About us Login Get email updates
Quick Clip
Print

Colbert: "Beck likes arguing but has a deep-seated hatred for logic"

July 30, 2009 8:45 am ET

From the July 29 edition of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report:

Please upgrade your flash player. The video for this item requires a newer version of Flash Player. If you are unable to install flash you can download a QuickTime version of the video.

EMBED
Expand All Expand 1st Level Collapse All Add Comment
    • Author by Conchobhar (July 30, 2009 8:58 am ET)
      2  
      Too funny. I'd just finished posting precisely this observation on the Maddow thread when this popped up. Colbert, of course, makes the point far more effectively and economically than I did. I hate him for that.
      Report Abuse
      • Author by John Paradox (July 30, 2009 9:37 am ET)
        2  
        Hey, remember that, even though Stephen is very good at ad-libs, there is a whole stable of writers.
        Report Abuse
        • Author by vysotsky (July 30, 2009 9:46 am ET)
          3  
          Colbert certainly does rely on a talented team of comedy writers, including Glenn Beck. All he has to do is play what Beck says one minute followed by what Beck says the next, and before Colbert can even say "Right!" the audience is already laughing.
          Report Abuse
        • Author by neon desert (July 30, 2009 9:47 am ET)
          2  
          I always keep that in mind. But then I'll watch him during one of his interviews, and be wowed by his quick wit all over again.
          Report Abuse
        • Author by Conchobhar (July 30, 2009 1:18 pm ET)
             
          He's got writing horses? Did he get them from Spinal Tap?
          Report Abuse
    • Author by epkklk851 (July 30, 2009 9:06 am ET)
      2  
      I understood what Glenn meant when he was talking to Brian. What he meant was that Obama may like individual white people, he hates all whites as a group. It isn't that hard to do, after all, he doesn't seem to like Black and Brown people but he was decent to his camera man. I liked the remark about having a deep-seated hatred of logic. That does describe Glenn and his followers quite well. He tells them to question everything and to verify every thing they are told but he never gets around to providing the details about where to verify the stuff he is spreading. Ah well, I guess that they see things with "better eyes" than I do.
      Report Abuse
      • Author by PurpleState (July 30, 2009 9:23 am ET)
        2  
        The problem with interpreting it this way is that Beck is insinuating that one side of that argument is untrue. How can one like an individual and hate their race? If you were to tell someone that you liked them, but hated their racial identity, you'd pretty much make an enemy of that person.

        I'm thinking that this argument is reflecting Beck's own views of other races.
        Report Abuse
        • Author by vysotsky (July 30, 2009 10:00 am ET)
          2  
          "How can one like an individual and hate their race?"

          By being a racist. The standard defense by racists is, "But some of my best friends are [insert racial or ethnic classification here]!". The racist's minority friends are the exceptions that prove the rule.

          I'm willing to entertain the idea that Glenn might have been trying to make that argument about Obama, but that's the kind of charge that requires evidence, and Glenn has none. Being for affirmative action doesn't mean a person hates white people as a race. In fact, supporting affirmative action doesn't even require that one accept the notion of "race" as anything other than a social construction. To support affirmative action one need only acknowledge that racial discrimination has existed and has lasting, self-perpetuating effects that require positive intervention. Hatred and racism have absolutely nothing to do with supporting affirmative action and similar policies.

          If Beck truly wants to make the case that Obama is a racist who happens to like particular white people, he's articulating his position in the worst possible way. Which is why, until there's direct evidence to the contrary, I'm sticking with my working hypothesis that he just opens his mouth and lets words fall out without the benefit of rational thought.
          Report Abuse
          • Author by epkklk851 (July 30, 2009 10:17 am ET)
            1  
            I know people who don't like whole groups, but would never hurt a member of the group and would be very generous in helping an individual in the group if they knew them or were asked. It is a weird dynamic, but it can happen. Look at Thomas Jefferson, he viewed Blacks as inferior, but he seems to have had a long-standing relationship with Sally Hemmings, with whom he had eight children, who he kept as slaves. Talk about a weird dynamic! But I do agree that Beck does "just opens his mouth and lets words fall out without the benefit of rational thought." That is a great description that really explains a lot. And he goes on about Obama being part of Reverend Wright's church for 20 yesrs, but how long has he belonged to the LDS Church, which believes/believed that Blacks are inferior, and that black skin and baldness are signs of sin.
            Report Abuse
            • Author by blk-in-alabam (July 30, 2009 11:00 am ET)
              3  
              If many white people who hate black people would open their eyes and look at history as it really is,they may realize that they should not hate their blood relatives
              Report Abuse
          • Author by Easy to refute wingnuts (July 30, 2009 10:24 am ET)
            1  
            The racist's minority friends are the exceptions that prove the rule.
            That expression is one of my pet peeves. If there's an exception, then there isn't a rule.

            (stepping down off soap box)
            Report Abuse
            • Author by vysotsky (July 30, 2009 10:43 am ET)
                 
              Not to be pedantic, but rules (unlike natural laws) have exceptions: languages have irregular verbs, people break speed limits, etc.... The physical law that nothing travels faster than the speed of light isn't a "rule" in this sense precisely
              because it cannot be violated and has no exceptions.

              I agree with you that an exception does not actually prove the existence and validity of a rule (unless it's actually recognized as by people as an exception to an established rule). This colloquial English expression is something of an unfortunately vague descendant of "Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis", which would be more accurately translated as, "the exception confirms the rule in cases not excepted".

              (stepping down from shamefully and needlessly pedantic soapbox...)
              Report Abuse
              • Author by vysotsky (July 30, 2009 10:44 am ET)
                   
                ("Not to be pedantic...." Yeah, okay, that wasn't the smartest way to start that comment.)
                Report Abuse
                • Author by neon desert (July 30, 2009 11:02 am ET)
                  4  
                  I had no idea that you were a pedantic.

                  Did you have to register in your neighborhood?
                  Report Abuse
                  • Author by vysotsky (July 30, 2009 11:12 am ET)
                       
                    Yes, and ironically, they say that's why I can't get a job teaching children at schools.
                    Report Abuse
              • Author by The_Cat (July 30, 2009 1:54 pm ET)
                   
                I have constructed a soapbox of tachyons specifically to take issue with your 'speed of light' comment. :)

                My understanding as been that the exception proves the rule, where 'prove' means 'to test the truth, validity, or genuineness'. Thus the old saying means if there is an exception, it's -not- a rule. It thus shares part of its meaning with bulletproof, in this sense.
                Report Abuse
                • Author by vysotsky (August 01, 2009 10:44 am ET)
                     
                  "Thus the old saying means if there is an exception, it's -not- a rule."


                  But if it's not a real exception to a real rule, then to what is it an exception?
                  Report Abuse
      • Author by bintx (July 30, 2009 2:33 pm ET)
           
        Ah, but the problem is that Beck doesn't really mean for his followers to question and verify. If they did, they would no longer watch him nor listen to him. He says that knowing that none will.
        Report Abuse
    • Author by ufleirx (July 30, 2009 9:07 am ET)
      2  
      Watch it last night.

      John Stewart also slammed Beck most excellently last night in a segment that ended in the line, "Nothing like a good night's crazy." This after showing Beck contradicting within 75 seconds.
      Report Abuse
    • Author by Victor Colorado (July 30, 2009 9:45 am ET)
      3  
      Beck: Boy oh boy, I guess having an opinion on POTUS is a very bad thing.


      Beck actually thinks he's being ridiculed simply for having an opinion, rather than the content of his opinion. There is no bigger moron on the TV machine than Glenn Beck.
      Report Abuse
      • Author by Easy to refute wingnuts (July 30, 2009 10:25 am ET)
        1  
        Although there are a lot of people tied for second.
        Report Abuse
    • Author by blk-in-alabam (July 30, 2009 11:04 am ET)
         
      Glen Beck has a deep seated love of money.That love is the root of evil
      Report Abuse
    • Author by trojwl (July 30, 2009 11:38 am ET)
         
      Until the right-wing pundits cease insulting the intelligence of the American people, they will continue to alienate themselves and the GOP further into oblivion.

      I recently heard that Obama was walking past a house, saw it was on fire , heard a screamimg child, busted out a window and then bravely entered the inferno and rescued the child.

      Just about everyone praised him for his incredible heroism.

      The right-wing nutjobs, on the other hand, wanted him arrested for child molestation and kidnapping.
      Report Abuse