Who's watching Glenn Beck? - Comparison to Father Coughlin

[RamboLiberal]

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That makes its recent report on the extremist groups and propagandists that have emerged since President Obama's election -- "Rage Grows In America: Anti-Government Conspiracies" -- particularly notable. For the first time in living memory, the ADL is sounding the alarm about a mainstream media personality: Fox News' Glenn Beck, who also hosts a popular radio show.

The report notes that while "other conservative media hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, routinely attack Obama and his administration, typically on partisan grounds, they have usually dismissed or refused to give a platform to the conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists." By contrast, "Beck and his guests have made a habit of demonizing President Obama and promoting conspiracy theories about his administration. ... Beck has even gone so far as to make comparisons between Hitler and Obama."

What gives all of this nonsense an ominous twist is Beck's announcement that he intends to use his TV and radio shows to promote a mass movement that will involve voter registration drives, training in community organizing and a series of regional conventions that will produce a "100-year plan" for America to be read from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a mass rally Aug. 28.

As Beck wrote on his website, "I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting. ... All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding."

Hard times predictably throw up their demagogues. Still, even allowing for the frenetic pace of our wired world's 24-hour news cycle, it's remarkable how quickly the arc of Beck's career has come to resemble that of the Great Depression's uber-demagogue, Father Charles Coughlin. In the months after the crash of '29, Coughlin turned what had been a conventionally religious weekly radio broadcast into a platform for championing the downtrodden working man. He was an early supporter of the New Deal, coining the slogan "Roosevelt or Ruin," but quickly turned on the president for a variety of complex ideological and personal reasons. Coughlin flirted with Huey Long, launched an unsuccessful political party, published a popular newspaper, Social Justice, and even inspired and supported a kind of militia, the Christian Front, some of whose members were arrested by the FBI and charged with plotting a fascist coup.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten25-2009nov25,0,6632984.column

[Marshabar]

1. Glenn Beck is doing a good thing.

I've listened to Glenn Beck for quite a while and I've fact checked his content. Certainly his message is not a comfortable one. But he isn't lying. For my taste he is making way too much money on the bad news he is telling, but I don't find any lies.

Obama hasn't turned out to be exactly what voters expected, no matter which part of the constituency you happen to occupy. It's like he stood there and turned around in a complete 360 degree circle making promises all the way around.

How would it ever be possible to satisfy all of those diametrically opposing positions?

Young voters are going to be expected to swallow a mighty big pill with health care reform. Young people voted for Obama by the millions. But Nancy Pelosi has said that people who don't buy health insurance according to the health care bill will be punished. Healthy young people don't buy health insurance now. What will tempt them to buy it at an even higher price under this health care reform?

This is just one of the things Glenn Beck has been talking about.

[bergie321]

2. Fact Check?

Did you happen to "Fact Check" Glenn Beck by watching Faux News?

[hlthe2b]

3. Lordy, Lordy, Lordy....

You have "fact checked" Glenn Beck and found him to be truthful.. Enough said.... :shrug:

[sharp_stick]

4. Welcome to DU, I guess

enjoy what is likely to be a pretty short stay.

[Marshabar]

10. Short stay?

What do you mean?

[krispos42]

12. Very short stay n/t

[sharp_stick]

15. LOL, nice n/t

[Frosty1]

5. Oh good god

put down the koolaid!
:popcorn:

[Zoeisright]

6. Wha .... ?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!

:rofl:

[Vincardog]

7. Young voters are going to be expected to swallow a mighty big pill with health care reform. WTF?

Young people are being offered a slight hope to evade the Parasitic Sick Care industry.
Healthy young people don't buy health insurance now. Because they don't have jobs and the take home pay to afford it.
RW talking point much?

[BOSSHOG]

8. As long as beck has people like you fact checking

he has no reason to tell the truth. He uses people like you to pad his wallet. He couldn't possibly give a flying dog fuck about you or your "values" or conservative "values." He mines for gold in the stupid communities of our nation and "succeeds."

[classysassy]

9. Those are facts

you hit the nail on the head,The Beckster has hit the mother lode out in mindless america.

[Martin Eden]

11. Yes -- Glenn Beck is doing a good thing.

He and assorted other nutjobs are destroying the Republican Party.

They are driving out the moderates and the people intelligent enough to distance themselves from the whacko conspiracy theories and falsehoods Beck promotes. The wingnut base that remains will make a lot of noise for their numbers, but their numbers will be such that they have very little chance of electoral success.

Eventually the GOP will have to reformulate itself, hopefully into something better. Glenn Beck and his ilk are a temporary rash on the body politic, ultimately to be rejected even by the deluded ignoramouses currently drinking the koolaid.

In the meantime, Beck will continue to help the Democratic Party by painting the GOP as a bunch of kooks on the fringe.

[BOSSHOG]

13. And in a very pathetic fashion

beck's motivation isn't firing up the "patriots" or hurting incumbents or putting his stamp on the body politic of the land of the free. He is a greedy pathetic human being and a drunk who can't make a living any other way. His sole goal, his bottom line and he has found the source by lemmings who are easily led (to beck's collection plate.) And teabaggers think they are smart. As does the like's of sarah palin, a beck fan (for no apparent reason.)

[CJCRANE]

14. I had the same thought the other day

when I watched Be*k's diatribe about the Statue of Liberty.

For some reason I thought of Brother Justin on Carnivale (a character with echoes of Father Coughlin played by Clancy Brown).

[Doctor_J]

16. As you can see by the replies to this thread, there are a lot

of people addicted to his lies, hate, and propaganda. He will carry Sarah Palin into the WH in 2013. After that who knows? We have let him and his forebearers foist Bush and everything that came with him (endless war, domestic terrorism, domestic military presence, trillion dollar deficits, fascist SCOTUS, loaded weapons at presidential appearances, etc.) on us, and seem to have no stomach to do the right thing yet.