Tag Archives: Glenn Beck

No, Glenn Beck … you’re mankind’s enemy

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Glenn Beck has enlisted in Donald Trump’s hate-the-media regiment, proclaiming that those with journalism degrees are the “enemy of mankind.”

Well, with all due outrage, I want to counter that right-wing blowhard blather. Glenn Beck and those of his ilk are mankind’s real enemy. The enemy does not exist within the ranks of reporters who do their job with dedication, who risk their lives quite literally covering news in danger spots around the world.

The enemy happens to be, in my view, half-baked talk show gasbags who purport to be the font of all knowledge but who just have the gift of gab that enables them to spew their garbage over the air.

That’s you, Glenn Beck.

Beck said this, among other things, on his show today, according to DeadState.com: “You are an enemy to man’s freedom,” Beck continued. “What you have done will be remembered a hundred years from now when maybe, possibly — possibly, men are free again after what you have done, you will be remembered in not a kind way.”

Beck needs to check his ego at the door.

The press is doing precisely what it always has done. It is holding government officials and others in power accountable for their words and deeds. They are performing an essential act in a functioning democratic system of government.

Shame on you, Glenn Beck … if you have anything in that ticker of yours that understands the word “shame.”

Beck's barbs won't unseat Straus

How cool is this? Glenn Beck, the radio gasbag, has weighed in with a commentary on whether Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, should be re-elected speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

He calls Straus a “RINO, a Republican in Name Only.” He said Rep. Scott Turner, R-Frisco, should be the next House speaker because, according to the Beckster, he’s the real deal.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/08/turner-and-beck-throws-barbs-straus/

I believe young Glenn ought to go back to pontificating about matters of which he is an expert, such as whether Earth’s climate is changing or whether the president of the United States “hates white people.”

Joe Straus is a mainstream Republican who, I reckon, doesn’t quite conform with how some people think Texas Republicans ought to act or say.

One doesn’t hear him vowing to sue Barack Obama for doing what the Constitution allows him to do. One does not hear Straus say that the Affordable Care Act is the worst thing to happen to this country since the Civil War.

No. All the speaker has done to incur the wrath of TEA party conservatives and loquacious radio talk-show hosts is worth with Democrats and seek to craft legislation that benefits the state. Why, they just can’t stand that kind of thing.

Turner won’t unseat Straus, who’s reportedly gathered enough pledges of support to guarantee his re-election as speaker.

Once the speaker retains the gavel, perhaps Turner will return to the back bench of the House chamber and represent his Metroplex constituents to the best of his ability.

As for Beck, stick to tossing out half-truths and outright lies about Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.

 

Liberals were right about Iraq?

Talk radio is big around here, the Texas Panhandle, that is.

It’s big everywhere it seems. Conservatives rule the air waves these days. They’ve got their devotees who hang on their every word.

The Big Two seem to be Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Throw in some others, maybe Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved and Mark Levin, mix ’em up, and they’re pretty big as well.

Thus, it was with some interest that I read an interesting admission from Beck the other day.

He said liberals were right about the Iraq War and that he — and other conservatives — were wrong.

http://www.newsweek.com/glenn-beck-admits-liberals-were-right-iraq-war-255341

I couldn’t help but think of “Happy Days” character Arthur Fonzarelli, who just couldn’t ever admit to being wr —-, wr —- about anything. Ever. He couldn’t say the word, for crying out loud.

Beck ain’t Fonzie, apparently. He was able to admit it.

“You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else, it doesn’t work. They don’t understand it or even really want it,” Beck said on his radio show this week.

Newsweek.com had an interesting take on Beck’s admission: “This is a major turnaround for the famously right-wing pundit who in 2009 said, ‘The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be president would be ‘What the hell you mean we’re out of missiles?”’

In a perfect world, it shouldn’t really matter what an entertainer thinks about such matters. This world isn’t perfect, quite obviously. So I guess it does matter that a talk-show personality who purports to speak for millions of listeners is willing to do an about-face on one of the more contentious issues of our time.

Who’s next? Rush?

Don’t bet the farm on that one.

Glenn Beck sorry? Now he owns up to it

Glenn Beck told the Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly that he is sorry for all the division and partisan rancor he has caused since the start of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Now he says he’s sorry? Now?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/01/22/glenn-beck-admits-divisive-role.html

It’s a bit late in the game for Beck, the talk-show radio host and one-time TV superstar on Fox to say he’s sorry for all the divisiveness he has contributed to the country.

Fox signed him on in 2009 and seemed to give him a single task: Trash the news president often and with extreme prejudice. Beck did all of that with apparent glee.

He made things up. He embellished his version of what he said was wrong with the country. He stoked the fire of anger from those on the right and the far right over the nation electing its first African-American president. You’ll recall that Beck once said famously — or infamously — on the Fox channel that the president of the United States hated white people.

Now he’s sorry for saying all those angry things about the president.

It reminds me of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara writing in his memoir, published in early 1996, that he believed the United States shouldn’t have fought the Vietnam War, that we were engaged in a futile endeavor. He was about 30 years late in offering that mea culpa, after more than 58,000 Americans were killed in that tragic war.

I recall the reaction then was that McNamara, too, was a bit late.

It pains me to say it, Glenn, but you can’t unhonk the horn.