Maybe this is why

I knew that we Jews have all the money and control the financial system and Hollywood. But who knew that one of our own could cause natural disasters? Has Glenn Beck ever considered that George Soros might be actually the second coming of Jesus?

I admit it. We'll miss him.

Dispatch from the "And these guys get PAID for this???" file

Rush Limbaugh thinks Michelle Obama is overweight.

Glenn Beck thinks reform Judaism is like radicalized Islam.

Stop the presses...Glenn Beck is a hypocrite

Are you shocked and appalled? Surprised, even? I'm not

Neither is Southern Beale:

Glenn Beck and the rest of the Fox fools have been whipping up the fear, because liberal rallies are always bad things and full of terrorists and terrorist appeasers and verging on violence (as opposed to conservative rallies which are Patriotic and Free Speech and Constitutional and Freedom and Liberty and yada yada.)

Anyhoo, yesterday Beck told the protestors their unions “are anti-western way of life,” which is the kind of thing people like Beck say: it’s just an insult attached to a group they don’t like (Nazi, communist, terrorist, leech, etc. + liberals, Democrats, Muslims, the poor, etc.), then regurgitated without any thought whatsoever. It's intellectually lazy, but it gets the job done, and frankly with their audience, no more is required. “This group = bad thing.” Whatever. It’s boring.

I just want someone to ask Beck one thing: aren’t you a member of a union? AFTRA? American Federation of Television And Radio Artists? The same AFTRA campaigning to save Public Broadcasting? Beck’s name is listed on the Los Angeles chapter’s June 2010 ballot under “newsperson.” Maybe there’s another newsperson named Glenn Beck, to which I have to say: dude, I feel sorry for you.

If telling people that people in the Administration should be shot in the head isn't going to drive someone to kill someone, what is?

I can't believe that we are reduced to running Tweety clips, but there we are:

The right has denied that anything said by Glenn Beck is going to drive anyone to violence. When Beck talks about shooting people in the head because they are destroying this country, does hereally think that no one is going to actually do it?

Right now there is an elderly professor named Frances Fox Piven, who in a recent column in The Nation, called on the unemployed to form a mass movement. Piven is one of Glenn Beck's favorite targets because of her advocacy of movements to produce social change. It's interesting that in Glenn Beck's sick, twisted world. a mass movement of peaceful action by the powerless and the disenfranchised is a threat to America, but a mass movement of people toting guns because of an imagined totalitarian threat led by the first Black president is what he wants to see.

Like Orcs, Beck's minions are already rising to their master's call:

These are not pretty e-mails, but they appear positively decorous compared with what has been written about her by commentators on Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze, where she's been the target of a relentless campaign to demonize her—and worse. There, under cover of anonymous handles, scores of people have called for Piven's murder, even volunteering to do the job with their own hands. "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas [sic] ready and I'll give My life to take Our freedom back," wrote superwrench4. "ONE SHOT...ONE KILL!" proclaimed Jst1425. "The only redistribution I am interested in is that of a precious metal.... LEAD," declared Patriot1952.

I ventured into the cesspool that is The Blaze, and comments like this have been scrubbed -- not surprisingly, since there is undoubtedly someone out there right now preparing to take a shot at a 78-year-old professor no one had heard of until Beck decided to place her in his Pantheon o'Scapegoats.

The thing that's so dangerous about Glenn Beck is that I'm not convinced he's buying any of it. When you look at him, and his TV schtick, he seems more of a carnival barker than a right-wing rabble-rouser. I'm always reminded more of Andy Kaufman than of Rush Limbaugh when I see what Beck does, because while Limbaugh is a genuinely mean, greedy, hateful man who gets paid millions for stirring the rage pot of downwardly-mobile white American males, Beck seems simply to be a guy with a troubled background, steamer trunks of emotional baggage, who has found a form of performance art that has made him wealthy beyond his wildest imaginings.

The jury is still out on whether an overall climate of hate, of legitimizing violence against those who disagree with you politically, of scapegoating politicians for your own grievances, contributed to the Tucson shootings. I still maintain that when you create an echo chamber of violent rhetoric, you legitimize the plottings of those mentally ill who hear voices in their heads. After all, if the voices outside your own head confirm what the ones inside your own head are telling you, that must make it OK, right?

For eight years you could get kicked out of school for wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt. Wal-Mart would rat you out for a photo of an anti-Bush poster you made and you'd get a visit from the Secret Service. Hang one in the privacy of your dorm room without even taking a photo and you'd also get a visit from the Secret Service. Nuns and Quakers were put on no-fly lists. And neither Glenn Beck, nor the frothing hysterics screaming about how Obama is going to take away their penis substitutes guns, said a word. But now, with a black man in the White House, the kind of lunatic ravings you used to hear on street corners by unhinged people distributing crude, homemade pamphlets, are pumped into people's homes and into the public consciousness every single night.

Glenn Beck has as much right to rant and rave as the street corner guy used to. What he does not have is a right to have the public airwaves on which to do it.

The truth hurts, Mr. Beck

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess that I have never watched Glenn Beck in full. What I see of Glenn Beck is what I see on The Daily Show and Countdown. For all I know, outside of the clips these programs show, Mr. Beck is a serious political analyst on a par with, oh, say, Jim Lehrer or the late Daniel Schorr. But somehow I doubt it.

It's hard for me to imagine that Beck's schtick is meant seriously. It's so over-the-top, so completely lunatic, that it comes across as performance art -- something the late Andy Kaufman would have put together. One has to wonder: if Glenn Beck is for real, how is someone this insane even able to function in day-to-day life, let alone put a show together every day. Are Jim Earl and Barry Lank perhaps writing for Glenn Beck now, only Beck thinks the stuff they give him to read off a teleprompter is for real? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

Because Beck's televised obsession with George Soros is pure comedy gold, as Jon Stewart pointed out the other night in yet another brilliant Beck spoof:

Apparently Mr. Beck, whose gift of projection is seen in the above segment in his accusations about George Soros, is unhappy with Stewart's spot-on parody:

Today Beck sent out an email blast asking if he should get a restraining order against Stewart, because Stewart spent 66% of a show on Beck.  Apparently Beck crunched the numbers, came up with 66% of the minutes in a single show, and felt that was a powerful statistic that would prove Beck's point about how "creepy" Jon Stewart is! Okayy.....

He also gave the story prominent coverage in The Blaze:

Jon Stewart spent over seven minutes mocking Fox News and Glenn Beck’s recent George Soros expose.

Stewart and fellow satirist/provocateur Stephen Colbert have jointly been nominated for Time magazine's annual "Person of the Year" award. Right now they're at #4. You know what to do.

David Neiwert went to Beckapalooza, so you didn't have to

David Neiwert wasted a day for our sins, and lived to tell the sorry tale.

But as expected, the quote of the day is over at Wonkette:

And here is their Idol, a hunchbacked fishmouthed monstrosity who will burst out of the hell-depths whenever anybody baits a hook with $100,000.

OK, whatever you thought before, Jurassicpork is now officially right about the publishing industry

It doesn't matter whether you've read any of JP's novel, or my unfinished one, or any of the works of the tens of thousands of unpublished authors who either still hammer away at the doors of the publishing industry or have long since given up or just decided to self promote and self-publish.

But there is something deeply wrong with an industry in which Glenn Beck receives a huge advance to write swill like this (which Digby has kindly transcribed, so you can save your pennies:

He bent to her, closed his eyes, and her lips touched his, gently, and again more urgently as he responded. He felt her arms around him, her body yearning against his in the embrace, a knot like hunger inside, heart quickening, cool hands at his back under the warmth of his jacket, searching, pressing him closer still. With everything to see and hear around them there at the very crossroads of the world, soaring billboards, scrolling news crawlers, bright digital Jumbotrons that lined the tall buildings and blotted out the whole evening sky, it all disappeared to its rightful insignificance, flat as a postcard. That place was left outside their small circle, and if asked right then he might have stayed there within it forever. But he felt her smile against his lips as they were brought back to where they stood by the brusque voice of a passing man, who advised in his native Brooklynese that maybe they should go and get a room.

A light drizzle had begun to fall, and down the block they found a coffee shop with two seats by the window where they could wait out the patch of rain. When he returned from the counter with their cups he found her sitting with a folded newspaper, not reading it but lost somewhere in her thoughts. It was a while before she spoke.

"Noah?"

"I was starting to worry you'd forgotten I was here."

Molly took a deep breath and seemed to collect herself for a moment.

"I need to ask you something."

"Okay."

"If we hired you, your company, what would you tell us to do?"

He frowned a bit. "You mean if you and your mom hired us?"

"It's more than just the two of us, you know that. A lot more."

"I don't know," he said. "What is it you want to accomplish again?"

"We want to save the country."

"Oh. Okay. Is that all?"

"That's where we start, isn't it? With a clear objective."

"That's right."

"So?"

"Okay. Let me think for a minute."

Molly had become deadly serious; this wasn't party talk. She didn't take her eyes from his as she waited.

"I guess;' he said, "I'd begin by sitting down with all these different groups and trying to focus everyone on the things they agree on -- the fundamentals. A platform, you know? Make it easy for people to understand what you're about. Propose some real answers."

"Give me an example."

"I don't know-start with the tax code, since your mom is so passionate about that. How about a set of specific spending cuts and a thirteen percent flat tax to start with? Get that ridiculous sixty-seven-thousand-page tax code down to four or five bullet points, and show exactly what effects it'll have on trade, and employment, and the debt, and the future of the country."

Oh, the humanity.

Best. Rant. Ever.

Who cares that he doesn't write his material on The Daily Show? No one delivers a rant like Lewis Black:

Maybe it's because not everyone wants media to spout wingnut talking points

Perhaps it happened the day Chris Matthews and G. Gordon Liddy had orgasms on the air over George W. Bush in a flight suit. Perhaps it happened even earlier, when the media decided taht George W. Bush won his debate with Al Gore. Perhaps it was eight years of regurgitating Dick Cheney's lies about Iraq. Perhaps it goes back to the media frenzy over a blue dress and a 20-year-old land deal. Perhaps it was the media presenting Sarah Palin as a credible figure to be a heartbeat away from, or in, the presidency. Perhaps it was the media giving a bunch of half-educated morons donning costumes and calling themselves Tea Party Patriots while spouting fractured history and rooting for tax cuts for rich people credibility as a viable third party and legitimate grassroots movement. Perhaps it hit the last straw with Bill Adair of Politifacts paraphrasing Stephen Colbert when opining that media outlets are afraid that facts are biased.

At any rate, thanks to the outright hackery of the last two decades, the journalism profession lies in ruins and its practitioners are pessimistic about its future:

Most newspaper and broadcast news editors think American journalism is in decline, and about half believe that their employers will go out of business if they do not find new sources of revenue, according to a survey to be released on Monday.

Among print editors, 18 percent said their papers were actively pursuing the idea of charging readers for access to their Web sites, while 58 percent said it was under consideration. Twenty-three percent said they believed that in three years, such subscription fees would be their primary source of online revenue, having overtaken advertising.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism polled members of two industry groups, the American Society of News Editors and the Radio Television Digital News Association. It received 353 sets of responses to the survey, conducted in December and January.

In addition, 48 percent of the editors who participated said that without a significant new income stream, their organizations could not remain solvent for more than 10 years; 31 percent gave them five years or less.

Despite that pessimism, about three-quarters of the editors who took part said they would have serious objections to accepting direct support from either the government or interest groups, and a similar number said their organizations had not seriously thought about taking donations from nonprofit groups.

In an era of shrinking newsrooms, 58 percent of the editors said journalism was headed in the wrong direction. Sixty-two percent said the Internet had changed the profession’s fundamental values, with most citing a loosening of standards.

Yes, blame the internet's "loosening of standards." Blame Brad Friedman, who has worked tirelessly over the last decade to expose the chicanery that lies behind our voting apparatus. Blame Greg Palast, who exposes so much treachery in public life that no one in the U.S. will hire him. For that matter, blame Rachel Maddow, who while part of the mainstream media, does cogent analysis night after night using DEMONSTRABLE FACTS while people who analyze media think this:

...is the same as this:

The Greatest Daily Show Bit You Have Ever Seen

Lately it's often seemed that Jon Stewart really doesn't enjoy his job anymore. It's hard to be funny when it's just not funny anymore. I mean, when crazy people who talk about grandma not being shovel-ready are actually making law and policy, we're so clearly looking down The Abyss of Stoopid™ that it's hard to be funny.

But even from his apparent slough of despond, sometimes Stewart and the rest of the Daily Show writers can still not only rise to the occasion, but produce brilliance. And this is right up there with Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner masterpiece:

Pot, Kettle, etc.

If I were four years old, I'd say "Takes one to know one":

I have no faith that this country won't elect Sarah Palin...but Palin/Glenn Beck? Are we THAT meshuggeh?

With even the most optimistic estimates having the employment picture not even BEGIN to improve until 2011, and Tim Geithner's buddies giving themselves huge bonuses instead of doing things like lending money in the aftermath of their huge taxpayer bailout, and Barack Obama's continued tossing under the bus of everyone who could otherwise be relied on to go to the mat for him, it's hard to imagine that the 2012 race won't be a real dogfight. The question is, just how angry (or racist) are people going to be, and are they willing to destroy the country in a stupid attempt to save it?

The signs are already there that the men who sit in the executive suites behind the so-called liberal media long for a Republican restoration, and if they can get a president about whom they can fantasize in a French maid costume, or dressed in dom/sub gear, or if they are like David Vitter, diapering them, well, so much the better. That every time she opens her mouth, incoherent babble comes out is immaterial. After all, we had a babbling idiot in the White House for eight years and survived, though whether we have survived or are just enduring the death rattle of a once-great nation remains to be seen.

Does anyone actually believe that if Sarah Palin looked like Barbara Mikulski, there would be this kind of fascination with her? Sure, her palpable self-delusion and ability to baldface lie without even flinching has a perverse kind of fascination. But I don't think it's her narcissistic, delusional megalomania or her willful ignorance that people find so attractive. Sure, projecting confidence can make people think you know something even when you're a blithering moron. But it's clear that Sarah Palin is all about the looks. The question is just how far those looks will carry her, and whether anger at what threatens to appear to be the utter failure of Barack Obama to clean up an economic mess that has taken nearly thirty years to make in a few short years is enough to generate a protest vote of that magnitude.

What OUGHT to make people sit up in their chairs, look at their children, and see if this is the future they want for them, is the idea that Palin hasn't ruled out choosing Glenn Beck as a running mate:

It's no secret that former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Fox News host Glenn Beck share great respect and admiration — so their fans can be forgiven for wondering: Is a "dream ticket" of Palin-Beck ticket completely out of the question?

Perhaps not.

Palin initially chuckled when Newsmax broached the idea. But then she had some serious words of praise for the popular Fox personality.

"I can envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I'm not there yet," Palin tells Newsmax. "But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He's a hoot. He gets his message across in such a clever way. And he's so bold — I have to respect that. He calls it like he sees it, and he's very, very, very effective."

Now right now this isn't worth sitting bolt upright in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. And hopefully the mediapalooza that surrounds Palin's book tour (that just happens to be focused on swing states) subsides by the time the 2012 race starts to kick into gear. But when you look at how we've seen mass mob mentality take hold when a population gets angry enough, and you look at the Bob Forehead quality of the other 2012 Republican hopefuls -- the parade of dull gray men (Tim Pawlenty) and poufy hair (John Thune) whose names are mentioned, the idea becomes not so ridiculous.

But Glenn Beck? Seriously? Are we THAT crazy? I know that intellectual acumen is a devalued commodity in these days of the fall of the American Empire, but have we embraced stupidity and ignorance to that extent?

Stay tuned.

OK, it's obvious now that "Meet Your Republican Party" has to be a series. So here's another installment

If you're a Republican, you can get paid to advocate the murder of the Speaker of the House over the public airwaves (but of course Beck isn't advocating assassination, right? WRONG):

This Is Not Over

Not by a long shot.

NBC may have shitcanned Imus from its MSNBC simulcast, but if anyone thinks that's the end of it, guess again. Because there are still the little matters of people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Weiner Savage.

LTR notes:

So, should Imus be fired once and for all? Who knows? Often, these scandals disappear after a short time, once another scandal comes around that our alleged media finds something else to pound into the heads of America. But this is just one of many audio nasties blasted out over the airwaves of our great country. There were many more prior to this. For example:

"(Cynthia McKinney) looks like ghetto trash. Get a braider over there ... quick!"

Oh wait, that was Neal Boortz who said that.

Or, "You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray . We miss you, James. Godspeed."

Oops, sorry. That was Rush Limbaugh.

"...Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."

My bad. Limbaugh again.

"Take that bone out of your nose and call me back."

"Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"

"The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

Yep. Limbaugh again.

"You open the door to them (immigrants), and the next thing you know, they are defecating on your country and breeding out of control."

Threw you all a curveball. That was Michael Savage who said that.

"(If) you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down... (aborting all African-American babies) would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do.. but the crime rate would go down"

That was Salem morning guy Bill Bennett.

Oh, and don't get me started on Glen Beck and Ann Coulter. I'm trying to keep this article short.

Imus may be a political non-Euclidian, an equal-opportunity basher, but Limbaugh and Beck and Savage and Coulter are not. And the amount of bile and vitriol spewing out of these people, the wishing people were dead, the advocating of murder, has gone on among the reptilian brains of the right wing for years. Funny how there was no outcry when Rush Limbaugh referred to a then thirteen-year-old Chelsea Clinton as "the family dog." It's one thing to point out the Bush twins drinking themselves into stupors when their peers are off fighting a war, because that's a FACT. Making fun of a thirteen-year-old's looks is just plain cruel, just the way calling a bunch of high-achieving collegiate athletes whores is just plain cruel, just the way saying that an 11-year-old kid who was kidnapped and held captive by a pedophile "liked his circumstances" is just plain cruel -- and crosses any kind of line of decency.

This isn't political discourse, this is whacking a hatchet at people just because you disagree with them. It isn't debating points of view, it's resorting to ad hominem attacks because your side of the fence has decided that this is the way to retain power. And the near-monopoly that the hatemongers who call themselves conservatives have had to spew their bile over the airwaves has contributed to the coarsening of the debate of the future of this country far more than a bunch of hip-hop artists working as cash cows for white guys have.

And don't talk to me about Randi Rhodes. I have my own beef with Randi Rhodes, most of it having to do with her excuses for the ineffectuality of the Democratic Party over the last six years and her propensity to scream at callers who disagree. Randi Rhodes doesn't have an H.R. from Staten Island, the progressive talk radio equivalent of Doris from Rego Park. H.R. is an old guy from Staten Island, a knee-jerk wingnut conservative who called Sam Seder at least once a week, just to argue. The thing is, H.R. is fond of Sam, and I think he respects Sam for standing up for what he believes in, even if H.R. doesn't agree. Randi doesn't have one of those. But I'll give Randi credit for this: She does her homework. She doesn't just pull stuff out of her ass, and the one time she went over the line, she recognized that it was offensive and apologized profusely. And she hasn't done anything like it since -- unlike Imus, unlike Glenn Beck, unlike Rush Limbaugh, unlike Ann Coulter, and the other lizardbrains of the right who spew this kind of thing daily. And those who would crucify Rhodes might recall that when North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms told Bill Clinton if he traveled to North Carolina, he'd better have a bodyguard, the Secret Service didn't investigate Jesse Helms.

Imus may very well have done us all a service with this latest stunt. Because certainly Keith Olbermann gave every indication on Countdown tonight that whether anyone else makes the connection between the Imus fracas and what the lizardbrains of the avowed right say, he's made the connection. And I am telling you Keith Olbermann is not going to let this go quietly. And neither am I.