I know–we shouldn’t even bother with Glenn Beck because everything he says and does is a WTF moment.
Well, here’s one you didn’t see coming:
Glenn Beck Suggests Tea Party is Racist
Yeah. I’ll let that sink in a bit.
From the article:
In a startling admission from a major Tea Party champion, former Fox News host Glenn Beck said Friday that race may be a motivating factor in the Tea Party’s opposition to President Obama. In an interview with Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano, Beck said Obama and GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich are both “big government progressive[s],” so he doesn’t understand why Tea Party members are supporting Gingrich. “If you’re against [Obama] but you’re for [Gingrich], it must be about race,”
Next up, Glenn Beck discovers that sun rises in the east, and that water is wet. Have we reached peak wingnut?
Open thread, also too.
gnomedad
Translation: Newt is “the white Obama”; yea, Mitt. He’s using racism to trash Newt.
punkdavid
That’s not even the big takeaway from this article.
I can’t decide whether I find it funnier that Glenn Beck thinks that Newt Gingrich is a “progressive” or that he thinks that the “power brokers” in Washington want Newt to win the GOP nomination.
It’s just a big knot of nutso in Glenn Beck’s head.
Linda Featheringill
I saw that and had to laugh.
Of course, his logic won’t hold water but if he wants to put that accusation out there, I think he should go for it. I’m really in favor of forcing the teaparty people to defend their positions.
Newt Gingrich as a white Barack Obama? [he-he]
Waynski
The sun rising in the east is clearly a Muslim plot to get God fearing Christian Muricans to turn toward Mecca every morning. If you just open your eyes, you can see that, Soonergrunt. Where’s the chalkboard when you need it?
Arky Vaughn
One that that really irks me is the capitalization of “Tea Party”. There is NO Tea Party. It is a figment of the “lamestream” media’s imagination.
MattF
So, David Brooks says that Noot is a DFH remnant of the ’60’s and Beck says that Noot is a big-government progressive. At the same time, Noot himself is claiming credit for Clinton’s budget surpluses and welfare reform. There’s a pattern emerging here and it’s making my head hurt.
flukebucket
I know Coulter is in the tank for Romney. Who is paying Beck?
dmsilev
No.
The Other Bob
Yet Beck sees racism is a feature, not a bug.
catclub
@flukebucket: Beck is a mormon, too.
Samara must be asleep to be beaten by me to this.
amk
The bigger question is “is obama still the racist he was?”
beltane
Where is Newt’s birth certificate?
jibeaux
I’m going to suggest that Glenn Beck’s star is on the wane, or whatever the expression is, and this is 1) a fairly desperate move to try to stay relevant & in the press & shocking, etc., and 2) really stupid, since he’s not saying the Tea Party is racist for the obvious reasons, such as that they say racist things and enjoy racist propaganda, but rather that they’re supporting Gingrich who is supposedly indistinguishable from Obama in all ways other than race. This is, of course, idiotic. I award you no points, Glenn.
Ben Cisco
BLASPHEMER! HERETIC! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PEAK WINGNUT!
Villago Delenda Est
Newt Gingrich is a “progressive”?
Yo, Glenn! Words mean things, ya know?
JPL
Since Beck is using racism to trash Newt, who is the racist here? Some folks are gullible some of the time and some are gullible all the time. I’m not defending the tea party, btw.
eemom
Soonergrunt, you were the subject of a lightbulb moment I had recently.
I always knew why you were grunt, but I never got the Sooner. Then one day fate placed in my path a random news blurb about an Oklahoma team for some sport or other…..and voila! I getted it.
Sooner is better than fucking “hoosier”, I’ll say that for Oklahoma OK.
The Bearded Blogger
In 2012, the racists will come out of the closet: YES WE COON!
Also, too, this responds to a combination of 1) Beck’s support for Mitt, 2) his insanity, 3) his need to piss somebody or other off and 4) his need for attention.
In the next couple of years, some weird scandal involving Beck will surface, and it won’t be pretty. Probably has to do with goats or small children
kth
If the right (Beck) and the left (The New Republic) both hate Gingrich, he must be the right man for the job.
/the dregs at the bottom of David Broder’s last can of Ensure
Anya
So Newt Gingrich is the fat, ugly white Obama?
Glen Beck is the least news worthy wingnut hate radio personality to appose Gingrich. Wingnut talk show host Michael Savage offered to pay Newt Gingrich $1 million, if he dropped out of the race. This is his reasons (the uppercase in the original):
jibeaux
@Anya: Romney 2012: Not Too Old Or Fat!
Steve
Beck is deploying an argument that I thought had been patented by the progressive blogs. “I can’t think of any difference between Obama and this other person/event besides race, therefore it must be about racism!” But yes, somehow he has found an essential truth in spite of himself.
4tehlulz
@The Bearded Blogger: in 1990.
Keith G
Catclub and jibeaux seem to have this worked out as far as Beck’s motivation, but I think that in the short tern, teabaggerer love for Newt has more to do with he is a fighter – a street brawler who can land punches and has some wins to prove it.
Now he also has a shit ton of baggage, bad behavior and hair brained ideas. Still, at this point in time, Newt is to them a (hired?) gun slinger who they think can vanquish the bad ol’ Dems once again. I think that is a rather strong pull.
The Moar You Know
Pretty obvious from this and a few other things I’ve noticed in the last two days that the marching orders have gone out – Romney is the Chosen One, take Gingrich out.
Which is stupid. Romney can’t win the general, Republican voters will stay home. Gingrich can at least get all the knuckle-draggers out to pull a lever, just like those trained chimps in the space program used to.
Linda Featheringill
@eemom:
Sooner is the state nickname for Oklahoma. They call themselves that.
The name came from land grabs when parts of the state opened up for settlement [by non-Indian types]. Some folks came in ahead of time to lay out a stake before the crowd arrived. Those early birds came sooner than was allowed and were called Sooners.
Benjamin Franklin
OT
Breaking…..http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/8953449/Belgium-grenade-attack-leaves-at-least-two-dead.html
Belgium grenade attack leaves at least two dead
At least two people have been killed and up to 47 others wounded when up to four grenades exploded outside the main courthouse in the eastern Belgian city of Liege.
Keith G
@Linda Featheringill:
Yep.
Greedy, cheatin’ white land-grubbers = great nickname.
John PM
@Anya:
Isn’t this bribery and thus against the law? If not, I think we should make a special exception.
lonesomerobot
OK,
F*ck the NFL. Just freaking die Roger Goodell.
That is all.
Benjamin Franklin
It’s an unlimited renewal resource.
Just as Einstein said when asked the diff between genius and stupidity………..
“…genius has it’s limits”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Steve: The real answer, though, is that only Obama is brave enough to wear that short of a haircut as president.
catclub
@John PM: I think Newt would like to open the bidding at $1M, but his willingness to open the bidding implies he will actually leave for less.
Sort of like, ‘we have established the principle, now let’s determine a price.’
“Madam, would you sleep with me for $5 million?”
“Why sure, honey”
“How about $50”
Tonybrown74
Mr. “Barack Obama Hates White People” Beck is calling the Tea Party racist? The same Glenn Beck who sponsored an event on the Washington Mall the same day of the anniversary of the March to Selma (if I remember correctly)?
I would laugh, but these people are just plain boring. I just wish that these media Ken and Barbie Dolls would actually remember the shit these people say and do only a year or two ago.
jibeaux
@John PM: I’m sure he’d actually be paying him for his advice as a historian.
Jerzy Russian
This may be an example of putting a thousand monkeys at typewriters. Every 10^34 years or so you will get something that is not complete gibberish. Although the odds seem small here, the odds of Glenn Beck saying something intelligent on purpose are about 1 in 10^67.
Comrade Dread
Don’t estimate the strength of tribal loyalty either.
Most of these people are only all to willing to be lied to, as long as the liar is one of them.
Remember, kids, when my team does it, it’s pragmatic politics. When your team does it, it’s evidence of the secret communist plot to destroy American and make men marry men.
Soonergrunt
@eemom: I’m here to serve.
Gwiwer
Godwin be damned, there’s no avoiding it anymore. The right in the US is so far right, they’re easily in fascist territory. I mean, the “moderates” anyway. People like Beck are so far right, fascism isn’t even a speck in their rear-view mirror at this point. Even the fascists of yore would look at Beck and think, “Damn… What a wingnut…” When Newt Gingrich meets your definition of progressive, you’re so far gone that I think people are going to have to invent all new political labels just for you. If the political center is the sun, you’re so far outside of our solar system it would take 4 trillion years for the sun’s light to reach you.
MattF
Note that Mr. Breitbart is unhappy about Mr. Beck’s statement:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39596_Andrew_Breitbart_Spews_Insults_at_Glenn_Beck
Also, popcorn futures are up.
Anya
@John PM: One would think. But don’t you like how desperate the wingnuts are. I don’t understand the concept that Romney would connect better with voters (being an android and all) but Gingrich personifies everything that’s today’s GOP – angry, racist white man.
@jibeaux: Ha
Punchy
Beck needs to stick to what he knows….conspiracy theories and booze.
The Other Bob
@Gwiwer:
It used to be said that the Tea Party would split off into a new 3rd, far right party.
At what point does a moderate (read normal right, not centrist) Republican party need to be created?
Brachiator
Much ado about nothing. Beck is being a smart ass. Does Beck go on and elaborate or enlarge on his implied accusation?
And even Beck and the reporting is doing the standard nonsensical dance around the issue: “race may be a motivating factor in the Tea Party’s opposition to President Obama.”
It’s not that these people are actual, you know, racists. It’s all about motivating factors.
But even if every Tea Party Person(tm) stood up and declared, “Yes, I am a racist,” how would that change anything?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Moar You Know:
Not mention Romney has pretty much destroyed and pretense of him being The Chosen One with that Fox interview and his $10,000 bet. I suspects it more of these media personalities have emotionally invested themselves in Mitt being the adult in the room and now want to redo reality. Though in Beck’s cause it’s simple tribalism since they are both Mormons.
kwAwk
I still think this is about tribalism as opposed to race. Herman Cain’s candidacy should have illustrated that.
They hate Mitt Romney as much because of his mormonism but probably as much if not more so because he represent a repudiation of more than a few of those crazy things repubs need to believe in order to accommodate the wingnuts.
Gingrich is simply the anti-Romney of the moment. Gingrich isn’t really a well thought out opponent to Obama, he’s just the last straw available for grasping.
Joey Maloney
@Punchy: isn’t Beck a Mormon? What would he know about booze?
catclub
@Gwiwer: But, so far, not nearly as organized. See the post on the Christian Militia home invaders. Not organized. Just laughed at.
So far.
Yutsano
@Joey Maloney: He used to be a severe alcoholic. Whether his sobering up has anything to do with his Mormon conversion is anyone’s guess, but my feeling on that is no.
catclub
@Joey Maloney: he converted relatively recently – after the alcoholic benders wore off. So he does know his booze.
And drugs too, if I recall correctly.
James
Maybe should actually watch interview, lol. He was saying that if they are going to support Gingrich but be against Obama, then the calls that they are racist carry weight, because Gingrich and Obama are ideologically the same. He was trying to tell the tea party to not support Gingrich or the calls that they are racist will be seen as legit.
Or you can just take one or two sentences and read them from a blog/article and go with it.
Wow, you’re lazy. But it’s not about facts on here, it’s about making a point regardless of facts or reality.
I would bet not a single person who has commented on here has actually watched that interview.
He doesn’t think the tea party is racist, lol.
Schlemizel
@lonesomerobot:
Yeah, one games does not seem long enough does it?
.
.
.
;)
Schlemizel
As far as the charge that Noot is a progressive you have to remember the pathology of Becks illness, really the modern conservative pathology:
There are only two positions in the world, correct & pure vs. liberal/Dem/progressive. Therefore, if you do not agree with me & I’m a conservative you are a progressive QED.
This is why the revisionists are calling Nixon and both Bushs liberals now. They are known failures & conservatives can never fail.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@James: Are you a professional hair splitter, or do you just practice it in your own spare time.
Cat Lady
CNN caption just now while talking about Glenn Beck: Do Republicans Dislike Obama So Much That They Have Lost Their Focus? “Focus” is not the word that comes to mind.
nancydarling
@eemom: I was going to explain it all for you since both of my grandfathers made the run in 1893, but I see it has been done. My father was known as a “stripper” since he was born on his fathers homestead in ’98 in what was at one time known as the Cherokee Strip.
Rathskeller
@Keith G: I lived for quite a few years in Oklahoma, and I had the same reaction. They are generally quite proud of the nickname, which is omnipresent throughout the state.
lonesomerobot
@Schlemizel: hehe. Well wrong. Find another player suspended for a play between the whistles. You won’t. Because it’s never happened. Richard Freaking Seymour of the Raiders punched another player this year. Did he get suspended?
joes527
@James: I guess Breibart is lazy too.
I would take comfort in this unambiguous illustration that the Tea Party is really the French Revolution … except for the fact that the French revolution went on a long-fucking-time before they ran out of heads to cut off.
Samara Morgan
@catclub: nah, just correcting Cassidy’s rabid Tebow fanfic on another thread.
@sooner:
There is no peak wingnut because there are no orders of transinfinity high enough to describe it.
But the Wingularity is near.
Monkey Business
Newt Gingrich has officially wandered into the tall grass, where old white men with long memories and longer knives wait for him.
The Other Chuck
There is no peak wingnut, it’s asymptotic. However, the closer a wingnut gets to the wingularity, they detect no change, but we observe them slowing down in a sort of zeno’s paradox of nuttiness, so from our perspective it can never actually be reached.
At the wingularity itself, all laws of rationality break down, though it is believed that invariant credos such as tax cuts are able to survive passing through a naked wingularity.
WereBear
In Beck’s case, once a shock jock, always a shock jock.
trollhattan
@The Bearded Blogger:
Who will think of the kids?
trollhattan
@James:
Has anybody pinned down the date that “lol” became the sole property of wingnuts and preteens? I want to say it was sometime in 2009, but have never seen a copy of the memo.
Samara Morgan
@The Other Chuck: i think invariant credos will become infinitely stretched with schwarzchild effect at the event horizon of the wingularity.
James L
IIRC Glenn Beck was a Romney supporter last election cycle. Given Beck’s extreme viewpoints this did not make much since to me. The conclusion I reached as superficial as it sounds is that Beck supported Romney because both are LDS.
El Cid
Glenn Beck not only is Mormon, but his entire recent resurgence was built on an image of himself as an anti-establishment revolutionary, and Gingrich is the establishment by any sane measure, but, well, yeah, you don’t use those.
Anoniminous
An interesting question of scientific epistemology. Is PW an Emergent Property of a Complex System and thus capable of objective resolution or a Limit in which case it is a subjective, albeit logically valid, judgment ?
Samara Morgan
@Soonergrunt: Serve this then.
Better or worse than Garani?
/spit
Soonergrunt
@Samara Morgan: I know that you’re rather stupid, but you do understand that the events of that incident have already been investigated, and that the people responsible were Afghans, right?
You know–people in their own country? Perhaps you should take your concerns about something that was investigated and reported to the government of Afghanistan already to the Afghan embassy, cause the people who did that are subject to Afghan law, being Afghans in Afghanistan.
While you’re at it, ask them if the people who did that were right or wrong under Afghan law as it was at the time or as it is now to kill those Talibs, whom they held responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Hazaras and others.
Report back to us and let us know what answer you get.
/spit
Samara Morgan
@Soonergrunt: its not me, its Physicians for Human Rights. Like the Iraq doc drop and the Afghan doc drop were Wikileaks.
I’m still angry about the things Done In Our Name.
We should never have gone there, never have stayed there, never have lied for PR for 11 years now.
But bots like you think that is fine. What was the mission sooner?
What was the fucking mission?
What was it like to suffocate in a truck container with other men screaming and dying and clawing each other for air?
Was it maybe like screaming and dying in a gas chamber do you think?
The ANA is fucking Karzai’s party.
Karzai is our puppet.
Do you get why the talibs just whacked his brother perhaps?
Do you understand why Karzai can never lead Afghanistan, and why as soon as America gtfo’s the talibs are roll into Kabul and dip his head in tar and pike it on a battlement?
Do you think the jews could have come to a “powersharing” agreement with the nazis?
dumbshit.
THE
There’s a lot you don’t know about Samara.
First: The Talibs don’t have anywhere near the support you think they do in all of Afghanistan.
Secondly: The USA is not the only country with an interest in what will happen there.
Pakistan and its ISI-Taliban proxy is not going to have things all its own way imho. Even after USA leaves.
I don’t really take sides in this issue, but I observe, and I think I read wider sources than you do. This game will continue for decades even after the USA is long-gone.
Samara Morgan
@THE: Imran Khan may be the new PM of Pak. Membah him?
Zardari was a US puppet, like Musharraf and the Benazir Bhutto crime family too– Khan wants to sue the US in the international court for droning.
The times they are a changing Spock.
Its dumb cattle like sooner that enable those milbrass fuckers to keep doing this.
I’m sick of it.
THE
The balance of power in AfPak is not what it was in the mid 1990s when the Taliban first took over. There are two rising superpowers in the region now. Both of them have an interest in Afghanistan.
China wants Afghanistan because of the mineral wealth. And because of the “Silk Road” strategy of tying up central Asia in her network of trade routes.
India wants Afghanistan to encircle Pakistan and prevent herself being encircled by China.
The great game will resume the day USA closes the door.
EDIT: If not sooner.
THE
Consider this thought-provoking link.
Samara Morgan
@THE: so fucking what?
the paradigm shift im interested in is the decline of the American security state, and the abhorrent practice of classifying inconvenient truths to cover them up.
And both china and india will run into the uninvadable strategy problem. A-stan isnt called the graveyard of empires for nothing.
Samara Morgan
@THE:
they have enough to kick America/NATO/Karzai ass in a 1:13 ratio.
30k talibs are asswhupping the +400k combined forces.
that is a stupid statement and unworthy of you.
THE
Don’t be silly Samara.
If you think Pakistan is going to be allowed to take over Afghanistan again, through its Taliban proxy, and return it to the stone age so they can keep it under their thumb, you are dreaming.
And no-one is talking about invasion. Bribery works much better than bullets. And $1 Trillion of resources pays a lot of bribes.
THE
The thing you need to get your head around is that Afghans won’t be growing poppy fields much longer.
Soon they will have real jobs. In mines and cities and railway lines and tv stations and fast cars and superhighways and skyscrapers.
Just cos you can’t imagine it doesn’t mean they can’t. And they will be right.
THE
I predict in 50 years, Afghanistan per capita income will be higher than Denver.
You have no imagination is your problem.
Samara Morgan
@THE:
that at least is likely true, because the percent of the population under 30 is much greater. Its true for all the ME and all of Murrica ekshually.
@THE: stupid crusader. wtf do you think we have been doing in A-stan? Bribing while trying in vain to delegitimize the Taliban. And the Taliban attacked the US embassy in Kabul while we still have 90k troops there. With 2 guys.
Terik-e-Taliban is a party in the Pak government.
Zardaris days are numbered.
There has been a paradigm shift. The old order is just not going to work anymore.
We are having “insurgencies” here in America– OWS is an insurgency.
THE
No you have it totally wrong. You are a superstitious primitive. You are worse than the Taliban yourself.
The wealth of Afghanistan is not because of its age structure, and USA’s age structure is not that bad anyway.
The reason for Afghan’s guarantee of future wealth is because they are a stone’s throw from the two fastest growing industrial powers in the world. India will be 1.5 billion, China 1.2, together they are 3 times bigger than Western civilization.
Now practically in between these two great and growing industrial powerhouses, you have one of the richest mineral provinces on the planet.
This isn’t just bribing with cash. This is bribing with jobs, investment, and a decent prosperous life. This is income for generations.
Samara Morgan
@THE: and you are a stupid crusader.
none of that means Afghanis will stop being muslim and neither does it mean the citizens of AfPak will stop hating India and the US. They may very well become Chinese clients, like Iraq is becoming an Iranian client.
Its a paradigm shift in the wells of power.
THE
I can see you get your news from very limit sources Samara:
neither does it mean the citizens of
AfPakPakistan will stop hating India and the US.TheyPakistan may very well become Chinese clients,Pakistan does not speak for all of Afghanistan. Samara. That is really the point in contention here, whether you see it or not. Not everyone agrees with you that Pakistan on it’s own will make that decision. Like I said this is no longer 1995. Much has changed since then in the disposition of forces.
Me? I foresee a great game unfolding. It starts as USA leaves.
THE
Ha! It starts already.