Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [180]
bu
“Capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans.” That makes Beck sound like some kind of sci-fi neuroterrorist. We need to call out the Starfleet Cortex Defense Squadron to liberate the feelings of innocent alienated Americans.
bv
To be fair to the Republicans, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) also criticized Obama’s czars.
bw
“Did that sound like you, Iowa?” This list of states is reminiscent of Sarah Palin’s infamous campaign line about “the real America.” Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, Beck’s first book from 2005 is titled The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland.
bx
“Beck deftly combined.” If you want to understand persecution politics, if you want to know why so many millions of Americans tune to Glenn Beck every day, listen to this radio program. I recommend playing the audio, not just reading the transcript. The URL is http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29967/. Or you can google “Van Jones unhinged.”
by
Subsequent to the DHS report about right-wing terrorism, a tax-dissident kamikazied his plane into an IRS office, a libertarian tried to go postal on the Pentagon, a Christian militia group calling themselves the Hutaree plotted to blow up police officers, and there were numerous death threats against Democratic legislators, some delivered via bricks through windows.
bz
Thug is a derivation of the Hindi thag, which means “swindler” or “thief.” The thuggee was an Indian religious cult of murderous bandits who used to rob and ritually strangle unfortunate travelers. The Greek-derived -cracy is a suffix denoting a type of government. A thugocracy would thus be “rule by murderous Hindu bandit cult.”
ca
“Read the Constitution. Act Constitutionally.” I picture colonially dressed Tea Party patriots reenacting the Great Compromise of 1787 while earnest AmeriCorps volunteers bang down the door shouting, “We are the change we’ve been waiting for.” (For some reason, NewsMax chose to exclude Beck’s profound answer from the official interview transcript, but it’s on the video.)
cb
“Deep and powerful eggs.” Beck often describes progressives as parasites who are using the republic as a host, so the metaphor is consistent with his Sci-Fi Channel meets Animal Planet approach to political analysis. He has also described progressives as viruses, vampires, and lizard people.
cc
There is no Blue-Green Group. Beck may have meant the Blue-Green Alliance but confused it with the theatrical troupe, the Blue Man Group, which would have been no less relevant.
cd
In a separate program, Beck alleged that Van Jones, ACORN, and SEIU had also conspired to block improvements to levees in New Orleans so that the paper trail of ACORN’s criminal misconduct would be destroyed in a hurricane. He did not explain why ACORN didn’t use arson or a paper shredder like normal criminals. (“Glenn Beck Blames Van Jones and ACORN for the Levees Failing in New Orleans,” Politicususa, 11 Sep. 2009, http://www.politicususa.com/en/Beck-Levees.)
ce
“1984.” The difference between O’Reilly’s and Beck’s worldviews is reflected in their choice of science-fiction dystopias. O’Reilly’s “brave new progressive world” is a reference to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which resembles a hippie commune gone corporate—a nonreligious, antifamily, drugged-up, sexually liberated collective of mass-produced blandness. By contrast, Beck frequently references Orwell’s 1984, a frightening vision of tyranny in which individuals are crushed beneath the mind control techniques of an omnipotent oligarchy.
cf
“ACORN employee.” As it turned out, the pimp impersonator had misleadingly edited the video to make it more sensational. In addition, the ACORN employee he had taped actually reported the “pimp” to the police after he left. But by the time this information came out, it was too late to save ACORN or its do-gooding employee. (Rachel Maddow, “Raw ACORN tapes tell very different story,” MSNBC, 6 Apr. 2009, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/36204129.)
cg
“His ratings plummeted.