Hypocrisy watch: Beck to tackle media who unfairly create "villains"
June 02, 2010 3:06 pm ET by Media Matters staff
On tonight's show, Glenn Beck promises to teach us about instances in which "the media has, or the politicians have created villains before, and it's spiraled the world out of control and only until after did you find out wait, wait, wait, that's not really what happened." His chalk board announced yesterday that the issue of "Media Created Villains" will be at the top of the agenda:
I don't want to get ahead of myself, but this may be the most brazen display of Beck's lack of self-awareness to date. Anyone who tunes in to the Glenn Beck spectacle knows that he's created more villains than Marvel Comics.
But Beck's villains are more like Rebecca Nurse from the Crucible than the Green Goblin: His charges against them are based on amazing distortions and outright fabrications. Among Beck's cast of "Media Created Villains":
- Barack Obama, the "Marxist" with "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," whose "evil" administration will "bash your brains out" and threatens the very survival of the United States.
- Progressives, who set a "time bomb" to "destroy" America as a "religious and moral people"
- Cass Sunstein, "the most evil man, the most dangerous man in America" who "controls everything" and wants to tax your speech and steal your organs.
- John Holdren, the advocate of "forced abortions," who, along with Sunstein, "will be responsible for many, many deaths."
- ACORN, the potential murderers who will "lie, cheat and steal their way through anything"
- Anita Dunn, the "lizard lady" who "worships Mao Zedong."
- Jim Wallis, the "Marxist" reverend who "perver[ts] the gospel" promotes "the devil's way."
- Van Jones, the "convicted felon" and potential murderer.
- Andy Stern, the "Leninist" former "union boss" of "communist" "thugs," who, along with other progressives, is "taking you to a place to be slaughtered."
- Eric Holder, the "defend[er]" of "radical Islam" who wants to "cuddle and hold the Islamic radicals."
- Simon Greer, the Jewish Funds for Justice president whose "talk" about "put[ting] the common good first" leads "to death camps."
- The IMF, a "shadowy, shady organization" plotting to implement "a global V-A-T tax."
Feel free to borrow our research, Glenn.
I'll wager that he won't actually discuss a single instance of actual unfairly media-created victimhood.
Even the Zombified Beck viewers must have some level of cognitive functionality (they must be able to find food and money in order to get FOX on the TV).
Raising the specter of Media influencing viewers is opening a door that FOX likely wants closed.(Survival Seeds Anyone?)
Watch for Beck to soon move on to another topic...
Whether it's a militia member of the Aryan Brotherhood tuning in to Glenn in the morning, or an alcoholic widow living in a trailer park somewhere in Appalachia, those identifying themselves as "Christian" in the right-wing sense of the word have their own personal reasons to believe Glenn's stream of nonsense.
They depend on Glenn's lies like a baby depends on it's mother's milk.
In an odd way, the more absurd Glenn becomes, the tighter his faithful hold on to his every word. This man to them must be telling the truth if what he says is so at odds with the evil mainstream media.
Taken at face value, what Beck is saying here happens to be true. The problem is that he's using this small truth to perpetrate a larger lie: That HE is the villain-du-jour, all set up to be martyred for the cause of conservatism on the crucifix of liberal media bias.
Or something. You get the point, hopefully.
This is how Beck (and right-wing media in general) work. They make criticisms without self-awareness, because they know that their audience doesn't want to be self-aware.