Just when we thought Glenn Beck couldn’t get crazier …

Beck goes and makes a comparison between what appears to me to be an ill-cast Satan character in the History Channel series, “The Bible” and Barack Obama. Here’s a side-by-side:

Screenshot/AP

From Beck’s perspective, this was just another opportunity — he doesn’t really pass up any — to take a jab at Obama and vilify the president by any means necessary. In fact, this is a good summation of the general program of conservative right wing radio in general.

As for the Satan character, I always pictured Satan, were he to take human form, as a young and attractive alpha male kind of figure. Does the History Channel really want to go on record as casting the most evil being of all time as an old black man? The History Channel? Oh well. Looks like that die has been cast.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Push-pull politics

I thought this website post offered an intriguing look at the phenomenon known as The Overton Window, and no, this is not in reference to Glenn Beck’s attempt at fiction.

Here is the image:

And here is the idea:

– There is, or there should be, a constant tug-of-war on the edges of the Overton Window on any issue.

– There is a place for everyone and anyone along the Left side of the rope, as long as we’re all pulling in the same general direction.

– The current location of the Overton Window is so far to the right of any objective political spectrum, that what are now considered Extreme Left Positions are really not extreme at all. ((http://www.correntewire.com/the_overton_window_illustrated))

The strategy of the Tea Party, right-wing crowd is this: alter what is perceived as conservative, and move that a bit to the right, rinse and repeat. Thus, proponents can then alter or blunt what is seen as a far-right stance, and make that far-right stance look as if it was more moderate, which, in turn, ever moves the arrow farther to the right, ad nauseam. If I have described the idea correctly, what we have is an ideology ever moving toward the right, while acceptance by the public, in tow, moves toward the right as well (it can obviously work to the left as well). As the above-referenced site notes, the right have mastered this strategy quite well, while the left has not, or at least not to the same degree. Or, according to the website:

Eliminationist Right-Wing Blogs and Fox News screechers may look like clowns, but that is their function. To stretch the Window so far to the Right that anything short of nuking the Middle East seems acceptable.

Thus, Beck. He, indeed, serves a unique, almost subversive, subconscious political purpose, just none that helps this country move forward.

El artículo más loco del día

Now, thanks to this article from The Daily Beast‘s Reihan Salam, we have comparisons of Glenn Beck to Malcolm X? In the words of Sheila Broflovski from South Park: what? What? WHAT?

That’s, according to Salam, Beck is a white version of X. Here’s Salam:

Whereas Malcom X embraced militant black separatism, Beck marries a stridently emotional style with political views that wouldn’t have been out of place at a 1950s Elks Lodge event. But like Malcolm X, Beck terrifies mainstream liberals, who see something sinister in his inexplicable ways. And just as Malcolm X mellowed in his old age, embracing a more traditional interpretation of Islam shortly before his death, Beck seems to be self-consciously moving past the politicized anger that defined his program for much of the past two years towards a heavy emphasis on spiritual uplift for his people.

I think this is a fairly ridiculous claim (See title). For one, as Salam claims, if Beck is attempting to enact some sort of spiritual awakening, he would be no different than the throngs of fervently religious — that’s not to mean terribly moral — politicians and evangelicals since the days of the Moral Majority and later, the Christian Coalition.

Second, Salam claims that Beck’s audience is mostly old and white. While that is true to some degree, it’s been fairly well-established that a number of black people follow the Tea Party’s credo, as well as quite intelligent young white people. Here’s some data from Gallup.

Also, Malcolm X’s followers, so far as I’m aware, were young black militants.

Salam also says:

Instead of accepting or embracing this transformation, a large and growing number of white Americans are, knowingly or otherwise, taking a page from minority protest movements of the past by asserting themselves and demanding recognition from political and cultural elites. Many on the left find this sense of anger and alienation risible, seeing in this movement of “are-nots,” as opposed to “have-nots,” a class of ignoramuses duped by Fox News into acting against their supposed economic interests.

Yet it seems more plausible that Fox News is following its audience rather than leading it — that this anger and alienation has existed for years, and has only now found a decidedly unconventional tribune in the form of Glenn Beck. Though this is a class with economic grievances, it seems more concerned with psychic injuries — with a profound sense of disempowerment in the face of centralized political power.

It is true that FOX News is following its audience rather than the other way around, for that’s what it means to be populist. And if Beck is anything, he’s a populist. Solutions to complex problems, as President Obama well knew prior to taking office, but well understood after taking the oath, are rarely popular, and more times than not, decidedly unpopular. And we can, I think, be thankful that within the framework of our free, democratic society, that some politicians have the guts (And I don’t exclude George W. Bush in some cases) to do that which isn’t necessarily popular for the common good. For the general public, more often than not, neither knows what it wants or what is best. It’s quite easy for Beck to lap at the trough of the popular movement of the day, one he helped create, but he’s no Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr., or any other transcendent leader. He’s a charismatic, very successful capitalist. That’s about it.

Tea Partiers blast Rep. Barrett

Props to this fellow’s blog and others for this video of Gresham Barrett, a representative from my home state of South Carolina attempting to address a Tea Party demonstration:

In Michigan and elsewhere, I’m sure Tea Party demonstrations are filled with folks such as the one in this video hollering “Go home!” over and over, even as the speaker, in this case, Barrett, is trying to kiss up to them as much as humanly possible. But in South Carolina, where, who knows, we may declare our indepedence once again!, the commentary from the audience is particularly vitriolic. He uses the term “liberal Democrats in Washington, D.C.” to win their side. He says,

I will fight for you, and I will never turn my back on you, I can promise you that.

He tells the crowd, which doesn’t stop booing the entire five minutes of the “plea,” says,

The Obama administration, they don’t believe in you guys,

attempting to speak to them as if he’s beer buddies with the lot of them. He petitions them that “we” must fight them on the deficit, spending, taxes, and

above all taxation without hesitation (Notice, he didn’t say “representation” because even he knows the analogy is a bogus claim, even as, two days before, folks showed up in cities all over the country in Revolutionary era garb to protest against … something. It’s hard to say just what.) must be examined, exposed and extinguished.

So, what we have hear is a Tea Party demonstration, where a Republican representative, not even a Democrat, is virtually shouted off the stage, as he fishes for something to say, anything anti-Obama, anti-spending or anti-tax, to get them to agree on any point. How much more excitable would they have been if Ben Bernanke or Barney Frank or Obama himself were before them? Who knows? But I do know that telling a state representative to go home contributes nothing to the debate, nor do the scores of “boos” leveled at the man, the latter of which says to me that the angst, the emotional, excitable, reason-bending, rabble-rousing type of angst, was coming from, not a single person or two, but from the majority. Which, in turn says to me that either the Tea Party has lost control of its own message (if it ever had one) or if we get Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and the gang to begin talking about protests against the government on air, and all types of angry people to come out of the wood works, folks who are angry about all sorts of things from taxes to the Democratically-controlled Congress to big spending to the sun’s peculiar tendency to continue rising despite thousands and thousands and thousands of years of prophecy to the contrary.

But then again, South Carolina was the first state to secede the Union. It doesn’t take much for some folks over there to be rabble-roused.

Kid licking ATV parts? Seek help

On one point, Glenn Beck and your’s truly can agree: banning dirt bikes meant for kids ages 12 and younger that may contain lead out of fear the kids’ mouths may come into contact with said lead is just nutty.Yup, that’s right. 

According to Brian O’Neill with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,

The new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, designed to protect toddlers from the dangers of lead paint, makes no distinction between the toy a tot might lick and the dirt bike an older sibling might ride.

“Two weeks ago,” said Kim Love, controller of West Hills Honda in Moon, “I had to remove $20,000 worth of vehicles from my sales floor because some of the metal alloy components, like valve stems and brake pads, contain lead and aren’t safe for licking.

“You know how those kids love to lick a valve stem.”

And from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:

A new federal law aimed at protecting children from lead poisoning in toys is weighing heavy on sellers of motorized off-road vehicles in Minnesota and around the country.

Thousands of dirt bikes and mini-ATVs have been pulled from showrooms since the law went into effect last Tuesday because the lead content of such parts as brake handles, tire stems and battery terminals exceeded allowable limits.

“This is crazy,” said Sheri Rosoff, owner of Hitching Post Motorsports, which pulled dozens of motor bikes and hundreds of parts from four locations in the Twin Cities metro area. “This was supposed to be about toys. Nobody’s going to ingest the part of a motorcycle that contains lead.”

From Beck, we have this gem:

If your kid is licking the gears, we should let natural selection work.

But I can take that point further (Ignoring the fact that Beck would probably reject the principle of natural selection). If your kid is licking anything at all on an ATV or dirt bike, it may be time to seek professional council. Also, say some ATVs or dirt bikes contain lead. Is there a greater chance that a kid would lick a gear than, say, get a good whiff from the gas tank or take a sip from the oil tank? Lead isn’t the only dangerous thing on an ATV or dirt bike. Why not ban them altogether for kids 12 and younger? Who knows, but in this case, common sense has fallen far by the wayside. Or, in the words of Tim Patnode, spokesman for American Honda:

We’re hoping that they see … a difference between a children’s necklace and a motor part that has very little chance of being ingested by a child.