Conservative media mogul Glenn Beck on Thursday called reports of a measles outbreak a “hoax” designed to make Americans “obey government.”
“The measles hoax,” Beck began, “is it possible we have been lied to about the measles, this outbreak?”
Beck said that the reports are designed to instill a “herd mentality,” so that parents would “grab their children and obey the government.”
Beck then embarked on a complete misreading of the origins of the recent cases of measles, traced to Disneyland in December, by blaming it on Filipino immigrants that infected Amish communities in Ohio in April.
The Center for Disease Control And Prevention has established this as a separate outbreak from the current cases spreading from California.
Within this mistaken explanation, Beck got more facts wrong: there was no “Filipino family” that traveled to the U.S. that infected Amish people. Rather, unvaccinated Amish missionaries traveled to the Philippines and brought the disease back to Ohio last year.
But Beck and his co-host were satisfied with blaming the current outbreak on “immigrants.”
“You don’t wanna blame it on immigrants,” Beck’s co-host said sarcastically, “because we want them to flow into America freely.”
“So it’s gotta be about vaccinations,” he continued. “That’s what they had to make it about and they have. They’ve done that pretty effectively.”
The right-wing media mogul calls Obama a “sociopath” and, for some reason, screams about the pursuit of happiness
In the days since Obamacare reached its goal of enrolling at least 7 million people before the end of March, Republicans and conservatives have been struggling to figure out the best way to downplay the good news and reaffirm their deeply held belief that the health insurance reform is a disaster. While most have decided to pursue what one could call the “phony numbers” tactic and argue the White House was “cooking the books,” Glenn Beck revealed on his radio show on Wednesday that he would be approaching the issue from a slightly different angle.
Instead of critiquing the administration’s arithmetic, Beck opted to yell incoherently about how President Obama is a sociopathic dictator who is trying to keep Glenn Beck from pursuing happiness.
Speaking of Obama’s Tuesday press event at the White House, during which the president celebrated Obamacare’s early successes and urged Republicans to give up on repealing the law, Beck said, “We’ve never had this before.”
“This guy, this guy,” Beck continued, “you put him in a military uniform — I’m not kidding you — you put him on a balcony in a military uniform, this guy is a full-fledged dictator.”
Beck went on to complain that the press event was orchestrated by the White House and attended by supporters of the president, a situation that Beck argued reduced the event to “a circus.” He railed against the press for covering the event and the Obamacare 7 million figure with, he claimed, mendacious intent. “And everyone in the press — you rat bastards — every single one of you know what he’s saying isn’t true.”
“You know it!” Beck repeated. “You know it!”
Beck went on to claim that the president is “a sociopath” who “doesn’t care anymore” and then repeated his earlier statement that Obama was thisclose to becoming a dictator by implementing a strange and lengthy metaphor about how Obama, were he an autocrat, would wear a uniform of his own design “because nobody else could design a uniform like he could.”
Seemingly reaching his wit’s end, Beck next proclaimed, “I’m not going to pay attention to these people anymore!” He then delivered a lengthy and passionate monologue about how he would not allow Obamacare to impinge upon his freedom. Or something:
I’m not going to waste. My. Life. I’m going to do what I was born to do! All men were created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS! I have a right to pursue my happiness! I have a right to do what I was born to do, not what they tell me what to do. That’s what that phrase means!
“Have you had enough?” Beck asked his audience. Then, lowering his voice and adopting a much more genial tone, Beck assured his listeners that his state of mind was “great” because he’s “had enough.”
If anyone from the MSM believes that the influence Fox News wields in the media is negligible this video should prove as a reminder that they are wrong. Glenn Beck is a case in point. His show on CNN made barely a blip on of the RWNM’s radar, but as soon as he began his Vicks vapor rub routine on Fox News, he became a media sensation and tea party hero. But as soon as he was booted of the network by Ailes because his mission had been accomplished, we rarely hear much about the rodeo clown these days. But it doesn’t mean he’s still not melting down and issuing warnings of the coming left wing Armageddon.
Beck: Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsie with these people, you are wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you. They will do it. They’re not messing around. Those in the media – and I am included in this – they will drag us out into the streets and kill us. If you’re wealthy, they will kill you for what you have. You cannot tolerate this kind of stuff. You certainly do not encourage it.”
Wow, that’s out there even for him. I was hoping to see one of his Dr. Gene Scott charts in the mix. Oh, well. Anyway, please keep donating to our Solidarity Pizza fund to support the Occupy Wall Street movement. It will also go a long way in ensuring more insane meltdowns by the wingnuts and Wall Street apologists which is just fun to watch: Beck’s warning to Nancy Pelosi was priceless. Vodpod videos no longer available.
Glenn Beck celebrated the death of Osama Bin Laden with cookies, confetti and a marching band: but not before pretending to castigate people for participating in the same kinds of celebrations.
Beck began his Monday show on a seemingly solemn note. He said that footage of the celebrations at the White House, Ground Zero and across the country reminded him of the rejoicing by some over 9/11. He called those celebrations “offensive” and said, “America, we are better than this. We are better than jumping into lakes and holding signs and cigars. I think we’re better than that.”
Then, Beck abruptly switched gears.
“I mean, why hand out candy when you can have cookies and confetti and a marching band, huh?” he said. With that, confetti began falling from the ceiling, a plate of cookies was produced, and a marching band emerged. Beck even danced a little bit as the band played.
He then said he had started by feeling “bad” about the celebrations, but thought, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!”
In the wake of Glenn Beck announcing he will end his Fox News show, Media Matters demonstrates how throughout Beck’s tenure at Fox News the false, incendiary, and even violent rhetoric he pushed on his television and radio shows spread throughout the network. Where Beck leads Fox follows … but who will they follow now?
One way to demonstrate that Glenn Beck is into the conspiracy business just for the money and nothing else is to take a look at some of the solutions to said conspiracies that he has offered over the years.
Oh, wait! He never offers solutions to his conspiracy theories. He never offers his listeners an alternative way out of his apocalyptic scenarios. That is, except to tell his audience to buy gold and food rationing kits for the inevitable apocalypse.
Day after day, week after week, Beck delivers what his audience wants to hear, that Obama is evil, his administration is evil and all global government is evil. One wonders why Fox News has never contemplated (until now) taking him off the air for some of the truly insane rants he has delivered over the past few years? Perhaps because it fits into their agenda to topple the Obama administration by any means necessary.
Almost every time I flipped on television last week, there was a deeply angry guy on a running tirade about the conspiracies afoot, the enemies around all corners, and how he alone seemed to understand what was under way.
While it’s true that Charlie Sheen sucked up a lot of airtime last week, I’d been watching Glenn Beck, the Fox News host who invoked Hezbollah, socialists, the price of gas, Shariah law, George Soros, Planned Parenthood, and, yes, Charlie Sheen, as he predicted a coming apocalypse.
Mr. Beck, a conservative Jeremiah and talk-radio phenomenon, burst into television prominence in 2009 by taking the forsaken 5 p.m. slot on Fox News and turning it into a juggernaut. A conjurer of conspiracies who spotted sedition everywhere he looked, Mr. Beck struck a big chord and ended up on the cover of Time magazine and The New York Times Magazine, and held rallies all over the country that were mobbed with acolytes. He achieved unheard-of ratings, swamped the competition and at times seemed to threaten the dominion of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity at Fox.
But a funny thing happened on the way from the revolution. Since last August, when he summoned more than 100,000 followers to the Washington mall for the “Restoring Honor” rally, Mr. Beck has lost over a third of his audience on Fox — a greater percentage drop than other hosts at Fox. True, he fell from the great heights of the health care debate in January 2010, but there has been worrisome erosion — more than one million viewers — especially in the younger demographic. Continue reading here…
Bill Kristol criticized the Fox News host’s Egypt coverage, and Rich Lowry and others are piling on. But the condemnations are unlikely to spread to the GOP mainstream—and favorites like Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Breitbart are two reasons why.
That brings us to their fellow conservative Jennifer Rubin, who writes for The Washington Post. “What should thoughtful conservatives do? I’ve said it before, but it is especially relevant here: Police their own side,” she advised this week. “Rather than reflexively rising to his defense when questioned about Beck, why don’t conservatives call him out and explain that he doesn’t represent the views of mainstream conservatives? Conservative groups and candidates should be forewarned: If they host, appear with or defend him they should be prepared to have his extremist views affixed to them.”
As a Beck critic who criticized the creepy aspects of his on-air personality even when he was touting awesome Friedrich Hayek books, I’d love to see more folks in the conservative movement adopt Rubin’s attitude. But they won’t. One reason is that it’s difficult to condemn Beck in isolation. Acknowledging that his show is indefensible—that’s the core of her critique—means confronting the fact that Fox News under Roger Ailes knowingly broadcasts factually inaccurate and egregiously misleading nonsense every day. How many conservatives are willing to stipulate that?
It also means departing from the conservative movement’s standard approach to its entertainers: It’s verboten to criticize anyone on “your own side” in an ideological conflict many see as binary. Continue reading here…
Glenn Beck blasts the uprising in Cairo as a threat to our way of life. Michelle Goldberg on how the rebellion is splitting U.S. conservatives—and the fallout for the 2012 presidential campaign. Plus, full coverage of Egypt’s protests.
Store food and prepare for the coming global insurrection: That’s the warning Glenn Beck issued Monday. The Muslim Brotherhood and American radicals, he informed us, are operating in tandem to bring about “the destruction of the Western world.” On his Fox show, Beck presented a clip of Mohamed ElBaradei calling for a “New Egypt that is democratic, that is based on social justice.”
The phrase “social justice” flashed on the screen, because in Beck’s world, it’s a code word for a totalitarian leftist agenda, just as the Egyptian protesters’ use of the phrase “day of rage” signals their kinship with Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. “We’ve shown you tonight that Hamas, Code Pink”—the feminist anti-war group—”and the Muslim Brotherhood are all linked together.” With the future bleak, Beck called on his viewers to pray for “our way of life” and for Israel.
Since the war in Iraq, it seems, Beck, like others on the right, has changed his mind about the desirability of Middle Eastern democracy.
It was only a few years ago, you’ll remember, that conservatives were crowing about a new birth of freedom in the Muslim world. Gunning for war with Iraq, conservatives attacked earlier generations of foreign-policy realists for propping up Arab dictators, arguing that political oppression and corruption created stultifying societies were terrorism bred. George Bush made the rhetorical championing of Middle Eastern democracy a centerpiece of his presidency. In a 2003 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, he promised that a “liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions.” More…
Rachel Maddow took the opportunity tonight to really go after Glenn Beck, and did so without really criticizing him directly as much as merely using Beck’s own words against him. Given Beck’s serious concern about the implications of the Egyptian uprising, Maddow proves this isn’t the first time Beck has sounded catastrophic alarm bells.
First Maddow defined opportunistic individuals as those who support an idea and then use current events to justify bringing about their proposal no matter what the circumstances might be. For instance Republicans will always advocate for lower taxes no matter if the government has a surplus or a deficit. Similarly, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will always suggest that now is a good time to bomb Iran, whether it’s a “random Tuesday” or as a result of the turmoil in Egypt.
With this as background, Maddow then showed multiple videos of Beck describing the uprisings in Egypt as evidence of the “coming insurrection.” Maddow concluded:
“For Mr. Beck and for others who see a direct ratio between their own success and how afraid they can make their audiences, it turns out that an uprising in Egypt is even better evidence of this being the end of the world than say the last evidence we had, which was President Obama passing Wall Street reform last July.”
By then showing video of Beck getting equally angry about the financial regulation bill, Maddow delivers an effective and hard to defend against blow. She’s not really attacking Beck, well maybe she is, but what she more convincingly accomplishes here is simply raising doubt about how serious one should take Beck in the future if he gets this apoplectic so frequently.
Then in a final moment where she admits her own recent mistake of confusing satire for something real, Maddow delivers a final jab at Beck by referencing his “analysis” regarding China’s expansion plans:
“In a world where China taking over New Zealand is what passes for real analysis on the situation in Egypt, how do we know that’s not satire too?”
The Fifth Column 