Frances Fox Piven defies death threats after taunts by anchorman Glenn Beck

[Ken Burch]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/30/frances-fox-piven-glenn-beck

Frances Fox Piven is not going into hiding. Not yet.

The 78-year-old leftwing academic is the latest hate figure for Fox News host Glenn Beck and his legion of fans. While she has decided to shrug off the inevitable death threats that have followed, she is well aware of the problem. "I don't know if I am scared, but I am worried," she told the Observer as she sat in a bar on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

"At the start I thought it was funny, but now I know that is dangerous... their paranoia works better when they can imagine a devil. Now that devil is me."

For the past three weeks Beck has relentlessly targeted Piven via his television and radio shows as a threat to the American way of life, seizing on an essay that she and her late husband wrote in 1966 as a sort of blueprint for bringing down the American economy.

Called The Weight of the Poor, it advocated signing up so many poor people for welfare payments that the cost would force the government to bring in a policy of a guaranteed income. For Piven, a committed voice of the left, known in academic circles but little recognised outside them, it was just one publication in a lifetime dedicated to political activism and theorising.

[Hannah Bell]

1. kr

[get the red out]

2. Opposing views require death threats

And these Beckites are the same people who scream for "freedom" and the "constitution". Of course they have no clue what freedom means or what the constitution is. They are a threat to the "American way of life" because that way of life is supposed to be the freedom to have one's own view point without fear of reprisal.

[RKP5637]

9. +1, n/t

[glinda]

3. The stress alone will kill her.

[xchrom]

8. Now there's a jack-ass comment. Nt

[glinda]

11. Stress can contribute to health problems. My concern is for her health and safety.

[virgogal]

4. Good for her. She and I are the same age and we're tougher

than we look.

I wish her well.

[Sonoman]

6. You're 78? Well, I'l be danged.

I'll skip the details, but I have been around here for a while.

I had you pegged as mid-30s, maybe early 40s.

Wow.

Sonoman

[virgogal]

7. Thanks. I'm a Great Depression baby that grew up with very little.

Life has been good to me,though.

No complaints.

[upi402]

5. I saw her interviewed

Beck doesn't deserve to clean her door mat. If this country really was based on merit, That's what would be going on.

[gratuitous]

10. Cage match! Cage match!

Put me down for a C-note on Piven. What's the over-under?

[Rex]

12. Glenn Beck needs to ask her to a one on one debate on live TVEE

haha I know JOKE! Like that would ever happen! Seriously, she would roll him up and smoke him right in front of the cameras. Glenn is a child given adult equipment to cause harm to America. Once again, please stop telling your followers to kill people Glenn Beck. Thanks.