Today, Glenn Beck took his previous embrace of Dinesh D'Souza's dubious, error-riddled theory that President Obama is running America in an “anti-colonial” manner to the next level by handing over the bulk of his Fox News show to D'Souza in order to peddle his highbrow birtherism, as detailed in his book The Roots of Obama's Rage.
Before bringing on D'Souza, Beck began his show by explaining the difference between fact and opinion (his insistence that he and Fox News treat their viewers like adults notwithstanding). Then he introduced D'Souza as “a man with great credibility” and “not just some yahoo.” Beck said he would “push back on” D'Souza “because I want to make sure the facts are right and separate fact from opinion.”
Unmentioned by Beck was the growing pile of falsehoods and nonsense in D'Souza's book that made it likely little in the way of relevant facts would be presented. Indeed, D'Souza was more interested in playing Beck's favorite game of guilt by association, portraying Obama's mother as so “enamored” by anti-colonialism that she married one in Obama's father and then “another anti-colonial guy, a Third Worlder, an Indonesian” in Lolo Soetoro, who then “turned out to be more pro-Western and anti-communist than she thought.” D'Souza also name-checked Obama's supposed “mentors,” like Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and “anti-colonialist legal scholar” Roberto Mangabeira Unger.
Far from “pushing back” against D'Souza, Beck appeared to agree with everything he said, even sticking large “fact” signs on statements D'Souza highlighted. Beck didn't haul out any “opinion” signs, even when D'Souza was spouting opinions.
Beck and D'Souza also have a shared obsession that they, unfortunately, didn't have time to get to during this show (though it appeared on the blackboard, at the top of the right-hand column in the image below): the return of a loaned bust of Winston Churchill, which had been on display in the Oval Office during the Bush administration, to Britain at the end of Bush's term.
Beck has promoted the conspiracy theory that Obama returned the bust as revenge for his paternal grandfather being tortured by British soldiers during the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya in the 1950s, an assertion that ignores the fact that Obama had nothing to do with its return -- it was already scheduled to return to Britain at the end of the Bush administration.
D'Souza pushes this very same conspiracy theory in his book, insisting that “Obama probably remembers Churchill as an imperialist who soldiered for the empire in India and Africa” and that the return of the bust is otherwise “inexplicable.” The fact that removal of the bust was handed by the staff of Obama's predecessor seems not to have crossed D'Souza's mind.
Beck concluded the show by gushing over D'Souza's book: “Get this book. Read it. Learn it.” And Beck promised that D'Souza would return for tomorrow's show to peddle more of this stuff -- including, it appears, a healthy dose of conspiracy-mongering over Churchill's bust.