Beck's guest accidentally exposes Beck's hypocritical progressive slandering
January 29, 2010 6:54 pm ET by Simon Maloy
As part of his thoroughly ahistorical and lunatic smear-job tonight against the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, Beck and his panel of "experts" attacked progressives for, in his view, rewriting history for their own purposes:
BECK: [Woodrow Wilson] also was a guy who helped change history. If I'm not mistaken it was during his administration that a group of professors, I think from Columbia, progressive professors, got together and said "You know what? Our founders were racist white people. What do you say?" And they decided to really make progress we had to detach from the history that we had and make progress from that. Can you tell that story?
LARRY SCHWEIKART, HISTORIAN: History becomes a tool for the present to affect the future. It no longer becomes a means of looking at the past, but it becomes an active weapon to change society.
Stupid? Yes. But useful, in that it set up one of Beck's other guests to accidentally expose Beck's ridiculous hypocrisy later in the program. As the show ended, Beck bemoaned the fact that documents like the Federalist Papers are somewhat inaccessible in the way that they were written:
BECK: You know what the problem is, honestly? I think guys like you, I think we need really smart people that can take the Federalist Papers and rewrite them for the common man. Rewrite them, change the language. I read George Washington's farewell address, which is brilliant, but I don't know how anybody listened to these guys back then, because it's really difficult. You know what I mean? If we rewrite these things in common language people can access them again a lot easier.
BURTON FOLSOM JR., HISTORIAN: Of course, that's what the progressives tried to do, rewrite them so that the common man could understand them.
BECK: [mockingly] It's just that the common people are so stupid, you know. We'll be back. Final thoughts in just a second.
So how great is this? Beck, after attacking progressives for rewriting history for their own purposes, advocates that conservatives rewrite history for their own purposes, and gets called out by his own guest. Caught in an obvious bit of hypocrisy, he shifts to mocking progressives for thinking the "common people are so stupid," even though not five seconds earlier he was saying that the language of the Founding Fathers was too complicated for the common man to understand.
And let's not forget that the last time Beck attempted to rewrite a founding document to make it more accessible to the masses, he ended up inadvertently endorsing a Constitutional provision that protected the slave trade.
This is really all you need to know about Beck's treatment of history -- hypocritical, factually vacant, and an expression of his own cynical view of the subject.
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
- Mark Twain
Rush Limbaugh could go on the radio and say that 2+2=4 and 2+2=39, and one of the dittobots would call in and tell him they agreed 1000% with both of his statements.
"You know what we need? To rewrite the Federalist papers."
"Progressives were trying to."
"Oh, so NOW we need to 'REWRITE' the Federalist papers, huh? Damn elitist liberals."
Does Beck know ANYTHING about Wilson?
In 1915, D.W. Griffith's landmark film "The Birth of a Nation" premiered. From any POV, it's a vital piece of cinematic history for the various contributions it made to cinematic construction.
However, it's also a vital piece of racial history in America. D.W. Griffith was incredibly sympathetic to the Antebellum South, and the film portrays all the Union soldiers as murderers and rapists, while all the Confederate soldiers are valiant heroes. The film is incredibly racist toward blacks. The scenes showing the blacks in Congress (installed by the "carpetbaggers") feature them sleeping at their desks, devouring fried chicken, and drinking while in session. Unbelievably racist.
WOODROW WILSON'S (glowing) OPINION OF THE FILM: It was "like writing history with lightning".
Beck just knows NOTHING about history.
But I digress (I wrote a sentence longer than a single subject/verb constriction, so, while describing Glenn, you must forgive me).
Griffith did the film because the book had been a huge bestseller and he liked the subject. He also realized that he went too far and so turned around and did Intolerance a few years later.
First, The Birth of a Nation was not originally a book. It was an almost entirely, if not entirely, original screenplay. You may be confusing it with Gone With the Wind.
Second, you fall prey to a common misperception about the film Intolerance. D.W. Griffith, at the height of BOTN hysteria, was flabbergasted that anyone could have interpreted his film as racist (which is a ridiculous thing to be flabbergasted). He was harassed and hounded by various groups.
Reading his comments, his writings, and a history of the film's production actually reveals something (comically) ironic: D.W. Griffith made Intolerance in response to the way people were treating HIM! That's why none of the sequences in Intolerance have anything to do with the suffering of black people. It was actually him crying a sob story.
oh yeah... Glenn Beck is a tool...
If you start to Google "Woodrow Wilson" followed by the word "segregation", one of the suggestions offered is "Woodrow Wilson segregation of Washington". Federal departments, offices, and restrooms were more segregated after Wilson (and his Southern appointees) took office than they were before.
Many additional scenes were added out of whole cloth to "The Klansmen" to form "The Birth of a Nation". In addition, given that the era between 1902-1910 (and thereabouts) was dominated by Teddy Roosevelt, Mr. Dixon's novel becomes less relevant to the film.
And once again, Woodrow Wilson's comment is about the film, and it is the film, not Mr. Dixon's novel, that was so instrumental in the rise of the early-20th century KKK that we all (rightly) despise.
And for all the harm that Beck foes, and that is considerable, Wilson is among the most understudied and misunderstood presidents. He is, in terms of foreign policy and the areas of domestic economic policy that relate to foreign policy, quite accessible to the Post-Reagan (note "POST", with a small degree of latitude) Republicans.
Is MMfA really that naive?
If anyone's naive it's those who accept everything Beck says without verifying the facts first.
Note to self--two full cups of coffee before attempting to make any posts.
Otherwise, it's just sad...
That's not what he said at all. The language used by colonists in 18th century America isn't the same as the language used by 21st century America. He's not advocating a rewrite to change the meaning of the words - as progressive wish to do with the Constitution - he's suggesting rewriting it in modern language. It's like you have a King James Version of the Bible and a Message version of the Bible. One is old school, the other reads more like a novel.
King James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy.
Kind of like this.
So, shush, and go read the conserva-bible.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project
Conservatives don't change meanings, eh?
Each Christian sect, be it Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic, whatever, has a translation it prefers, nay, demands be used by its devotees. That's because the translation supports the dogmas of that particular sect.
This is why it is dangerous to have an ideologue, of any stripe, "translate" the documents of our founding into "21st Century English." Go to the G-D originals, and give your brain a work-out, facrissakes.
AND, this all began with you ignoring the original discussion here, that Beck is a giant hypocrite. Progressives updating historical documents for the common man, wrong, conservatives updating historical documents for the common man, great. And he did it in the span of about 10 seconds.
Do you guys understand the difference between updating the vernacular of a book and changing its meaning around? Beck is arguing for updating the vernacular. You all are claiming he's arguing for changing the meaning of the actual words in the Federalist Papers.
Who says that progressives change the meanings and that conservatives change words? Glenn does. You are just accepting his premise, with no analytical thought process of any kind, and come here re-iterating what he spews, and then throwing up your hands when people continue to disagree. It's comical, really.
Bye-bye. We'll miss you.
There's a conservative movement out there advocating doing that to the Bible once again, scrubbing out all the moral strictures that smack of "liberalism."
Any evidence that progressives want to re-write the Constitution?
Really? What's the point of putting that little bit in there? Are you trying to upset the "King James" conservatives?
No, really. You know what? Nevermind. It's like talking to a brick wall.
Your "progressives want to rewrite the Constitution," is in the same league.
By the way. Read American Progressivism. It's just a book of speeches and writings by actual Progressives of the Progressive era. Read it and tell me they aren't trying to rewrite the Constitution.
"2nd Amendment braaaaaaaains..."
So Mags, now you're a royalist? I don't think the Beckenstein Monster would allow you in his club with that attitude.
Also, I like how they claim that the "progressive income tax" is the fault of the evil liberals because the word "progressive" is there. Like it has no other meaning other than being a political movement. I guess the 36 states that ratified the 16th amendment were part of a vast left wing "progressive" conspiracy...
Then they quote Thomas Jefferson to prove their point...trying to deflect the fact that Jefferson was FOR a PROGRESSIVE tax system...
When you rewrite something and change the language, the risk you run is that you change the original meaning and intent, either inadvertently or deliberately.
Beck decried the efforts of the progressive movement as an attempt to rewrite history. What's to say that if someone with a particular viewpoint - either conservative or liberal - "rewrote" the Federalist Papers using current vernacular, that it wouldn't result in the very thing Beck is complaining about and at the same time, suggesting?
They don't need to be rewritten. What Glenn needs to do if he's having a comprehension problem is cough up fortyfive cents.
I'm not even addressing really Beck's notion about Progressives rewriting history or the Constitution. That's for another discussion. I'm simply saying you all are putting words into his mouth.
MagCynic, 2 hours later: I'm not even addressing really Beck's notion about Progressives rewriting history or the Constitution.
You even TALK like Beck! Good doggie.
Here, let me "rewrite" it for you:
My main point isn't about Beck's notion that Progressives want to rewrite the Constitution (that can be saved for a later date), I'm simply arguing that you all are confusing the meaning and vernacular of words. Nothing Beck says indicates he wishes to change the meaning of the Federalist Papers, just the vernacular.
Right?
I mean, otherwise, what are you defending his statement from?
No it doesn't. All he's arguing is that more people should read the works of the Founding Fathers. Don't you agree? He's admitting that this could be difficult because of the way they wrote and spoke back then. Because of this he's suggesting to take the words they used back then and substitute them with modern words that mean the same exact thing. This would essentially make the writings of the Founders that much more accessible to the common people (myself included) to teach us more about the political principles of the Founders.
We shouldn't even be arguing about this as there really isn't anything to argue about UNLESS you twist around what he's saying. We should all be able to agree that a modern version of the Federalist Papers would make it more accessible to everyone while at the same time keeping its original meaning intact.
If you want to understand the writings of the FFs, read them as they are writ; they contain nothing un-understandable to someone who can read a newspaper.
What Beck is advocating is "dumbing down" and there is nothing good in that. Not to mention what it shows about his thoughts on the American electorate.
Beck--We should really rewrite these documents in modern language so people can understand them.
Beck guest--That's what progressives wanted to do. Rewrite them so people could understand them.
Beck--Yeah, cause conservatives think people are all stupid.
You don't see how ridiculous and hilarious that is? Beck just sat there and said, "man, the way these documents are written because it's really hard for the average person to understand them". And THEN when his guest remarks that progressives wanted to do the same thing, Beck attacks proressives because since they wanted to rewrite documents in understandable language, it means that they think all people are stupid! HE JUST SAID THAT IT'S DIFFICULT LANGUAGE FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON TO UNDERSTAND! He JUST said that!
Is Media Matters really located in someone's parent's basement?
How about Noam Chomsky? Mag, are you all right? Get off the floor, speak to us.
Point is, I'd trust Beck, or anyone he'd approve of, as far as you'd trust Noam. Safer for all of us to read the original, and not have it interpreted for us by ideologues.
Because Beck said that, five seconds later.
Which Beck is telling the truth?
He'll say anything, if he contradicts himself, to get ratings.
People today are so used to the 10 second sound bite, they simply won't make the effort to wade through the language to understand what the people of that day were saying.
Beck seemed to be asking for the language to be translated to terms that people of today could sit through a reading of.
Having read through the postings here, I can understand why people could berate Beck for his statements, but, I don't think he was asking for an interpretation that would support his arguement, I think he knows common sense would prove him correct.
I'm sure most here would disagree.
If Beck thinks that "the common people are so stupid" that the federalist papers need to rewritten so they can understand it, how about we raise the education standards in this country to a level where the common people can read the papers as they were written?
But, I guess that would go agains the rights fight against that whole elitist education thing.
Jeebus, first conservatives get mad that people have the temerity to actually read and be educated then they moan that "the common people are so stupid" they wouldn't be able to undestand something they read. The right can't keep their attacks in some sort of sensible order.
And very telling of the far right's bag of rhetorical tricks, which includes shape-shifting when confronted with an inconvenient truth in order to keep the attacks on progressives, Obama, his administration, etc., going strong at all costs. Mustn't allow the truth to slow you down. You just shape-shift and keep right on ploughing forward in your new form. Given their ratings, apparently there are enough Americans too stupid to see the obvious secrets behind Fox' magic tricks.
Which begs the question, given English is too much for Beck, what language did Beck read The Book of Mormon that convinced him it was all real?
Priceless. Time for your dirt nap Glenda. Mommy's waiting.
Key part of the article above that seems to have escaped your amazing right wing focus.
[mockingly]
See it? Here it is again.
[mockingly]