Who Is Stupider: Glenn Beck Or His Viewers? [View All]

[babylonsister]

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=2761

Who Is Stupider: Glenn Beck Or His Viewers?
Posted by Mark on September 21, 2010 at 4:07 pm.


Today’s episode of the Glenn Beck program on Fox News was one of the best examples of the celebration of ignorance that defines his show and his appeal. It is downright mind-boggling how anyone can take this garbage seriously.



From the very beginning he reaches for the most egregious numbskullery. He begins the program by calling Delaware senate candidate Chris Coons a Marxist. He doesn’t bother to explain the genesis of that insult, but I happen to have heard his explanation previously. It concerns an article Coons wrote twenty years ago in college that described his return to the U.S. from a humanitarian trip to Africa. Here is what Coons wrote:

“I spent the spring of my junior year in Africa on the St. Lawrence Kenya Study Program. Going to Kenya was one of the few real decisions I have made; my friends, family, and professors all advised against it, but I went anyway. My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe the strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists.”

Every rightist media outlet, including Fox News, jumped on the last few words of that excerpt to twist it into what they called an “admission” from Coons that he was a Marxist. Of course, it would require someone with the comprehension skills of a fern to arrive at that conclusion. Coons clearly stated that it was his friends who were joking about his change of heart and ultimate reemergence as a Democrat. Neither he nor his friends regarded him as a Marxist. Nevertheless, that’s the demonstrably false accusation with which Beck opened his show.

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The sad part of all this isn’t that Beck is an ignoramus. After all, he’s made a fortune on his asininity. It’s his viewers for whom I sympathize. The poor slobs actually believe everything he spews. They will repeat it to their friends. They will thump their chests with pride as they disgorge his factless bromides, never realizing that they are making asses of themselves.

In the end, the question in the headline of this article isn’t really important. What matters is who is hurt most by this festival of feeble-mindedness? The answer is that the cumulative effect of this mass dispersion of nonsense is ultimately harmful to the country, to the practice of democracy, and to the very people who suffer from the greatest exposure to it – his viewers.