“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”
With these words, Martin Luther King, standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, opened perhaps the most famous speech in modern times.
But Glenn Beck has a dream too — and a demonstration to go with it.
Tomorrow, on the anniversary of King’s march on Washington, Beck and legions of Tea Party supporters will descend on these same steps.
It’s unclear if the chosen date of the “Restoring Honor” — or Beckapalooza as it’s been dubbed — rally was politically motivated, according to NPR:
Beck has repeatedly said that he was dumbstruck when he realized that he had requested his rally permit for the anniversary of King’s 1963 speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
It must have been “divine providence” that he unwittingly settled on that day, he told his radio audience. He later said he was out to “reclaim” the civil rights movement. (NPR)
For some, this is a little too close for comfort. Decades after King’s dream, Beck has accused America’s first black president of having “a deep-seated hatred of white people” and as late as this week has continued to fuel speculation over President Barack Obama’s religious beliefs:
Tuesday night Fox’s Glenn Beck was riffing about how recent polls on Mr. Obama show that many Americans “don’t recognize him as a Christian.” The problem, Mr. Beck said, is that the president does not conform to “true” Christian values. (Christian Science Monitor)
Civil rights activists are mostly up in arms, the symbolism of the event not being lost on leaders like Al Sharpton:
“Glenn Beck and others are expected to push for the expansion of states’ rights – the exact antithesis of the civil rights movement and Dr. King’s legacy,” Sharpton said in a news release promoting his march. “The Tea Party and allied conservatives are trying to break that national stance on justice and, in turn, break the crux of what the civil rights movement symbolized and what Dr. King fought and literally died for.” (CBS)
But this isn’t about race, this is about Glenn Beck.
Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel and Giovanni Russonello explore the politics behind the politics of the Restoring Honor rally. They paint a picture of competing factions within the loosely established tea party holding differing views over Beck’s involvement, even as Beck and Palin (the keynote speaker) are collectively the pied-pipers of the movement.
“I call it ‘Beckaplooza’ because it seems to be all about Beck,” said Andrew Dodge, the Maine state coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, a coalition of local groups that has helped stage several big rallies, including the seminal tea party rally on Sept. 12, 2009, that drew tens of thousands of people to Washington’s National Mall to protest what they saw as unchecked government expansion under President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress. (Politico)
While Beck is seen as an inspirational force — one with the ability to reach a massive daily audience — he has maintained that Saturday’s rally is non-political.
At the same time, Beck is feeling pressure to take on an even more overt and hands-on role and the rally tomorrow is a step in that direction.
Get ready America, this could get interesting.
NeoCon’s New World Order Math system: Beck=Sissy, Wimp, Tool
… and apparently to them this is a good thing; he should be emulated by others as a patriot along with other armchair, talking head, commandos that have never, ever been in harm’s way, not for a single second; people such as: Hannity, Bush, Rove, Cheney, Limbaugh. All these tough guys that never leave the office but send others, the cream of our nation, especially our young men, out to do their dirty work while they profit handsomely at home from the misery and fear of others.
I know of some other similar types of equally unsavory characters, another rouge’s gallery from a different era, who once did the same thing. Most likely you may be familiar with them, or at least their handy work and ultimate failures, then they were then known as the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, of Germany, circa 1920-1945; they went about things in a similar manner as this lot of manipulators, motivation through fear and hate.
History is full of such miserable bastards that the people must suffer all too often.
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Interesting from a clinical perspective to watch someone have a psychotic experience in public. As for its meaning to any rational person, it’s completely absurd. Does Beck exclude non-Christians and atheists from his formula about who Americans are? Does he know that many founding fathers were agnostics and atheists? Do non-Christians and atheists have no honor and no values? Does he want America to become a theocracy like Iran? What a sad commentary on today’s leadership to have a self-serving and ignorant man like Beck leading a rally in Washington DC. Who in his little mind does he think controls America? Did it ever occur to him that Rupert Murdoch, his boss, owns a major piece of the American pie? I see Beck and his troops as providing simple answers to complex problems, just like the brown shirts did in pre-WW II Europe.