Dana Milbank makes the connection between Glenn Beck’s crazy bullshit and crazy people with guns inspired by it.
Beck has prophesied darkly to his millions of followers that we are reaching “a point where the people will have exhausted all their options. When that happens, look out.” One night on Fox, discussing the case of a man who killed 10 people, Beck suggested such things were inevitable. “If you’re a conservative, you are called a racist, you want to starve children,” he said. “And every time they do speak out, they are shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?”
Here’s one idea: Stop encouraging them.
Milbank has one of the most sensitive fingers to the wind of the DC status quo, so I’m betting on a bit of a backlash against the assignment editors at Fox from other media notables in the coming days.
WereBear
If Glenn Beck had become a screenwriter instead of a shock jock, we’d all be better off.
Your point about Milbank is a good one: we can only hope the stockers are starting to realize their marshmallows have caught fire and the steam valve has nudged into the red.
The justifications have seeped into the group mind that it’s okay, for people like us, to do bad things from good motivations.
This holds across the board; any group looks at the excesses of the late 60’s/early 70’s and says: They were killing us! It was a war!
But even the IRA figured out terrorism doesn’t work. You get a reaction, but it’s never the right one.
Scott
Feh. Glenn Beck and Fox are doing what they mean to do. They want “The Turner Diaries” and they won’t stop ’til they get them. And the so-called liberal media ultimately wants the same thing. Milbank will settle back into cheerleading the idiocy soon enough.
jomo
Beck is becoming more messianistic and grandiose as time goes by. A year ago he called himself a circus clown, now he is giving a call to arms on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of MLK. He’s started a university. The guy thinks he’s important. And once Hubris takes over, the ability to shift tactics is lost. I can think of many such cranks in American history who have jumped the shark – I can’t think of any with staying power.
cat48
Milbank does good work again this wk. Few wks back, he went after the Tea Party, et al. for that Obama/Hitler/Stalin Iowa Billboard & posters of Obama/Hitler at rallies, etc.
Looks like Milbank might be a little frightened of the weirded out wingnuts, too!
jurassicpork
American Zen‘s Mike Flannigan in “Robbing People to Pay Rand Paul.”
Pancake
Milbank’s pinkie is more normally found up the keester of one of the Washington insiders from whom he gets most of his ideas and columns.
numbskull
@jomo: I think that’s missing the point. The “staying power” is important at a higher level. Consider what the John Birch Society has morphed in to and spawned. That’s just one example of not only staying power, but growth!
Gina
On a personal level, I find Beck’s continuing descent into madness even more depressing every time I hear from my dad. He’s really into the guy, and the mental gymnastics Dad does to downplay any cognitive dissonance are truly frightening.
Chad N Freude
Let’s not forget this exercise in Milbankian Breitbartism. He left his gig on Olbermann’s program apparently because Olbermann wanted him to issue a correction (which he never did).
mem from somerville
Well, I was just told on Fox Obama is a harbinger of the apocalypse, with all that raw soshulism…
Is President Obama actually a harbinger of the Apocalypse?
“Total fruitloop” is an understatement.
WereBear
Yeah. Sigh. If my dad still had a mind, which he does not, he’d be doing the same thing. However, both Fox News fans I’ve known over the last ten years turned out to have slowly developing dementia.
I know it’s not data. But it’s frightening…
mai naem
I consider Glenn Beck to be the Charles Coughlin of our times. He will eventually do something and bring himself down.
geg6
Sadly, Beck is just the latest iteration of the grand tradition of hateful demagogues who drive the stupid and stupidly angry to horrible crimes against humanity before they flame out in spectacular fashion. He and his contemporary ilk have already sent murderers into the streets over the last two years and I dread to see how many more will have to die before the flames will be put out and he becomes another historical figure illustrating the hate that lurks in the dirty underbelly of rightwing populism, much like Coughlin or McCarthy or Lindbergh.
wilfred
Beck is a prophet? With ‘followers’? Maybe so, but unless there is some direct connection between the guy who killed 10 people and conservative anger at the imposition of political correctness than there is a serious lapse in critical thinking here.
But then what else is new? Nothing is more overdetermined than violent crime; anyone can ascribe any meaning they want to it.
This is the Grand Theft Auto defense/attack.
Pancake
@WereBear:
Funny, but I’ve observed the same phenomenon as you, but in a somewhat different context…”[Balloon Juice commenters] I’ve known over [recent]…years turned out to have slowly developing dementia.”
Scott
Pancake, I know it’s a slow, drowsy Sunday morning, but shouldn’t you be busy masturbating to photos of Tim McVeigh?
Shalimar
@Pancake: Not very good at diagnosing mental illness?
Pancake
@Scott:
That sort of stuff is best done by a real afficionado of the art such as yourself…although one suspects that you add Obama in your imagery.
Frank
@mem from somerville:
Please don’t forget that he is also a Kenyan born Socialist Muslim Nazi and the anti-Christ. It floors me that there are actually idiots that believe this stuff.
It reminds me of some fraudsters in the south who were calling on older folks to buy an Obamacare supplemental plan to help protect against the dangers of Obamacare (I assume Sarah Palin’s made up death panels). The utterly amazing thing is that they apparently actually sold a number of policies.
Chad N Freude
@jurassicpork: OT, but related to your link, another energy industry accident that shows the merits of Galtian disregard for regulation.
Chyron HR
@Pancake:
Hey, Dave, when did you first realize you were a traitor to your country?
Was it when you were showering after gym class, and you got a… funny feeling from the way the older boys were declaring their fealty to Israeli hegemony?
Pancake
@Chyron HR: Way to Go! Combining anti-Semitism with homophobia in one short post…must be some kind of BJ record!
Chad N Freude
Pancake: Screen name for commenters who wish to describe the sharpness of their wit.
asdf
I don’t follow any other right wing sites but I do read Free Republic. It’s fascinating. Want to know what kind of people these murderers are? Liberals. Yep, George W. Bush was a liberal too. Who knew?
I wish I was kidding.
Gina
@WereBear: Given the amount of congenital insanity in the family, dementia would be the better option. My parents are both pretty young, early 60s, so I’m bracing for decades of teh krazy to come. But, given the practice I’ve gotten from decades past, hopefully I can manage not to slide along w/them.
WereBear
@Gina: I’m sad to say crazy runs in my family, too. But I give both my parents some credit for diluting the child rearing practices they were raised with. Now that some people have passed on and we’re all raised, the hair raising truth is coming out.
The amazing thing would be if they were not crazy, knowwudimean?
Socraticsilence
Beck seems like he’s tring to get someone to take a shot at Obama- after all he’s an “usurper” who “has a deep-seated hatred for white people” and “is trying to destroy America” and whats the right solution to a problem like that? All I can say for the man is he better pray no one follows up on his words, because he wont get out of NYC alive if something happens.
Jay C
Really? I wouldn’t take that bet at any odds. Mainly because the only reaction most “other media notables” seem to have towards Fox “News” is galloping envy at its ratings and media clout (even if only perceived).
Most of the “serious” “mainstream media” has been quite content to let Fox and its imitators rant away Teh Crazy 24/7/365 with scarcely a peep about concerns over the damage unchecked rage-mongering can, or might do. Unhinged right-wing rhetoric is the expected norm “over there”, and can always be dismissed as mere clownery. Of course, when it occasionally gets out of hand (a la Byron Williams), the apocalyptic rabble-rousing can always be tut-tutted over by the Serious; but I imagine Beelzebub will be renting ice skates before we’ll see any “media notables” – and BTW, who do you imagine these “notables” are? – do more than make a few disapproving murmurs over Glenn Beck’s screeds. If that.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
M.e.h.
I realize that he “controls the voting booth” as the saying goes around here, but in a complete mindfuck, he is doing it with fewer and fewer viewers.
Magic? I think so.
BobS
@asdf: I’ve noticed that with several teabaggers I regularly antagonize on threads in our local newspaper. The word “liberal” seems to be defined as whatever it is that bothers them today, no matter how they felt about the same thing yesterday.
By the way, referring to them as teabaggers gets my comments deleted (it’s a conservative small town paper). I have to refer to them as ‘Mad Hatters’. If any of them have gotten the connection, they haven’t let on.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“But even the IRA figured out terrorism doesn’t work. You get a reaction, but it’s never the right one.”
No, the (Provisional) IRA played a blinder. They established their political wing as the dominant force amongst Northern Irish Catholics. The fact that it took them thirty years longer to learn what was obvious to the SDLP and the Official IRA (which abandoned terrorism in the 1970s) didn’t cause them any political penalty, mores the pity.
aimai
@BobS:
Ah yes, I almost got punched out during the run up to the 2004 election by an extremely angry republican at a public parking lot on the cape. I’d accidentally parked him in and when I went to move my car, with profuse apologies, he accused me of having done it “on purpose” because “that’s what liberals do.” To this day I’m still completely taken aback by the accusation. Really? That’s our master plan? Parking some guy in in a free form sand parking lot by a public pond? And after that, what? We’re taking over the world? Wonder what they think the homosexual agenda is–maybe jumping the line at Liza Minelli concerts?
aimai
Paris
I think any network that employs Glen Beck should be rewarded with a front seat in the White House press briefing room.
Max
For those of you that actually think Glenn Blech is popular … keep in mind …
Even here in the “Capitol of the ol’ Confederacy” NPR All Things Considered earns about a 10 share of radio listenership. Faux Snooz doesn’t come CLOSE to that kind of viewership percentage!
“FNC (Faux Snooz) averaged …2.8 million viewers (657,000 in the demo) CNN averaged 1.3 million total viewers (407,000 in the demo) and MSNBC averaged 1.1 million viewers (377,000 in the demo).”
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/179815-Cable_News_Ratings_Fox_News_Still_Tops.php
And now the ultimate ammo:
“National Public Radio alone reaches more than 20 million listeners … 12m for All Things Considered”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Things_Considered
And 13 million for NPR Morning Edition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Edition
When the Richmond Times Dispatch did a very rare thing … and actually reported the ratings of a commercial and a NONcommercial show together in the same news story … NPR ATC got about a 10 share … SAME AS RUSH LIMBAUGH.
This idea that Faux Snooz is the most popular “news outlet” in America is conservative media mythology.
… and now I have read that Bech’s show brings in no ad revenue! If that’s true … keep it up Faux !