Glenn Beck, who was purveyed to the American public in their millions by Time Warner’s CNN for some time, before he was picked up and built up by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Cable News, is obviously unstable and has done a good job of encouraging others to be unstable.
But on his radio show on Monday, he went so far that if he ever has another gig where he is allowed to address more than 50 people (and those would have to be fellow inmates in the asylum) it will be one of the great media travesties of all time.
As bereaved parents are burying and mourning their children, Beck said of Anders Breivik’s killing rampage at Utoya Island,
‘ “As the thing started to unfold and there was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth. Who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing…” ‘
The audio link can be found here.
Beck himself sponsored a children’s political summer camp, to indoctrinate the poor things in Beckism, so his statement is doubly macabre.
The irony is that Beck, in painting ordinary political liberals as fascists, is projecting his own dark desires on liberal democracies. Mussolini’s banning of labor unions and punitive policies toward the poor are exactly what Beck calls for.
It is hard to know what provoked the heartless comment. One could speculate Beck cannot sympathize with Breivik’s victims because Breivik’s political philosophy and obsessions resemble Beck’s so much. But perhaps it isn’t support for Breivik that led Beck to his monstrous statement, but rather hatred for the Labor Party and its policies. But when you hate a mainstream political party so much that you display this level of indifference to human suffering, then it raises questions about the judgment of radio station owners who choose to push this excrement at us.
In contrast to Beck’s poisonous hatred, which for-profit radio is making money off of, some 100,000 Norwegians in Oslo, and more around the country, responded to Friday’s massacre by calling for nonviolence.
We should honor the dead children, and honor the masses of Norwegians who stood up for non-violence, by boycotting any radio company that carries his sick rants to six million people every day, as well as the products of the companies that pay to keep him on the air. Beck has a right to say what he wants to say. But he does not have a right to be picked up in syndication by private businesses, who can choose other programs if they like. Private businesses have obligations to their customers, and one of those obligations is not to purvey to them political pornography of this sort.
The Prime Minister of Norway responded, calling Beck’s comments a new low.
Numbers to call, politely, to say you are tuning out until Beck is gone, are given here.. Premiere does syndicate him, so don’t let them off the hook if they say they don’t produce his programs. They buy & distribute them, which is worse.
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