Noonan: Beck "has long appeared to be insane"
March 19, 2010 7:49 am ET by Media Matters staff
From Noonan's March 18 Wall Street Journal column:
Now for the Slaughter
On the road to Demon Pass, our leader encounters a Baier.
[...]
Thursday's decision followed the most revealing and important broadcast interview of Barack Obama ever. It revealed his primary weakness in speaking of health care, which is a tendency to dodge, obfuscate and mislead. He grows testy when challenged. It revealed what the president doesn't want revealed, which is that he doesn't want to reveal much about his plan. This furtiveness is not helpful in a time of high public anxiety. At any rate, the interview was what such interviews rarely are, a public service. That it occurred at a high-stakes time, with so much on the line, only made it more electric.
I'm speaking of the interview Wednesday on Fox News Channel's "Special Report With Bret Baier." Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns this newspaper, so one should probably take pains to demonstrate that one is attempting to speak with disinterest and impartiality, in pursuit of which let me note that Glenn Beck has long appeared to be insane.
That having been said, the Baier interview was something, and right from the beginning. Mr. Baier's first question was whether the president supports the so-called Slaughter rule, alternatively known as "deem and pass," which would avoid a straight up-or-down House vote on the Senate bill. (Tunku Varadarajan in the Daily Beast cleverly notes that it sounds like "demon pass," which it does. Maybe that's the juncture we're at.) Mr. Obama, in his response, made the usual case for ObamaCare. Mr. Baier pressed him. The president said, "The vote that's taken in the House will be a vote for health-care reform." We shouldn't, he added, concern ourselves with "the procedural issues."
And Noonan claims this shows Obama's weakness?!
And, Ms. Noonan should be reminded, as should Mr. Baier, that we have representative government, in which we elect our Representatives to vote on our behalf. They need to known - or at least try to know - what's in a bill.
Never able to argue against the merits of reform, and no longer able to get away with pretending to argue against the merits of reform....
That's better.
I suppose he should have outlawed the Internet before yesterday.
more.
Scott was a chalkboard king like Beck. He was crazy, but he was actually an educated man.
I think Beck ripped off Scott's style.
My favorite Gene Scott statement was about tithing. He was asked about the tithes given to him by his followers. He said he passed along 10% of the money to God, and kept the rest for himself. That's a pretty good scam, if I say so myself.
The Preacher had the money collected from his 'flock' on a table, and carefully pushed it all into one pile. Then, he took it, threw it up into the air and said "God, here is the money I have collected in your name. What you want to keep, you may take, and all that falls back to the ground, I will keep".
The non-medical marijuana may have been responsible for that.