Yet what I find interesting is Beck loves controversy and attention, his planned event today, that some of our local television stations actually covered live (they didn't cover the true "civil rights" one interestingly enough) worked. He's gotten lots of attention. Articles like this one by Mary Mitchell -- Boorish Beck makes mockery of King's dream will fuel the fires of the two sides. Mitchell makes her thoughts about Beck very clear, in addition to calling him boorish and a demagogue:
In fact, Beck has a lot in common with the deposed talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
Neither one of these personalities have much respect for the African-American experience.
Schlessinger, who was forced off her long-running radio show after she said the N-word 11 times during a broadcast, has been in the media long enough to know that whites can't get away with using the word.
Yes, I recognize this prohibition is a double standard.
But given the painful history the word carries, this is a double standard that whites ought to be able to live with.
Schlessinger, though, tried to defend her use of this racial slur by cloaking it in her First Amendment rights. "I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors," she said on the Larry King show.
Ironically, Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally is being promoted as a "moment" that will "reclaim the civil rights movement."
How disingenuous.
I think most people realize that Beck's brand of freedom was not what Martin Luther King Jr. had in mind.
Unfortunately, this is another area where people are divided, there are some out there that are trying to argue Beck's brand of freedom is something King would support. I'm not sure if the continued name calling is the answer, though for those interested in a balanced view, I'd recommend this Chronicle piece.
2 comments:
9/13/2001 was the day (I remember it well) when this incredibly compelling man was broadcasting live from Ground Zero - the guy had real talent, a three hour play-by-play that was mezmerizing, and from that day on his voice was on WSPD AM Toledo instead of Dr. Laura.
I listened pretty regularly. He was the first to talk about Terry Schiavo since he knew about the case when he was a local Florida Morning Zoo radio guy. I quit the day I was taking my 6th grader to school and he decided to play the "sounds" of a partial birth abortion ... sick.
He is butt ignorant, it's true, and a personality defect that goes beyond being a dry drunk. But he admits to being a rodeo clown and that anyone who takes him seriously is a fool. I just ignore him for the most part, and listen to music or Detroit's progressive station when I'm in the car now.
I have never listened to Glenn Beck and I don't plan on to. But I am getting sick of the over liberal minded people saying that Beck shouldn't have had his rally. So what if it was on the same date as Dr, King's most famous speech. It wasn't Beck who has turned King's Dream into a nightmare, but King's public followers, like Jesse Jackson, who have made a mockery out of that historic and courageous speech. But that is a discussion for another post.
I have experienced that the liberal minded people are the greatest violators of free speech and favor censorship when it goes against their agendas. If this was Keith Olbermann's rally, then the liberals would have said that this would be the greatest rally since King's speech on the same steps in DC.
Liberals, in general, yell and cry and refuse to debate. Conservatives, for the most part, at least will debate. Viewpoints may not change, but the discussion is available. Liberals shake their fingers at anyone with a different viewpoint and try to quiet the other side like an uneducated child.
So is Beck the villain in wanting to use his First Amendment right to say what he freely wants to express (and promote himself and his shows, of course) or the liberals who want to censor him and not allow him his free speech? Either all voices must be heard or none. You can't let one person talk and duct tape the other person. That is tyranny does and the Constitution won’t allow it. That is what the Constitution is about and a lot of people are forgetting that.
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