I have to admit I am not accustomed to see raving lunacy on my telly. Extremes, yes; but insanity? However yesterday afternoon, at the appointed hour, there was Mister Glenn Beck, a misplaced Isaiah to Tea Party America, literally foaming at the mouth. While I am accustomed to his rant, as I am to the general Fox/Murdoch bias, I cannot recall ever having seen such extreme, frothing-at-the-mouth disrespect of an American president.
There, behind the president, was Mr. Obama himself, explaining his policy on the stimulus package; nearer us, was Beck, his head obscuring the president -- at whom he gesticulated wildly and very personally. Did Obama really believe all the guff he was putting out? Was he a conscious liar or just an ordinary cheat? This went on for several minutes before, mercifully, we reached one of Fox's many breaks.
Now, when I came to America from Europe in 1939, one of the first things I learned was that an elected leader was, whatever one's own opinions or whether one had voted for him, entitled to some respect for his position as president. I had to learn this because in the British parliament, frontal attacks on the prime minister of the day are common; they are a part of the severity of debate in parliament. But even there, there are rules, and a Speaker to enforce them.
So far as I know, or until Mr. Beck unveils himself as a candidate for public office (alongside Madame Palin?), he is a private citizen. As such, he is entitled to have his opinion stated in public. That is free speech. But is he also entitled to incendiary opinions? to direct physical challenge to the President? Not, I think, in the crowded theater of our politics, in which crying 'Fire!' can lead to panic.
Is the majority of the country, which voted for Mr. Obama, a worthless bunch of dolts for so doing? Has anyone yet elected Mr. Beck?
I do not say this as one who believes that our president has divine right on his side, such as kings could claim to have; I say it as someone who believes that the man has a right, while in office, to our respect: because, for better or worse, he represents all of America. Many have been the presidents for whom I had scant respect, but I would not, ever, have thought of assaulting any of them phsyically: not even on a screen. If they were elected president, the people had spoken; and if he turned out to be a rotten president, the people was in a position to remove him.
Without that inherent respect for the office, whoever the incumbent, democracy quickly falls into mob rule. This Mr. Beck encouraged -- indeed lampooned. Awful as the 'left' channel is, it not show a desire to punch a president in the face, or impose its own talking heads on Obama's. That may be especially important when the president is the first black to hold the office and is also transparently -- whatever his failures -- a decent and intelligent human being. That does not merit to be dissed, for it is also as dangerous as crying 'Fire!' in a theater can be.
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Lahti
7 months ago
First, I'm surprised and a little impressed that you can sit through an entire segment of that idiot Beck. I avoid Fox, Palin and that whole ilk for the same reason I avoid eating rotten food. However, let the man speak! Let Palin speak too, and all the rest of them, for whenever they open their mouths they show to the world how hateful, incompetent and unintelligent they are. We need these people to speak and in fact the louder the better. We have become a nation where intellectuals are no longer valued and the very word has become an embarrassing utterance as the way old ladies whisper the word "cancer." That's not just those Tea Party folks either. Whenever Palin, Beck, and the others speak, intellectuals only look better. In fact someday after we've all had enough of that poison we might again look to the intellectuals to save us. Understandably I can see where, after watching that self proclaimed "clown" my instinct might also be to shut him up, if not by force then by law, but I don't think that's the answer. My fear is that someone might want to one day shut me up, and as a writer I can't imagine a worse fate. Let them whip themselves up into a frothing mess if that's what they want, in the end they'll reveal to a weary public how ugly they are and how unwelcome they are as well.
ReplyDeleteTO ANON
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid your malaise is not shared by a large or largish group of citizens who feel gratified that Mr. Beck (and Palin and Hannety and Murdoch and the rest of them) speaks to their concerns. These people are not conservatives; they are an interest group no different from other interest groups, be they hmosexuals, doctors, ministers, minorities or hole-in-their-heads. Everyone has a demand: try Armenians as a group! The TLS reminds me that the only Middle Eastern country to 'mourn' 9/11, was Iran. You know where that interest now stands. Why, right alongside Greek civil servants who don't give a flying f*** if their country goes broke as long as their waged keep on rising, or Lufthana and BA pilots. We have a tide of malcontents. What distinguishes Glen Beck is that he has NO self-knowledge at all. He doesn't bother with inconsistency in his argument. Add to that the obvious fact that he was hired (pretty much as Howard Stern was) to do a job for which he is well-paid and has a large audience which thinks that he makes eminent sense, and you have a problem: one not unlike the challenge Huey Long threw down.
A disclaimer: I am a physics professor in a US university. I have two PhD degrees and speak four languages. You can count me as an intellectual (sort of). Also, I was born in the USSR.
ReplyDeleteYour mumbling does not make much sense to me. Just go back a few years, and, in your babble, replace Glenn Beck with, among many, say, Keith Olbermann, and Obama with Bush. See? Where were you then? You are a caricature.
A caricature? That's an interesting use of one of your four languages, sir.
ReplyDeleteIf you are such a relativist that you equate Olbermann's annoying smarminess with Beck's dangerous baiting of the unwashed masses, then I wish you well with your future endeavors in the world of physics - and for the love of God, please avoid real life outside your pedantic "equal-and-opposite" equations.