crying and saying why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along, why all the hate? Why can’t everyone just work together? Why can’t liberals and conservatives come together and find common ground? Five minutes later he’s talking about how a conservative revolution is coming and it’s not going to be pretty. Then he complains that conservatives are villified by the left as crazy gunlovers– and then tells everyone that they’re coming for your guns so you better stock up. One of his favorite repeated warnings is that America is going to completely fall apart at some point and that everyone better be ready. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Seriously. I’m not exaggerating. Beck might make a good point here and there– but whatever he says 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after completely and totally undermines it. Just today he actually compared Obama to Goebbels. I kid you not. Right after he ranted about how waterboarding is NOT torture and that it doesn’t matter if it were torture because torture works!
Beck is living in ranting, raving rightwing fantasy land. If it’s not all an act I really do wonder about his mental health and stability. The man is really not well.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
I think they believe that they’ll get big campaign contributions from the fossil fuels industry if they pretend that global warming is a hoax. They believe that if they somehow manage to lose their next election, they’ll get a cushy job in a “think” tank funded by those same industries. Most importantly, they think that what happens to them in the next election is far more important than what happens to the Earth as a whole in the next 50-100 years.
Brick Oven Bill
Most of what Rome accomplished was borrowed from the Greeks Dennis. Venezuela’s Chavez is contemptuous of the US, although this does not mean that his economy is based on anything other than selling the accident of geology that is his oil.
One beautiful thing about the Constitution is that it seems to be a uniting force among the people who care, and Beck recognizes this. So you’ve got that going for you Dennis, know it or not. I recommend attending a Meet Up group.
…
We all have our flaws Zoe. You should attend a meeting too, and see the people who are attracted to the message. Make your own judgments.
Brick Oven Bill
At our last, secret meeting, held in the woods, as announced on Meetup.com, we viewed this very concerning film clip. Don’t tell Janet.
Brachiator
@demimondian:
And sometimes they have a wide stance, especially when they are soliciting man on man sex in airport restrooms.
Kyle
What do the actual officeholders and leadership of the Republican Party think is going to happen – all of a sudden, the science behind global warming will turn out to be false? Global warming will suddenly end and reverse if we do nothing?
They’re not *thinking*.
Repubs are like a five-year old throwing a tantrum, believing that if he just WANTS something to be true then that makes it true, be it global warming, creationism, magical revenue-increasing tax cuts or American exceptionalism. Their base is composed of tribal authoritarian-followers who stubbornly refuse to think or recognize evidence; anything to perpetuate his illusions so he can keep driving his SUV and being a selfish prick with no consequences.
The rest of us grew out of this pre-Piagetian stage by age 7. Having a background in child psychology is very useful when analyzing the Repigs.
Zuzu's Petals
@jenniebee:
I grew up in Orange County (CA) in the ’50s and ’60s. My dear darling mom was a Bircher.
I can’t tell you how many nutty Dan Smoot tracts I found lying around. “None Dare Call it Treason” was on the bookshelf. John Schmitz was a hero.
Talk radio and wingnut TV was in its infancy; the main difference was that none of these nutters benefited from the amplifying effect of cable TV and the Internet. Obviously.
OriGuy
Anyone else watching Krod Mandoon on Comedy Central? How long until Beck appears wearing pagan goat pants?
Johnny Pez
@zoe kentucky from pittsburgh:
Glenn Beck, you are Saruman the White, and I claim my five dollars.
Batocchio
Doug, I share your concern about Beck, but I think you’re defining dumb down.
Comrade grumpy realist
Actually, the concept of constitutional gov’t (and our form of it) has far more to do with the fights between the popes and the cardinals in the 11th and 12th centuries. Roman law comes in a lot however because much of canon law got swiped from it. (Which is how Roman law concepts actually ended up influencing English law even through they refused to implement it for civil law.)
Anyone who thinks that we took our stuff over from the *Greeks* hasn’t read much legal history. The Corpus Iuris Civilis (and use in Europe up until around the time Napoleon tried to revise everything with his Code) was the lifeblood of European law for a long, long time.
I’d say the two works that were most influential on Western Culture are a) the Bible, and b) the Corpus Iuris Civilis.
If the Christers want a “bible-based society”, I suggest they look at Geneva….
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
B.O.B.-
I’d be seriously uncomfortable to be in the same room with a bunch of people who think the world of Glenn Beck– uneducated, proudly ignorant, conspiracy-minded, liberal-hating and Obama-hating reactionaries who are hair-on-fire angry at the world. The “teaparties” were largely Glenn’s and look at all the nuts those attracted. For pete’s sake, at Pittsburgh’s teaparty Alan Keyes was the guest speaker, one of the most hateful, vitriolic and judgemental people I’ve ever seen speak to a crowd. They LOVED him.
You can pretend that Beck’s listeners are all interesting and thoughtful but that is because your winger lens distorts reality. For me, going to a Beck meet-up would be like going to an Ann Coulter book club. Not going to happen.
Ash Can
@zoe kentucky from pittsburgh: I’d like to see how many geniuses in Beck’s audience get cited for violating ordinances or destroying public property in their tree-cutting spree. After all, it’s not like they’d stop to think about that sort of thing (or anything at all, for that matter).
RememberNovember
They have already gone Galt- the Gulch is Limbaugh’s show and Becks Doom Room.
OriGuy
@Ash Can: I was thinking the same thing. Also how many of them will cut off a finger or drop a tree onto their own car.
Crockpot
I listened to Glenn Beck’s show for around 5 minutes this morning while driving into work. I’m really glad that was all I could listen to, because the stupid was starting to chafe.
He was COMPLAINING, that the constitution says we must honor treaties with other countries. FULL STOP. THAT WAS HIS POINT.
We signed a treaty under Clinton, that the republican congress ratified saying we WOULD NOT TORTURE and Glenn was pissed because that was, in his words ‘TRANSNATIONALISM’.
His huge complaint about it was ‘we the people didn’t vote on it’. This is how ‘they’ (whoever the fuck they are, I guess our elected officials in this case) are going to ‘take over’.
The man is fuck-nut crazy and anyone that seriously believes or follows the man needs serious psychological help.