Can’t this idiot get anything right?
Soon after, on his radio show, Beck added, “By the way, I just thought I would put this out there, and what you do with it is your own business. But, this weekend, I put out a tweet on Twitter that September 28th is the Day of Atonement for the Jewish faith, and I thought it would be a good day for all of us to fast and pray, you know. And I got this idea from Thomas Jefferson. After they put together the Continental Congress, the first thing they did was put together a day — a national day of fast and prayer, and I thought the Day of Atonement would be a good day to do it.”
Does he really not know that Yom Kippur falls on different days in different years?
Update. It really does sound to me like he’s proposing making this an annual thing. I’m not going to apologize for criticizing that. Yes, I know it is on September 28 this year.
Jager
Ah… no. He doesn’t!
Michael D.
Ahmmm, I totally think Beck is a looner, but, uhm, Yom Kippur DOES fall on the 27th and 28th of this month. I see nothing in this that suggests otherwise.
El Cruzado
Clearly America is a Christian Nation because it was founded on a Christian Calendar.
Warren Terra
Yay, a comment box!
Reprising what I posted to the previous thread:
DougJ’s post is a shame, because it’s weak, and unnecessarily so. At least in the Benen post DougJ is responding to, Beck doesn’t say that he wants to make it an annual event tied to September 28, which is what DougJ is riffing off of.
But take a gander at what Benen quotes:
Speaking as a Jew, and one who is frankly terrified by Beck’s Christianist crypto-brownshirt Teabagger following, I find his attempt to appropriate my people’s holiday for his own purposes absolutely infuriating. The fact that he moves the horribly offensive “Judeo-Christian” canard one step further (and have you heard that term from anyone but a Christian, or their rare lapdogs like Daniel Lapin, in the last fifteen years?) to transform the founders into some sort of devout “Judeo-Christians” who observed Yom Kippur is equally incendiary, and is profoundly ahistorical and ignorant.
Amazingly, the one thing DougJ criticizes is the one thing that doesn’t seem to be a problem to begin with.
winguts to iraq
just an FYI, the image “balloon juice” on the top of hte page no longer goes back to the home page. I have to click “consistently wrong”. It makes me has a sad.
Also, why does my work calendar not list the start of fall on it? Yom Kippur is there!
brat
Clearly, no. He’s dumber than a box of rocks.
Leelee for Obama
There should be a law that says Glenn Beck cannot appropriate religious holidays of any kind in his insanity. Lord only knows what he’ll come up with next. I’m not sure I can get sicker of him than I am presently.
freelancer
Now that this thread is active again, a joke:
George, Sr.: What time is it? Oh, almost sundown. I have to prepare for the Sabbath.
Michael: It’s Tuesday.
George, Sr.: Shh.
——
George, Sr.: Tonight? No, it’s Yontif, the first night of Yom Kippur.
Michael: Dad, that’s just one night, and it’s back in September. That’s okay. You’ve only been a Jew for about two days.
monkey.dave
Atonement? That sounds like blaming America first! Nice try, Comrade Beck. Maybe you need to on one of Obama’s European apology tours!
handy
Yeah, that’s a bit of a nit to pick in a wider ocean of stupid that is Glenn Beck.
Warren Terra
Given that Beck is some sort of enthusiastic Mormon convert, is this retroactive conversion of the founders into observant “judeo-christians” somehow related to the Mormons’ habit of retroactively converting long-dead Jewish victims of the Holocaust, so that these people who suffered for their religious or ethnic identity can enjoy the pleasures of the Mormon afterlife?
Or perhaps he’s thinking about the part of Mormon doctrine that says that Native Americans are the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel?
Zzyzx
I’m so so so sure that Beck has been spending these 10 days thinking about how he has hurt someone, tried to repair the damage, and now will be fasting so he can forgive himself. Really I am.
Konrad2
You know, Glenn Beck has said a lot of stupid and inflammatory things, but this seems pretty benign.
I don’t even see how it could be offensive to Jews if his followers do it in privacy and Beck doesn’t make a big spectacle out of it (which he inevitably will).
media browski
Um, dougj, I think the pliticizing of my religion’s most holy of days is really the huge fucking issue here.
For whatever reason (prbably some fundy obsession) the gop insists on using judaism to lend credibility and stature to their political propaganda, despite our well-documented lack of support for same.
Apparently christianity doesn’t have the same gravitas.
Andre
And next: “Why everyone who died in Auschwitz and Dachau was actually a Republican!”
Steeplejack
@winguts to iraq:
I just looked it up last night. The autumnal equinox is at 5:18 p.m. EDT tomorrow.
Had a little calendar program, AstroWin, that was great for all that stuff. But it didn’t get updated the last time that daylight saving time changed, so I have been reduced to snuffling around with the Google.
(Fingers crossed for edit box.)
Zifnab
The dude is starting a cult. I mean, it was always kinda a joke that the Right Wing’s constant idol worship of Reagen and dogmatic adherence to tax cuts and deregulation and clinging to the trappings of patriotism made it something of a religion.
But I’m convinced Glenn Beck is going the full Jim Jones given enough time and attention.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Boo. No edit box. (Opera 10.0 on WinXP.)
ellaesther
(ok, cutting and pasting the comments that rightfully should be here)
@Warren Terra (who commented that Beck is out of line and as a Jew he is deeply offended):
I’m with you on that. The man needs to step off my faith.
I mean, Christians of good will may well want to take him and his ilk on and challenge him/them on the lies they tell about Christianity and this country’s relationship with Christianity—but he is their boy. He is not my boy. (I have called out Joe Lieberman in the past, though, in commentary that I wrote for his hometown newspaper! Unlike Beck, et all, he is, sadly, my boy).
But Beck had best stop this nonsense right.now.
What’s next? Is he going to suggest that white folks take Juneteenth?
mario
if doug doesn’t update his post and admit to overstating this particular bit of nothing, the terrorists win.
no, seriously.
They win.
media browski
2nd thought: the GOPs war on the High Holidays is off to a grand start!
ellaesther
(one last cut-n-paste)
You know, generally, there’s this whole tendency among American Christians of a certain stripe to behave as if they have the run of Judaism, too. That they can take my faith, my rituals, my prayers, and apply them any old way they like to their own faith. It’s deeply irritating and deeply disrespectful—but of course, they are the type of Christian who generally has no respect for any other faith, anyway, so I suppose “respect” doesn’t really enter into it (except in that faux-respect that they show Israel/Jews, which is roughly analogous to the man who “puts his wife on a pedestal,” but beats her when she dares to step off it).
And this being the Ten Days of Repentance, I suppose I have to forgive them for it now…! Damn repentance.
asiangrrlMN
Fucker. Go fuck yourself, Beck. Meditate on that for awhile. Fucker.
Zzyzx
@mario: Doug got the point wrong, but this isn’t nothing. Ask any Jew what they think of this idea, and you’ll get an earful.
Skepticat
Let’s see, so far Mr. Bleck has appropriated two days in September for his very own. His latching onto Thanksgiving seems unavoidable and associating himself with Halloween would be apropos. What other holidays can we expect to see sullied? More so than any day tainted with his presence, I mean.
gwangung
Rather…blasphemous…isn’t it?
Zifnab
@Skepticat: April Fool’s Day has been enshrined as “GOP Health Care Plan Release Day”, so I think that’s locked in.
He can always try and scalp Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day and maybe spend the time revisiting why we never should have left Vietnam.
Origuy
What’s next, the War on Hanukkah?
whitey
Beck’s a Mormon.
“At the Anointed Quorum’s September 28, 1843, meeting, Joseph “was by common consent and unanimous voice chosen President of the quorum and anointed and ord[ained] to the highest and holiest order of the priesthood (and companion [Emma]).”45 This ordinance, called the second anointing or “fullness of the priesthood,” fulfilled the promise of the first anointing.”
Beck’s politicizing a religion, but it ain’t Judaism.
Julia Grey
Next he’ll be appropriating Lent and Maundy Thursday.
Maybe he’ll decide it would be nice if all good conservatives stripped their kitchen tables and veiled their sink faucets on Good Friday.
whitey
That’s Joseph Smith, to clarify. Taken from: http://www.signaturebooks.com/excerpts/anointed2.htm
freelancer
@Origuy:
I think Cole came up with appropriate response to offensive co-opting shit like this back in June:
So here is my plan for a tea party of our own. This year, from after Thanksgiving until 2 January, I want everyone who wants to signify that they support any liberal or dirty hippy position to do the following things to show your support for the cause:
1.) Put up a large evergreen in your living room and dress it up with lots of ornaments.
2.) Drink egg nog.
3.) Place candles in your window.
4.) Take the day off on the 24th or 25th of December, and spend it with your family.
5.) Sing little ditties and songs (we can even call them “carols”).
6.) Buy gifts for your friends and loved ones.
I have a lot more ideas about how we can really show our solidarity. I’m tentatively thinking about adopting the reindeer as our mascot, and maybe making mistletoe our official plant life, but I’m open to ideas.
What do you think?
*** Update ***
It has been suggested that not only should we choose mistletoe, but we should make up some silly rule about hanging it and then kissing people underneath it. This sounds promising.
NOTE: Everything Above is Cole’s up to “back in June:”
Martin
I predict a solid 3 months of near-daily posts responding to wingnut arguments that Nemazee helped steal the election for Obama when it was Obama’s DOJ that caught the asshole, not Bush’s.
Regardless, if the health care brouhaha manages to sort itself out soon, the nutters have a new box of ammo to play with.
WereBear
Tell him to leave Citizenship Day alone. (September 17th.)
valdivia
This really really ticks me off. So now the freaks are also taking over other religions? Without even understanding what the meaning of the holiday is? The process it involves?
I want someone to scream at this guy for this. Maybe Wiesel call tell the guy to STFU
valdivia
hmm I hear rumors some of you have the edit function back and I don’t. I am using firefox 3+ any idea what I am doing wrong?
Ash Can
As I mentioned in the previous thread, it’s not the ignorance of Yom Kippur being a movable feast, which his wording actually does not necessarily indicate, it’s the effrontery of his co-opting not just a holiday, but one of the most important holidays, of the Jewish religion. I’m not Jewish, and even I recognize that this easily exceeds the bounds of acceptability.
First 9/12, and now Yom Kippur. Sometimes I wonder if Beck is actually, in private, playing a huge joke on his employers and followers, just seeing how big of a douchebag he can be before they wake up and say “hey, you can’t do that; that’s just wrong.”
Then I think, nah, he’s not acting. He really is just a big fucking douchebag.
Comrade Kevin
@Warren Terra:
Glenn Beck? thinking?
MikeJ
Make it Shrove Tuesday.
Mmmmmm. Pancakes.
BDeevDad
Yom Kippur is the day God says you either made it for another year or you didn’t. Your supposed to spend the 10 days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur atoning for your sins against everyone and apologizing, not just God. Beck would need a month, at least.
And what @Warren Terra and @ellaesther said. Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish Calendar.
Could you imagine the uproar if someone on the left asked Christians to make Easter a national day of self-sacrifice to their fellow man.
Ed Drone
If Beck wants to co-opt another holiday, he should try Sept. 22, which is “Freedom Day,” the anniversary of the first Emancipation Proclamation (not to be confused with the second one, nor with “Juneteenth,” when the Union declared the actual end of slavery). Beck could proclaim his anti-racist creds by co-opting this black remembrance.
I’d love to see him try it.
Ed
valdivia
@BDeevDad:
I think that to be comparable you would have to have someone who is not a Christian co-opting Easter for their own political motives that totally contravene everything the holiday is about. This is just so out of bound I am speechless.
BDeevDad
@valdivia: You’re right I just could not even imagine something so crazy.
wasabi gasp
Can you get Charles Johnson to blog here?
Martin
BTW, that should be through Jan 6.
Why is it the atheist is the only one who knows when the 12 days of Christmas are, why Epiphany is significant, and that many cultures don’t take their tree down until the 6th (and promptly on the 6th).
Warren Terra
Not using Chrome isn’t wrong, but using Chrome would fix your problem.
Maybe some other Firefoxer (Firefoxean? Firefoxist? Firefox?) knows of a plug-in you can use.
Betsy
Holy fucking shit. Glenn Beck, keep your filthy, puffy, pasty paws off my people’s day. I’m not that observant, but that pisses me the fuck off. How dare he?!
Calouste
@El Cruzado:
That Christian calendar that was invented by a pagan Romans and perfected by a Papist? Where half the months carry names that refer to Roman gods, emperors and rituals?
freelancer
@valdivia:
First of all, don’t let your computer drink.
cleek
sept 28?
keep your filthy fucking hands off my birthday, Beck!
valdivia
@Warren Terra:
hhis. will switch I guess?
BdeevDad–I know this is why this makes me so angry
peterh
“Does he really not know that Yom Kippur falls on different days in different years?”
Hmmmm….a rhetorical question that begs for another…..would his audience know?
MikeJ
Others have said Firefox 3 on mac seems to not have the edit bar. Works fine on linux and windows, as far as I know.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/87/240803829_9212773615_o.png
valdivia
@freelancer:
LOL.
freelancer
@valdivia:
I’m having the same issue with my desktop at home. Install IEtab and change the rendering engine to IE, and they will show up.
The next-to-last samurai
Coming up on Fox news: the liberal war on Talk Like a Pirate Day! And Beck, or anyone else, had better not mess with the 22nd, because it is a very important day in 20th century history. It is my birthday.
trollhattan
I’m pretty sure this means Beck will soon be phoning Stephen Colbert on the AtonePhone to apologize for…existing?
I await the call.
Betsy
@trollhattan:
Ooohhh…it gives me little shivers of joy thinking what Jon Stewart might do with this, should he decide to address it.
IndyLib
@cleek:
Happy B-day a week early! The 28th is my birthday, also. Too.
JK
Glenn Beck is a raving, drooling, bedwetting luantic and a malignant media carcinogen.
I’m ashamed and disgusted that a substantial percentage of my fellow Americans now worships at the altar of demagogues like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, et al. There should be a special place in Hell reserved for these people for poisoning and corroding the well of civil discourse.
trollhattan
@ Martin #45
My, uh, tradition on selecting deforestation day is driven by a formula that involves football schedules, flammability levels and spousal holy naggery. It’s surprisingly complex.
MobiusKlein
My kids’ birthday is the 28th too, and it’s also the day one of those lousy detainee bills got through the Senate,a nd all that.
Way to ruin my kids’ bday.
Keith
I eagerly anticipate Beck asking his listeners (and children) to protest government takeover by dressing up in costumes and/or handing out candy and/or copies of “The 5000 Year Leap”.
Makewi
@JK:
Abandon hope all you who enter here something you are interested in seeing first hand or is this intentionally ironic?
Betsy
@all the birthday folks –
At least, if you celebrate your birthday with something other than prayer, fasting, repentance, and the beating of breasts, you are doing exactly the opposite of what Beck is calling for here. For Jews, he’s basically claiming what we do on this holiday as his own.
valdivia
@Betsy:
exactly. God I am fuming about this.
freelancer–thanks for the IE tip will do that.
Betsy
I’m actually a little surprised at how angry this makes me. I guess I still identify with the tribe on some level! I did have apples dipped in honey this weekend, so maybe I’m still in good standing.
Also, I’m +1.5, so that might have something to do with it too.
Josh Huaco
I’m surprised that Brick Crematorium Shithead hasn’t stopped by to defend his main man Glenn yet.
SiubhanDuinne
I can’t copy’n’paste on the BlackBerry, but like Warren Terra and ellaesther, I had a bunch of comments about this topic over yonder down the threads apiece.
The only important thing, however, was — “Another great thread title, DougJ!”
Tim in SF
I love this blog and I love DougJ even more. But I gotta say that I grow weary of all the updates of the latest effluence from Beck’s mouth. Just sayin’. He ain’t news, he’s a bat-shit crazy Mormon and nothing he has to say is of any interest to me, even if he is right.
SiubhanDuinne
Olberman just teased he’s going to do this story, I think in WPITW or else the #1 story.
SiubhanDuinne
@Josh 8:05 pm
Isn’t Brick Oven Bile still grounded?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
More power to Beck if he can get those grossly obese pasty fuckwit supporters of his to put down the triple-bacon cheeseburger and their gallon-sized SuperUltraMegaGlug soda.
Doubt if they will though, there are limits to what a fuckwit is willing to do.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Hep me! Teh BJ Mod Gawd done et me post! I am curious about what word triggered it this time though…lol
DougJ
He ain’t news, he’s a bat-shit crazy Mormon and nothing he has to say is of any interest to me, even if he is right.
I hear where you’re coming from. But at this point, he is the leader of the Republican party, in effect, and does exert a crazy kind of influence.
Zzyzx
@Betsy: Every year I think, “Wow apples in honey kicks ass! Why don’t I eat that more often?” And then I don’t.
Betsy
@Zzyzx:
I think my answer to that very astute question is that I like having special holiday foods/traditions. It’s the same reason I only make peanut butter-kiss cookies at Christmas (yeah, I’m that kind of Jew. What can I say.). I love them, but I especially love having them at a very specific time of year.
ellaesther
@Zzyzx: Same -same with matzo brie. Every damn year, I save some matza to make matza brie after Passover is over, and every year, I throw it out a month later.
TuiMel
With apologies to people of the Jewish faith, I read this post and said “Huh? Was this just apropo of nothing that Beck decides to encourage people to fast and pray on Yom Kippur? Toward what end?”
So, I went over to Benen’s blog and actually listened to the clip. Perhaps I am just especially clueless today, but to me the entire thing comes across as mockery. I am left wondering just exactly what is going on here. But, I am with those who think the “elevation” of Beck is not productive. Those who find him prescient or fascinating or funny will not be convinced by our outrage to do anything but find him even more prescient, fascinating, and funny. I do not find it out of the realm of reason that he is seriously mentally ill. He is tapping an ugly vein these days; The Color of Change had the right idea in naming and shaming his advertisers. Another step is to stop reacting to his bizare rantings. Reactions from the left are what he wants.
Boston Yankee
Jefferson was most likely a deist. Glenn Beck would only be confused by this and his followers as always-clueless.
Warren Terra
No need to throw out the matzoh, ella – its one redeeming virtue is that, barring excessive humidity, it’s shelf-stable seemingly forever. Maybe years. I’ve kept it around because it doesn’t go bad, doesn’t attract insects, and I’m too lazy to throw it out, and used it to make tunafish sandwiches when I’d run out of bread and the weather was frightful at least several months later.
Thomas Beck
Of course, Yom Kippur is the culmination of a 40-day stretch of introspection and atonement during which Jews resolve to come closer to God and to their fellow human beings – including by asking forgiveness of all those we have wronged during the preceding year (because Jews believe that God can’t forgive us for our offenses against human beings until they forgive us). It’s kind of disgusting for an ignorant Christian like Beck (ignorant about Judaism, I mean) to try to coopt a Jewish holy day for his own narrow partisan political purposes. If he wants to repent, let him do so on his own time. Yom Kippur is not about making Glenn Beck seem all puffed up and important. it’s about humility and purity and holiness.
What Jews want is for Christians to leave us alone. If they really want to learn, that’s one thing. But other than that, don’t try to horn in where you have no place. Please.
HRA
“Rather…blasphemous…isn’t it?”
It certanly is that and even more so considering the freak who proposed it. I cannot seem to grasp his purpose in offending the Jews. Does Fox have no one who understands how insulting this is to the Jews?
(family history has a grandmother fleeing Spain a very long time ago to another country where the family adopted Christianity )
Hand off of tomorrow, too. It’s my youngest daughter’s birthday. Happy Birthday to The next to last samurai and all those celebrating on the 28th.
joe from Lowell
OK. Let’s go for it.
Let’s put Day of Atonement on the calendar, like Chirstmas. I’m game.
I want to see a Democrat introduce this. Flush out the Christianist, dominionist, replacement-theology, anti-Semitic “Christian conservatives” in Congress.
PS – the Moonies have such strong ties to the GOP that they got Jesse Helms and Orrin Hatch to sponsor a bill recognizing the fourth Sunday in July as “Parents Day.” The fourth Sunday in July is the Moonie holiday called “True Parents Day,” in honor of Rev. Moon and his wife, who are the true parents of all of humanity.
kth
It would be tacky and condescending even if Beck’s political program weren’t so offensive: i.e., “lets all be Jews today”.
Mike in NC
Has anyone yet figured out how many Glenn Beck fans it takes to change a lightbulb?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
Yes. No.
hamletta
@Thomas Beck: And there’s a Christian analog called “Lent.” But of course the Real True Christians who follow the crazy Mormon have no truck with such papist guff. It’s kinda sad, really. Maundy Thursday is a very moving, humbling experience for me.
Their frenemy treatment of Jews is all wrapped up in their idiotic End Times horseshit.
I was just listening to religion scholar Karen Armstrong on Fresh Air this morning, and she was talking about how childish that whole line of thought is, specifically its child’s-eye-view of God.
Porlock Junior
@Julia Grey @30:
Veiled their sink faucets? I love the image, but I have this strong sensation of missing something here, something funny. Yes?
tootiredoftheright
Oh quaint that Beck doesn’t state what Thomas Jefferson said about the notion of a day of fasting and prayer namely that he recommened it.
In particular this part often doesn’t get mentioned.
“I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling in religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority.”
ca
Fact about 9/28? it’s a special day to Mormons. It’s the day that Joseph Smith was ordained.
This special priesthood ordinance was first administered on 28 September 1843 to Joseph and Emma Smith.
http://bit.ly/150CQ5
Flugelhorn
@media browski: How is this “Politicizing” anything? The guy thinks it would be good for everyone to have a day of fasting and reflection. How is that politicizing anything? Thin skinned, straw-man much?
chopper
i rarely make pronouncements on behalf of the jewish people.
however, i will this time: go fuck yourself, beck.
seriously, its bad enough you fuckers keep trying to co-opt passover. yeah, its a thing now among christian groups to observe passover and make it all jesus-centric. have their own seders with jesus in the starring role. great.
now glenn beck wants to make yom kippur his own? he can choke on a bag of dicks.
Julia Grey
Veiled their sink faucets? I love the image, but I have this strong sensation of missing something here, something funny. Yes?
In my church we have a special service on Good Friday where we strip the altar of all its ornaments and veil the central cross, symbolizing Christ’s descent to the dead. It stays that way until Easter morning, when the whole joint is lit up and covered with lilies.
A bit obscure, I guess.
Julia Grey
have their own seders with jesus in the starring role. great.
Actually, chopper, the Last Supper WAS a seder. That’s why Jesus was in Jerusalem that week instead of out on the trails. He was there to celebrate Passover, and Maundy Thursday was the last night. No kidding. It’s in the Bible.
chopper
@Julia Grey:
yeah, i know that. however, the passover seder as its been celebrated for thousands of years AINT ABOUT JESUS. trying to make passover about jesus is a punch in the face to a religion that christianity spent most of the past two thousand years trying to wipe off the face of the earth.
Karen
It’s bad enough that Tea Partiers, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and all the conservative Christians that just claim to LOVE Israel only care about Jews because it’s our death as collateral damage to bring the End Times is all they really care about. Now Glen Beck appropriates our most holiest of days and some people on this message board don’t understand why it’s so horrible? We atone for our sins on that day. All the things he does would qualify as sins. So it’s like making our day mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Snarla
Has anyone here actually ever seen a Christian fast?