LUNACY & RESPECT: THE BECK CASE

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.

In Breve

First the Good News. Fox's new pundit (from the Indian pandit or learned man, or woman), Sarah Palin's first appearance opposite a discountenanced and wary Bill O'Reilly -- let's give him credit for wondering how the devil she turned up -- setlles the matter once and for all: the 'fair and balanced' Murdoch network has now gone public as a home for Boobs and Folly. A nice confirmation of the Obvious. A 'news' service that hires a former candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States is in fact an enlarged Op-Ed Page for yet another loony of the right. Further good news is the thought that Palin will perforce learn a little geography and be launched into the Fox orbit where no fool fears to tread. She and Hannety (or is it Hannity?) make an ideal couple: were they otherwise without ties.

Roughly at the same time another enormity of Nature, a powerful earthquake, struck Haiti. I hope that everyone who reads this contributes, for Haiti is one of the world's marvels, a nation at roughly the same time as the United States, it has always been tormented by open warfare between black and mulatto, yet has also produced a remarkable culture (Roumains, Alexis) and a proud people. I feel privileged to have known many Haitians: an upstanding people whose prophet, Toussaint Louverture, was left to perish in a frigid prison in Joux by the selfsame 'revolutionaries' in France. To build his mountain fastness, the emperor Christophe had stone mounted by gangs of a hundred rolling logs uphill; the more perished in the task, the harder the remainder had to labor. Good times have been few. In Puerto Rico I knew some Duvalier acolytes and some opponents, exiled to the borough of Queens. A fine, a desperate people.

But America remains America, and the news had, until the earthequake, focused on the Great American Problem: Messrs Leno and O'Brien. I watched bemused, never having watched either of them. Just how important news are two performers whose every word is scripted beforehand? Just how are they worth their millions and their celebrity?