On Monday, ABC News reported that liberals have grown frustrated with the efforts made by Fox News, and Glenn Beck in particular, to expose their true agenda. Teddy Davis writes, “Fox News host Glenn Beck has been targeting liberals for years but labor unions and other progressive groups are beginning to fight back.”
At a speech delivered to Harvard’s Institute of Politics, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka explains, “We are working to counter the Glenn Beck effect and turn anger into action for real change.” There’s that catchword again: “change.” If it’s anything like the “change” that Obama has imposed upon the American people, perhaps the AFL-CIO should reconsider given Obama’s current all-time lowest popularity rating.
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It does not take a genius to deduce that Trumka’s use of “change” alludes to silencing any opposition to the liberal agenda. After all, it’s a fairly simple process. Simply accuse Obama’s opponents of being fueled by racism, and watch them shrink from voicing their opinions.
That’s just what Trumka seeks to do. In his speech, he claims that Beck intends to “convert justifiable anger about an economy that only seems to work for a few of us into racist and homophobic hate and violence directed at our President and heroes like Congressman John Lewis.” You may recall that Lewis claimed he was called “nigger” by Tea Party protesters outside of the U.S. Capitol on the day of the healthcare vote, though no evidence has been produced corroborating his story. In fact, web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart has pledged $100,000 to the United Negro College Fund if anyone can provide evidence that protestors slew any racial epithets. Not surprisingly, no such evidence has been found. Nevertheless, the liberal tactic of branding the Tea Party movement as racist is nothing new.
The AFL-CIO is joined by Media Matters for America and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who have asked Beck’s advertisers to “stop supporting his dangerous brand of crazy.” SEIU Director of Strategic Affairs Michelle Ringuette wrote an e-mail to union supporters asserting, “Beck’s irresponsible comparisons of progressive leaders to Stalin, Mao and Nazi Germany cannot be dismissed as merely silly or stupid. This kind of rhetoric can instigate unbalanced individuals into committing rash and violent acts.”
Yet when leftists were calling Bush Hitler and attempting to invoke violence in protest against Bush’s policies, it was acceptable? (See www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6b1VOAATNk). When Bill Maher wished that Glenn Beck was killed at the Pentagon on Thursday March 4 instead of John Bedell, that wasn’t thought byliberals to “instigate unbalanced individuals into committing rash and violent acts.” Maher, whose television show is comparable in nature to Beck’s, stated, “When we see crazy, senseless deaths like this, we can only ask why, why, why couldn’t it have been Glenn Beck?”
How about when Rosie O’Donnell argued that public funding of abortions would solve the problem of financially supporting “all the unwanted kids and the half-million of them in foster care.” O’Donnell makes a cogent point, though. If Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would walk into orphanages across the country and stick a fork into those kids’ heads and suck out their brains too, problem solved! It is this very callous and disdainful mentality that has caused an increase in child abuse since the decision of Roe v. Wade in 1972. If anything should be accused of instigating “unbalanced individuals into committing rash and violent acts,” it should be Roe v. Wade.
Liberals have targeted Glenn Beck because he highlights both the Left’s alarming agenda and their hypocrisy, and does so in a way that laymen can understand. He is a danger to the Progressive movement and therefore must be painted as a crazy racist to undermine his authority.
And if that doesn’t work, they can simply prevent conservatives from being broadcast altogether. What do you think the Fairness Doctrine was all about?
Karl Rove astutely summed up the liberal mentality when he noted, “This goes to show the totalitarianism of the Left. They don’t believe in dialogue; they don’t believe in courtesy; they don’t believe in First Amendment rights for anyone but themselves.”
Photo of Glenn Beck: AP Images
