Glenn Beck has decided that net neutrality is censorship and the work of the devil:
[…]President Obama has compiled something “almost like an enemy’s list” and how Obama is into “silencing opponents.” The president’s tool of choice for this censorship? Network neutrality—the principle that ISPs cannot interfere with content.“We are dealing with people who think they should rebel until they get their little kingdom like Satan did,” said Beck. “You know what? Thanks, Mr. President, but I think we’re going to keep the Internet the way it is right now. You know—or at least until people who are worshipping Satan, you know, aren’t in office.”
That’s just general Glenn Beck stupidity and not really worth remarking on. What’s more interesting is that AT&T recently used a Satanic reference in the title of a blog entry accusing net neutrality advocates of apocalyptic predictions.
I know that Satan dwells in everyone’s heart, but I didn’t know that he also lives in TCP/IP networks. We really do have to work to keep him down in the hole.
4tehlulz
/b/?
russell
I think Satan actually resides at the physical or data link levels. TCP and IP are pretty much above suspicion.
Ethernet, different story.
atlliberal
Does anyone else think it’s just possible that Glenn Beck is conducting a huge experiment with propaganda to see how far he can push it before he gets caught? I don’t think he really believes a single word he says. The experiment would be to see how many people he can fool before the curtain gets pulled back and he’s exposed for the fraud that he is.
So far it’s been a success for him.
Punchy
Is it just me or has Ann Coulter pretty much ceased to be an item anymore? Haven’t seen that broad on the cabulz for months.
Geeno
@Punchy: She ran out of the blood of virgins and started aging.
Mumphrey
@atlliberal:
No, I think he believes this stuff, or at least a lot of it. I think the guy’s really sick. He’s clearly paranoid, and who knows what else is wrong with him. He needs some help desperately. I know that nobody can make him take medicine or lock him up in an asylum or anything, but still, they don’t have to give him a platform to rant, either. Sooner or later something bad is going to happen. Either some nut will take his words to heart and shoot somebody, or amybe he’ll go off on the air and do something really crazy, like beat up a guest or something. I don’t know. But as long as he keeps his show, and is free to spew forth on the aia, the odds are that sooner or later something’s going to break.
MattF
I do wonder about Beck. Wouldn’t surprise me if one day he started rolling around on the floor and speaking in tongues. On the other hand, I don’t wonder at all about AT&T.
stevie314159
Just make sure your router blocks Port 666.
dmsilev
I always thought that Satan lived in SCSI chains, as this bit of technical wisdom from the internet dark ages demonstrates:
dms
geg6
@Geeno:
This. A thousand times, this.
She’s not so pretty and nubile any more, so gotta push her to the back of the line.
Not that I ever thought she was all that attractive (what with the Adam’s apple and all), but a lot of wingers I know thought she was. Now, not so much. It’s all about Sarah with them. And when her neck starts looking a bit too crepey, they’ll be onto Megan McCain, I’m guessing.
some other guy
When did Glenn Beck turn into the Church Lady?
geg6
@Mumphrey:
I agree. I think Beck is truly mentally ill. His rants remind me of the ones my brother with bipolar disorder used to have before he got stabilized on his meds and realized he should not self-diagnose or -medicate.
He would make the same sort of crazy connections between totally unconnected things and create these inscrutible diagrams of all the interconnectedness, just like Beck and his blackboard.
I find it all very uncomfortable to watch, knowing that he’s mentally ill and untreated. It isn’t funny at all to me.
Bill E Pilgrim
Oh I thought we were worshiping Santa.
Must have been a typo I saw somewhere. Damn.
/takes off fuzzy hat
wag
This I love me a little early morning Tom Waits.
Pigs & Spiders
The whole debate over Net Neutrality is really fascinating to me, at least in terms of the bedfellows it’s making. It crystalizes the line between those for whom the good of the country comes before the good of the corporation and those for whom the corporation is the country.
rachel
By letting them show the world what morons they are?
some other guy
@stevie314159:
Also, never do a chmod 666, the permissions of the beast, or else Satan will have access to your data– and, since *nix treats everything like a file, your eternal soul!
MikeJ
@dmsilev: I have a chicken’s foot I got in New Orleans that has waived over many a broken server. Usually works.
Morbo
@geg6: Satan and Ann Coulter in the same thread? I’ve had worse excuses to post metal.
Punchy
What the fuck you got against the Boston Bruins?
By the way, look at that url. Think Yahoo did that on purpose?
mistermix
@geg6: Beck is crazy like a fox. He’s got hours of airtime to fill and dreaming up crazy bullshit like this is an easy way to make time fly.
atlliberal
@Mumphrey: I agree that it could lead to something bad, but I don’t think he believes a word of it. I think he’s pushing to see how far he can go. I think he’s possibly due an academy award for the performance he puts out night after night. And when some nut takes him literally, he’ll play the victim and deny any responsibility.
Chris Johnson
What Wag said :)
Ye fucking gods, you hear Marc Ribot on that? It sounds just like the solo from ‘Clap Hands’ crossed with Stevie Ray Vaughan :D
Ed Marshall
Can someone, even a troll, try and explain the case that net neutrality is going to censor them?
Jon H
It’s *so* unhinged, contrary to reality, and just so happens to be in line with large-corporate interests, that I can’t help but think he’s been paid by cable interests to espouse the position.
cmorenc
@atlliberal:
IMHO this was true for quite awhile, as Beck used his showmanship skills to craftily build his ascent from merely just another second-stringer republo-glibertarian shock-talk host into becoming an actual insurgent leader. However, there came a point not long after Beck moved from HN to Fox where Beck became trapped in his own ego and success and began to seriously swallow his own bullshit. For one thing, he realized he’d reached a point where if one day he admitted he was winging it, making shit up, his admiring audience would turn on him and tear him apart. For another, he has a massive ego and has grown fond of the degree of adulation and hyper-financial success he’s achieved beyond his wildest dreams five years or so ago.
In short, he both realizes that if he stops he dies at the hands of his own followers, and also that he’s enjoying such a thrilling ride that he doesn’t want to stop. He’s also gained PT Barnum-like confidence that he has enough talent and skill to keep this thing going without tripping any of his followers’ bullshit alarms that might turn them against him. He knows the bounds of wilfull gullability of his audience well; what he’s lost IMHO is a sense of his own self-gullability. He’s come to believe in the healing powers of his snake-oil patent medicine. After all, it seems to be working for him personally.
Morbo
@Punchy: No, and that should be the scary thing. :-O
Bill E Pilgrim
@Ed Marshall:
You have to cast your mind into the right wingoverse where corporations are people. And people are just sort of parasites that ride around on them freeloading.
Then many things become clear.
dmsilev
@MikeJ: That works, though you do have to tune the talisman to the device in question. I once advised a colleague who was having trouble diagnosing a SQUID magnetometer that she should put a small bowl of spicy marinara sauce on top of the thing and tell it that unless it behaved, it was destined to become fried calamari. That worked, for a while anyway.
dms
Bobby Thomson
@wag: Nothing against Tom Waits, but I like what the Neville Brothers did with that.
As for the Ghost in the Machine post, of course no journalists can be bothered to explain that net neutrality is more speech, not less, and doesn’t “silence” anyone. Beck’s too stupid to know the anti-net neutrality talking points (Pr0n is bad! Think of the children!).
gnomedad
I remember thinking when I first saw Network that Howard Beall was an entertaining fantasy. Glenn Beck makes Howard Beall look like Edward R. Murrow.
Gregory
Which is exactly what net neutrality does! Sheesh.
Citizen_X
@Ed Marshall: Seriously. I can’t follow the “logic” either.
arguingwithsignposts
@4tehlulz:
Wow, there outta be a Godwin’s law for the /b/ reference. First comment. Awesome sauce!
SpotWeld
Let’s say you’re an amature geneologist. You look up family trees and write up nice histories of a given family. Then you get it bound into a book and sell it to said family members.
I nice little out of the house side business.
Let’s say you do a really good job for a nice big family, and you end up going to the post office every day for a month with a half-dozen pacakages of that booth to send out to your customers.
Now, if after the first week the guy at the post office desk said. “You know, you’re really taking up a lot of our resources mailing those books. Since we have to keep our systems clear incase Amazon needs them for a big order, we’re going to have to start charging you more per book since you aren’t as important as these big customers. ”
Net Neutraility is about keeping the pricing of the resource the same for all customers. And not letting the big volume users push out the little guys.
ksmiami
Beckism: (noun/USA) A syndrome to describe the Cable TV Paranoid rantings of the desperately delusional in exchange for wads of Murdoch cash
cleek
the logic is :
he knows his audience is completely ignorant of the issue, and he knows they love it when he says mean things about liberals. therefore he can drop the issue into his standard librulzRbad template and use it to fill time.
flukebucket
Beck has simply identified his audience and knows that the secret to success is to give ’em what they want.
Walker
Because no one has made the obvious joke:
They are called server daemons for a reason.
Bill E Pilgrim
Oh I think it’s perfectly in keeping with the Citizens United ruling, for instance.
One common interpretation of that ruling is that it establishes that money equals “free speech”.
So any regulation that restricts in any way how much money a corporation can make is thus censorship.
Just have to think like a complete lunatic extreme right winger. And try not to reflect on the fact that a majority of our Supreme Court justices actually fit that description.
Persia
@cmorenc: It’s like Network only real.
someguy
Well, it is possible that giving government control over net content could at some point backfire. We just have to make sure Republicans don’t capture the FTC.
Kryptik
He can’t even be consistent between sentences. I mean…
…tell me. How does saying ‘ISPs can’t butt their heads into other sites’ content’ equal ‘GUBMENT CENSORSHIP!!’ Sounds to me like…er…this is trying to stop corporate censorship. Then again I’m just a dirty fucking hippie like that.
Quiddity
I like the fact that Beck claims Obama has compiled something “almost like an enemies list”.
An enemies list? No, nothing that bad, but ALMOST LIKE an enemies list.
What a relief.
MikeJ
@Quiddity: I’ve got an almost list
Of people who won’t be missed….
Fred X. Quimby
Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all the authority of the FCC, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship Obama, whose fatal Supreme Court reversal had been healed. And he passed great and miraculous laws, even causing government interference and regulations to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the FCC, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an network of openness in honor of the beast who was wounded by the Tea-Baggers and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of Peter Schreiber, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to have sucky download speeds. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a secure IP address, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the certification, which is held in trust by a neutral non-governmental authority.
This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the IP address of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is ~ ERROR ~ INVALID IP ADDRESS ~
jwb
@Quiddity: The funny thing is that if Obama really did have an enemies list, Beck would almost certainly not be on it.
Fergus Wooster
@walker: Server daemon indeed. . .
I have a friend whose employer wrote code for one of the major Religious Right TV-network-investment-conglomerates. Guidelines included that no line of code was ever allowed to include three “6”s in a row.
Also, the word “abort” was never to appear in the code.
The conglomerate/network had people review lines of code to make sure none of the forbidden scripts appeared. I’m not making this up.
slippy
@someguy:
Are you asserting this is what Net Neutrality does? Because, it doesn’t.
cliff
Satan is busy running the HFT and flash trading machines, wasn’t 666 a lovely bottom for the market?
drunken hausfrau
I thought Satan and Mrs. Satan lived in McLean? With little Miss Satan Jr. nearby?
flukebucket
@Fred X. Quimby:
It doesn’t get any better than this.
Joey Maloney
@geg6: Not that I ever thought she was all that attractive (what with the Adam’s apple and all), but a lot of wingers I know thought she was. Now, not so much. It’s all about Sarah with them. And when her neck starts looking a bit too crepey, they’ll be onto Megan McCain, I’m guessing.
Given the whole child-porn-on-freerepublic thing that Salon was pearl-clutching over this weekend, I figure they’ll skip straight to Piper.
MikeJ
@Joey Maloney: Free Republic really is a cesspool of stupid and evil, but that Salon story was bullshit. Wow, they didn’t nuke spammy profile pages quickly enough.
Ash Can
Satan is alive and well and running Fox News, among other corporate entities. Murdoch, Beck et al. are simply his tools.
Citizen_X
Actually, the logic is very simple: throw a lot of bullshit out there to confuse the issue. Citizen apathy results, and the corps get to do what they want. Mission Accomplished!
jwb
@Ash Can: Murdoch is a portmanteau of murder and Moloch.
NattyBatz
An important PSA for everyone to see…
PurpleGirl
What does /b/ mean?
(Obviously I don’t know all internet traditions.)
YellowJournalism
I think it’s more likely the result of all the vile things she’s been spewing over the years. It’s all coming back to her on her face. Plus, she seems to have terrible make-up people. They cake it on and use the kind of liquid eye-liner often found on crazy old cat ladies buying tuna at midnight from the 7-11.
As far as Beck goes, hasn’t he already used the “rodeo clown” defense recently to deflect criticism? Not that I don’t think there’s some crazy mixed in with his PT Barnum-on-PCP style.
Corner Stone
@Walker:
The obvious joke is Dante and the 7 Layers of the OSI Model.
unabogie
Ok, here’s what’s really weird about this. Flash back just a few years ago, and I think most of the Teabloggers were advocating FOR net neutrality. In fact, anyone with a website can see how it helps them to have an equal footing with the “liberal” MSM when it comes to getting your opinion out.
It amazes me how these people can be talked into fighting tooth and nail against things that help them in their lives.
Pigs & Spiders
@Ed Marshall: Here’s the logic train, if you want to call it that:
FCC proposes Net Neutrality regulations —> FCC regulates television —> FCC Doesn’t allow boobies and swear words on television —> FCC will totally censor the internet
Mumphrey
@Morbo:
Did you know Coulter and the devil were married a while back?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmLJDrsaJmk
vtr
Forbes Magazine interviewed Beck in April, and Think Progress excerpted the interview on April 8. In it Beck said he couldn’t “give a flying crap about the political process.” He went on to say, “Now making money – that’s an important consideration.” It’s impossible for anyone with his intelligence not to understand, for instance, that net neutrality means the opposite of his portrayal. His is cynicism on par with Wall Street traders. I don’t think he means much of what he says.
Mike in NC
Satan and Roger Ailes have never been seen together in the same room. Coincidence? I think not.
Silver Owl
I think Satan has far higher standards than Fox News, Ailes, Beck and the executives at AT&T. LOL!
someguy
You don’t think that Republican FTC commissioners would seize on that “any lawful content” principle and not use it to define some content as unlawful? I think they would. Can’t seem them not doing it.
SGEW
I think a lot of people are failing to consider that Glenn Beck is both a) mentally disturbed and b) a lying, disingenuous, self-aware charlatan.
MikeJ
@someguy: Some content is already unlawful (kiddy porn). Has nothing to do with net neutrality.
Randy P
@geg6:
Beck is going to give a speech on August 28, on the same date and in the same place as Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s supposed to be about The Plan, some sort of 100-year plan he got direct from God.
So we’re going to see full unhinged Beck on display. And full unhinged Beck supporters. A frightening picture in many respects.
And I do sincerely believe that the extreme talk-show nuttiness that is the core of the modern Republican party includes a significant number of people who are literally delusional and otherwise mentally ill. That’s their new base. Talking about “logic” to this constituency is pointless.
The Moar You Know
@PurpleGirl: /b/ is incontestible proof that our homo sapiens ancestors would have bred with anything that crossed their paths. Sapiens/neanderthalis sex would have been flat out normal compared to what you’ll see after a few minutes on /b/.
Here is a link.
Don’t click it. I’m serious.
Karmakin
@Pigs & Spiders: You’re giving them WAY too much credit.
The actual logic stream going on here is this:
DFH’s support Net Neutrality—>Oppose Net Neutrality
There’s nothing here past that. They don’t even have the first clue of what it is or why it might be bad or good or anything.
There’s no argument there.
PurpleGirl
@The Moar You Know: Thank you, Moar. I will not clink the link. I have learned to take warnings seriously.
WereBear
You are right. It’s just that simple… minded.
This is what makes their stand on any issue so easy for me to predict; basically, whatever creates the most harm to the most people.
Honest. It’s twisted, but it’s true.
Morbo
@The Moar You Know: You have to admit though, what they did with the Hutaree message boards when all the moderators were arrested was, in the local dialect, full of win.
Bill Murray
@Quiddity: it’s a list of people he doesn’t care to associate with very often. A list of meh-ies
Scuffletuffle
@YellowJournalism: Hey, I don’t wear makeup!
Comrade Kevin
@Ed Marshall:
Liberals are in favor of net neutrality, therefore it’s bad.
I don’t think there’s any more to it than that.
mclaren
Of course satan dwells in the TCP/IP protocols. Haven’t you ever heard of daemons?
Alex Murray
I don’t get why Megan won’t be in the next Transformers 3! She was so awesome before.