For Glenn Beck, SEIU Is 'Radical, Marxist,' Except When Its Nurses Treat Him for Emergency Abdominal

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143774/for_glenn_beck,_seiu_is_%27radical,_marxist,%27_except_when_its_nurses_treat_him_for_emergency_abdominal_pains/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet_workplace

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted November 5, 2009.

Beck described SEIU nurse care as "amazing" after his inflamed appendix was removed.

Earlier today, a hospitalized Glenn Beck tweeted in praise of the "AMAZING drs/nurses" who have cared for him since the emergency removal of his inflamed appendix yesterday afternoon.

The quality of care he is receiving should not have come as a surprise. When Beck complained of acute abdominal pain during his radio program on Wednesday, he was rushed to a nearby hospital. The security-conscious Beck has not disclosed the name of the facility, but it's a safe bet that it is staffed by proud members of a storied union: New York's Local 1199, aka United Healthcare Workers East, which belongs to the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU has organized all of Manhattan's major hospitals, including every facility to which Beck could have conceivably been sent.

It probably has not occurred to Beck to link his kind, efficient nurses to something as dastardly as the SEIU. As recently as Wednesday, he was busy smearing the union with his usual verbal feces. For the past several months, on radio and television, Beck has cast the SEIU, the country's largest union, as a Toxic Avenger-looking bogeyman in his conspiratorial fantasyland. In the progressive plot of Beck's imagination, the "radical, Marxist" SEIU is conspiring with ACORN "thugs" to destroy the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and turn this country into North Korea--or worse.

Just hours before his hospitalization, Beck was at work increasing the pitch of his attacks on SEIU and its leaders. On Monday, he warned his Fox News audience that SEIU president Andy Stern is "controlling our country." On Wednesday, he claimed Stern was spouting "communist, Marxist propaganda" by addressing the need for labor to organize globally in a globalized world.

It is obvious listening to Beck go after the SEIU that he has only recently encountered the name Andy Stern. Almost certainly the introduction came in the form of talking points spoon-fed to Beck by his friends at the corporate-funded policy shop, Americans for Prosperity. It is also apparent that he knows even less about the labor movement in general. Compared to Beck--who probably knows more about the 80s TV show ALF than he does the history of the AFL--Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are Pulitzer-winning labor historians. He clearly has little to no understanding of what unions do, their central role in creating the American middle-class, or why the labor movement has long served a legitimate and important role in national politics.

FULL story at link.

[bullwinkle428]

1. Is there a more transparent, shallow piece of shit walking the earth than Beck?

If we had a real media, they would absolutely HAMMER this fucker over the sheer hypocrisy he displays on a daily basis! :mad:

[FiveGoodMen]

2. +1,000,000