Glenn Beck is a sick man. Crazy actually, crazy like a Fox News Network. Maybe if he never existed, it would be necessary for the Devil to invent him. He has carried through his plan to momentarily pre-empt the Civil Rights Movement and rally his Tea Party and conservative followers at no other location than the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on the 47th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. He calls it "Restoring Honor."
Ironically this project makes Beck the whitest of the right-wing talk radio grunts out there. A stark contrast to Rush Limbaugh (an admitted liar and drug addict), Michael Savage (possibly the sole narcissist of the bunch), Laura Ingram (arrogant), Laura Schlesinger (condescending), Sean Hannity (manipulative) and last and emphatically least Ted Nugent.
What makes Beck dangerous is he has just enough BS to make himself sound rational to many. He knows he's on the wrong side of history, and isn't comfortable with that – unlike the other conservative radio hosts. So what does he do? Camouflage the wrong side. Over the course of the last few months he has taken to actually researching and studying Black history and of course twist and pervert it to the current world-view he is pitching; that the Republican Party and it's affiliations are actually the party of freedom and liberation (as opposed to today's Democratic Party). Beck started this with his claim that President Obama has a problem with white people. Recently he is claiming he is the heir apparent to Martin Luther King and that former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is the next Rosa Parks.
I don't doubt that Beck is the heir apparent to Lex Luthor, or even Martin Luther (who openly hated Jews), but obviously not King. Beck's movement is actually not the array of initiatives it has advertised itself as; it's not for war veterans, nor soldiers serving today, and it really doesn't bear the earmarks of a white nationalist movement. He himself claims it's non-political and has nothing to do with the mid-term elections. This is where he is blatantly incorrect. Surely he must know this, but it seems to be a case where cognizant meets con-man and the results resemble a plot worthy of the WWE.
In fact, in order to give this effort some sense of validity is his somehow drafting one of King's relatives to participate with them; Alveda King, Martin's niece, was one of Beck's keynote speakers at the event. What I expected is a cramming words into Dr. King's mouth-fest that is unequalled on the right. After all, Alveda reportedly joined the fray, claiming to be non-partisan and is even quoted in the Daily Caller as stating, were her uncle alive today, he would attend Beck's rally. My first thought was how much was she getting paid, or how hard did he beg her?
It's not hard to understand Beck's true stance on Civil Rights, all one needs do is mentally transport Beck and the network that refuses to part company with him despite dozens of sponsors deserting them due to his insane rants; the Fox network, back to the past and safely assume what he would be commenting on the Montgomery Bus Boycott ('King has a problem with white people'), lynchings ('lock and load'), and black voter registration ('sigh... did Medgar Evers even think to register any good white southerners to vote?').
Amidst Beck's tricknology is the question of what took him so long to recognize and research Civil Rights heroes known and unknown? Doubtless Bull Connor would be adamant today against calling King, Parks, Evers and their supporters heroes. Yes, he does have a right to organize and meet at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but he is way off base in his assertions that Dr. King would be against affirmative action were he still alive today. I recall this rhetoric starting around the early '90's. Were it not for King, there wouldn't be an Affirmative Action. Obviously Beck's hindsight isn't 20/20 as most normal people's are.
Glenn Beck's surprise appearance on the "Joe Madison Show" at XM radio's black-talk station 169 "The Power" proved more revealing than the words of his 8/28 speech in DC. On the morning before the rally. He got pretty evasive once Madison questioned him about his racists tags against Obama. Beck also told Madison that he doesn't believe in social justice. Hmmm... I don't recall him saying that in his closing lecture at Restore Honor. It would have been interesting if he did considering just a few minutes earlier Ms. King added a list of her dreams to her Uncle Martin's, chief among them was: "that white privilege will become human privilege." Pretty important I say, especially since social justice deals directly with race, opportunity and the economy.
No one is really challenging Beck's right to do this, it's just the obvious; a jerk-off and his ilk speaking before his misguided followers (who doubtless won't be under-counted as the black male attendees of the Million Man March were – early Beck rally numbers estimate 100,000) on the virtual-holy ground of a man who shared his dream before millions and changed a nation before the whole world. It's obvious to me as well that what Beck wants, amidst the multicultural presence and backdrop of Restoring Honor is a Restoring Hubris. A restoration of white republican presidential rights to do anything that he pleases provided that one can find his way back into the Oval Office.
Beck and most of the Republicans don't care how much damage Bush and the banks have caused: he's white, he's Republican, he was their guy. Back then Republican voters were proud spectators; they had no problem with no WMDs and wire-taps. Nationalism would make them direct participants, not that they aren't up for it, but they already feel powerless with Obama. They don't care how much good Obama does, he's a black or bi-racial man... oh yeah, who took their country from them. Beck's program wasn't aiming for nationalism just yet, that's for smart people, he can achieve the same objective by sprinkling some black activists, soldiers and musicians to praise him and entertain rural-America's simple-minded dregs, if the GOP loses the mid-term, in '012 he will bounce the blacks like a Fox Network cancelled sitcom and go-for-broke with his white nationalist movement to support the republican candidate.
--Chris Stevenson is a syndicated columnist, his articles also appear in the Challenger Community News.
