Frank Rich: Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day

[Me.]

“With all due respect to Jimmy Carter, the racist component of Obama-hatred has been undeniable since the summer of 2008, when Sarah Palin rallied all-white mobs to the defense of the “real America.” Joe Wilson may or may not be in that camp, but, either way, that’s not the news. As we watched and rewatched the South Carolina congressman’s star turn, what grabbed us was the act itself.

What made the lone, piercing cry of “You lie!” shocking was that it breached a previously secure barrier. It was the first time that the violent rage surging in town-hall meetings all summer blasted into the same room as the president. Wilson’s televised shout was tantamount to yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. When he later explained that his behavior was “spontaneous” rather than premeditated, that was even more disturbing. It’s not good for the country that a lawmaker can’t control his anger at Barack Obama. It gives permission to crazy people.

The White House was right not to second Carter’s motion and cue another “national conversation about race.” No matter how many teachable moments we have, some people won’t be taught. (Though how satisfying it would have been for Obama to dismiss Wilson, like the boorish Kanye West, as a “jackass.”) But there is a national conversation we must have right now — the one about what, in addition to race, is driving this anger and what can be done about it. We are kidding ourselves if we think it’s only about bigotry, or health care, or even Obama. The growing minority that feels disenfranchised by Washington can’t be so easily ghettoized and dismissed.

Many of those Americans may hate Obama, but they don’t love the Republican establishment either. Michael Steele, who was declared persona non grata at one of the mad “tea parties” in April, was not invited to that right-wing 9/12 March on Washington last weekend. There were no public encomiums for McCain or Bush. No Senate leader spoke to the gathering, and perhaps only Palin and Ron Paul would have been welcome from the ranks of what passes for G.O.P. presidential timber. If there was a real hero to this crowd, it was the protest’s most prominent promoter, the radio and TV talker Glenn Beck.”…cont…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20rich.html?_r=1

[Me.]

1. More

“Beck has notoriously defamed Obama as a “racist,” but the race card is just one in his deck. His ideology, if it can be called that, mixes idolatrous Ayn Rand libertarianism with bumper-sticker slogans about “freedom,” self-help homilies and lunatic conspiracy theories. (He fanned Internet rumors that FEMA was establishing concentration camps before tardily beating a retreat.) It’s the same crazy-quilt cosmology that could be found in last weekend’s Washington protest, where the marchers variously called Obama a fascist, a communist and a socialist, likening him to Hitler, Stalin, Castro and Pol Pot. They may not know that some of these libels are mutually exclusive. But what they do know is that they need a scapegoat for what ails them, and there is no one handier than a liberal, all-powerful president (who just happens to be black).

Beck captures this crowd’s common emotional denominator — with appropriately overheated capital letters — in his best-selling book portraying himself as a latter-day Tom Paine, “Glenn Beck’s Common Sense.” Americans “know that SOMETHING JUST DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT,” he writes, “but they don’t know how to describe it or, more importantly, how to stop it.” This is right-wing populism in the classic American style, as inchoate and paranoid as that hawked by Father Coughlin during the Great Depression and George Wallace in the late 1960s. Wallace is most remembered for his racism, but he, like Beck, also played on the class and cultural resentment of those sharing his view that there wasn’t “a dime’s worth of difference” between the two parties....Cont…

[musette_sf]

2. wow, an unrec right from jump street

looks like the tealurkers are prowling tonight...

[Quantess]

4. Who knows, maybe it was unrec'd by DUers who disagree that he is right even twice a day.

[Me.]

5. I Was Expecting It

As to the article I found it especially interesting where he says, in his opinion, the GOP is done for, the loonies are taking them down and they don't even get it.

[xultar]

10. Nevermind, I thought he was that guy who doublecrossed the Clintons.

[Me.]

11. HAH!

It's not like he wouldn't had he the chance

[xultar]

8. My bad I got him mixed up with someone else.

[notesdev]

13. I'm used to it already

Post something that doesn't 100% confirm the mob mentality in every tiny detail and the unrecs will hit you from the moment you post.

The good news, as we see now, is that there is a (silent?) majority on this board that can see through the initial unrecs and filter good content from bad.

[RamboLiberal]

16. Yeah there are some DU'ers still mad at Rich for things he said

about Gore. So that might be where the UR come from. I don't remember the Gore columns by Rich but the last couple of years I've read Rich I ususally find he right on.

[Eric J in MN]

3. "A couple of weeks later, Beck mockingly replaced the stars on the American flag with the logos"

"...of corporate giants like G.E., General Motors, Wal-Mart and Citigroup (as well as the right’s usual nemesis, the Service Employees International Union)."

It would take a strange man to be upset that both a union and anti-union corporations supposedly have too much influence over government.

For someone who wants the EFCA to pass, the influence of the SEIU should be welcome.

For someone who doesn't want the EFCA to pass, the influence of Wal-Mart should be welcome.

[Me.]

6. People Acting Against Their Own Self Interest

As he's on the tele, is he part of a union one wonders

[malletgirl02]

15. Beck

Beck talks out both sides of his mouth

[C_U_L8R]

7. Yeah but if it was two o'clock on the button

Beck would probably lie about that too

[spanone]

9. k&r.....

[Umbral]

12. If Frank Rich says Glenn Beck is right twice a day and he is correct, that makes Rich right...

once.

[pscot]

14. I was struck by the part about Obama being tone-deaf

to the anger at Wall Street. While some of the anger is being driven or manipulated by people with an ax to grind, a lot of it is based in a deeply held belief that things have gone way wrong. The people who are out there protesting are not so different from us. They've been hit hard by plant closures and off-shoring. They understand they're being abused by the corporations and that our democracy isn't working the way it's supposed to. For 30 years they've been hearing that government is the problem, and 8 years of Republican misrule under George Bush drove the lesson home. That has become the focus of their anger. Obama promised to make things better. His apparent capitulation to the banksters, the car makers and the insurers undercuts his crerdibility.

"Nor has Obama succeeded in persuading critics on the left or right that he will do as much for those Americans who are suffering as he has for the corporations his administration and his predecessor’s rushed to rescue. To mark the anniversary of Lehman’s fall, the president gave a speech on Wall Street last Monday again vowing reform. But everyone’s back to business as usual: The Wall Street Journal reported that not a single C.E.O. from a top bank attended. The speech sank with scant notice because there has been so little action to back it up and because its conciliatory stance was tone-deaf to the anger beyond the financial district.."

This country is not in a very good space right now. The protesters may be weak on the details, laming Obama for the sins of GW, but they can read the writing on the wall, and it says they're being screwn.

[RamboLiberal]

17. That is one of my bigger disappointments with Obama

There are too many Wall Street and Clinton insiders in this administration. I was expecting we get more reformers.

[Me.]

18. I Dearly Wish He Had Picked Someone Other Than Geithner & Larry S.

[Uzybone]

19. I find the idea of giving Beck even an inch of cover appalling

but Beck is on the cover of Time Magazine now, so he is a big media star. And you know big media doesn't go after big media often.

[Me.]

20. Kicking Myself In The

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