Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The willow is too close to the house.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

No one could have predicted…

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

We still have time to mess this up!

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

You are here: Home / Suffer the children

Suffer the children

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This puts me in mind of the Chappelle show classic “Kneehigh Park”:

When he left Fox News last April, Beck explained it was in part because he wanted “to target the youth.” And, starting on Monday, he will take direct aim with a children’s show on his new GBTV Internet network with the tea party-friendly name “Liberty Treehouse.”

Beck won’t be the host of the hourlong show, grounded in American history and the day’s news, but it will lead into his own daily 5 p.m. show on the subscription-based network. And politics, long considered a taboo in children’s programming, will be a frequent topic, informed — like everything else on GBTV — by Beck’s populist conservative sensibility.

I hate to be all-apocalypse all the time, but it’s hard to see a bright future for a society that gives David Brooks a high-profile op-ed gig and gives Glenn Beck a children’s show.

Reader Interactions

48Comments

  1. 1.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    There are going to be some grandparents who make their kids never want to visit them again pretty soon.

  2. 2.

    Jebediah

    How many people with kids will pay for Beck? Aren’t most of the Teatard People the Hoveround Brigade? I look forward to pay-per-spew Beck working out as well for him as some other recent paywall adventures.

  4. 4.

    Helen

    Does anyone know what happened with Beck’s Israel mission/goal/stunt? I watch the media like a hawk and I saw nothing.

  6. 6.

    beltane

    The people who would make their kids watch Glenn Beck are the same people who are already filling their kids’ heads with hateful garbage so it really doesn’t make that much of a difference in the scheme of things.

    David Brooks is another story. But we have to remember that it is not our society which has given him his high-profile gig as it is that some rich people pay him to pimp their version of reality. Rich people used to commission works of fine art, now they commission opinion pieces in the NYT. Same thing.

  9. 9.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    I see GBTV and wonder why the L and T folks are left out. And then wonder whether they are pissed about it.

  10. 10.

    beltane

    @Helen: There was a hilarious liveblog of one of his speeches there in Haaretz. The speech was attended solely by Likud party officials and some American evangelicals who flew to the Holy Land to be near their prophet.

  12. 12.

    amk

    Talking of ignorant imbeciles, this year’s Ig Nobel winnahs.

    Physiology Prize: Anna Wilkinson, from the University of Lincoln, and colleagues for their study in the journal Current Zoology titled “No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise”.

    Chemistry Prize: A team led from Shiga University, Japan, that determined the ideal density of airborne wasabi to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm. Patent pending.

    Medicine Prize: Shared by two teams whose independent research jointly established that people make better decisions about some kinds of things, but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.

    Psychology Prize: Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, Norway, for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.

    Literature Prize: John Perry of Stanford University, US, for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.

    Biology Prize: Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle. The pair have published two papers on the topic.

    Physics Prize: Philippe Perrin and colleagues for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don’t.

    Peace Prize: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armoured tank.

    Public Safety Prize: John Senders of the University of Toronto, Canada, for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.

    Mathematics Prize: Shared by a group of doom-mongers for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/science-environment-15117051

  14. 14.

    Bloix

    Boy, I hate to be a bore, but “suffer the children” does not mean “cause pain to the children.” It means “permit the children.” Jesus said it, when his disciples wouldn’t allow the people to bring children up for him to touch them, Mark 10:

    14But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

    15Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

    16And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

    “Suffer” in King James’s time meant “Permit” or “allow.” It slowly transformed into “put up with” or “tolerate,” and then into “bear something unpleasant,” and then into “feel physical or mental pain.”

  15. 15.

    ppcli

    “Literature Prize: John Perry of Stanford University, US, for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.”

    Perry is an acquaintance of mine, and he’s not only an exceptionally funny guy, but an irrepressible joker. I’ve never heard of this “theory”but I’d be astonished if it weren’t a put-on. I hope the ignoble committee realizes this.

  18. 18.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    populist conservative sensibility

    What do you call an oxymoron with three words in it?

  20. 20.

    ppcli

    The one thing I’ve learned (maybe the only thing) in 15 years as a parent is that kids have a primitive instinct for things that are preaching to them under the guise of fun. If it is actually fun (and it almost never is) they might tolerate it. But if it isn’t Spongebob-calibre entertaining, they will hate it and shut it out. And make it clear that if you don’t change the channel a tantrum is coming.

    Somehow Beck doesn’t seem to me to have it in him to be Spongebob-calibre entertaining.

  25. 25.

    JGabriel

    When he left Fox News last April, Beck explained it was in part because he wanted “to target the youth.” And, starting on Monday, he will take direct aim with a children’s show on his new GBTV Internet network with the tea party-friendly name “Liberty Treehouse.”

    Great. Conservatives are going to raise an entire generation of children who understand the definition of liberty about as well as they understand the definition of Christian.

    .

  28. 28.

    AA+ Bonds

    Whatever happened to good ol’ Apocalypse Now parodies, I got one of those every Saturday morning from one show or another when I was a kid

  29. 29.

    JGabriel

    @Bloix:

    “Suffer” in King James’s time meant “Permit” or “allow.”

    It still does, or, maybe more accurately, it means “forebear” — i.e., it means “you should suffer (forebear)” the children.

    .

  30. 30.

    NickM

    Didn’t Beck compare those kids at the Labor Party camp that got shot up by a Norwegian Beck fan to the Hitler Youth at a Nazi Party camp?

  31. 31.

    AA+ Bonds

    Sermons about constancy and prudissitude are all very well and good, but the church could be doing so much more to reach out to people.

  33. 33.

    fasteddie9318

    Fucking Politico just reflexively does right wing framing every time. This impending disaster won’t be ”grounded in American history,” it will be grounded in the syphilitic delusions that rattle around in Beck’s diseased brain.

  35. 35.

    R. Porrofatto

    Beck’s youths need some kind of insignia to wear, maybe on armbands or something. It would identify them as true free thinkers and individualists.

  37. 37.

    Cat Lady

    Beck indoctrinating children – OK. Obama welcoming kids back to school – ZOMG indoctrination! Wingnuts are weird.

  44. 44.

    Nancy Irving

    More like Beck has given *himself* the kids’ show, Doug.

    Let’s wait and see whether anyone watches it before we give up on the nation entirely.

  45. 45.

    Origuy

    I watched part of the igNoble ceremony. The one about yawning tortoises was related to finding out how much non-social reptiles like tortoises interact with each other. The wasabi alarm is for deaf people who wouldn’t hear a smoke detector going off.
    The researchers were there to accept their prizes, so they didn’t see them as insults. The ceremony is very funny in spots.

  46. 46.

    kindness

    Why do I get the creepy feeling that Pedo Bear should be over at Becks TV show for kids….and I don’t mean to help Beck, I mean to protect the kids.

  48. 48.

    artem1s

    somehow I’m thinking the production values of this show are going to be somewhere in the vicinity of the 1950’s. I’m betting Pokemon reruns will win the day.

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