Conservatives flock to fear-mongering commentator
By: Matt Blickenstaff
Issue date: 4/2/09 Section: Opinion/Editorial
them."
His thinly veiled message? Atheists
and liberals are going to take over the
world and all of you good Christian soldiers
must unite to defeat them.
I'm more worried about the gun totin',
Toby Keith lovin', jean short wearin'
hordes perched at the city limits.
Beck's unhinged rhetoric would be
comical - if 2.3 million viewers didn't
tune in to listen.
Everyone has a right to be as nutty as
they want - this is America after all. But
broadcasting Beck's descent into Lovecraftian
madness is grossly irresponsible.
Conspiracy theorists write their
manifestos alone in some clandestine
Montana shack. Beck is writing his on
air, out in the open, four hours a day, every
day, in front of millions of entranced
viewers. Sure he's got the right to say it,
but is it prudent to do so? You wouldn't
give Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh
or Jim Jones a variety show, would you?
The unemployed, uneducated and
disenfranchised masses are out there
and they are armed to the teeth. Gun
sales skyrocketed after Barack Obama's
victory, and Beck is chucking M-80's at
this roiling wasp's nest.
Beck believes he's simply an entertainer,
a political comedian. I don't trust
his viewers to make that distinction. In a
recent interview Beck said, "If you take
what I say as gospel, you're an idiot."
Idiots are Fox's key demographic.
If Beck tells these backwoods revolutionaries
their government is going
to round them up and throw them
into Federal Emergency Management
Administration concentration camps,
they'll believe it. At what point does
one of these mouth-breathing hill people
grab his rifle and scale the town
clock tower?
Times are tough, people are pissed,
and Beck's spreading propaganda as
incendiary as the Turner Diaries or
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It's got me looking to the horizon, on
vigilant watch, for rebel-flag flying
four-wheelers.
His thinly veiled message? Atheists
and liberals are going to take over the
world and all of you good Christian soldiers
must unite to defeat them.
I'm more worried about the gun totin',
Toby Keith lovin', jean short wearin'
hordes perched at the city limits.
Beck's unhinged rhetoric would be
comical - if 2.3 million viewers didn't
tune in to listen.
Everyone has a right to be as nutty as
they want - this is America after all. But
broadcasting Beck's descent into Lovecraftian
madness is grossly irresponsible.
Conspiracy theorists write their
manifestos alone in some clandestine
Montana shack. Beck is writing his on
air, out in the open, four hours a day, every
day, in front of millions of entranced
viewers. Sure he's got the right to say it,
but is it prudent to do so? You wouldn't
give Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh
or Jim Jones a variety show, would you?
The unemployed, uneducated and
disenfranchised masses are out there
and they are armed to the teeth. Gun
sales skyrocketed after Barack Obama's
victory, and Beck is chucking M-80's at
this roiling wasp's nest.
Beck believes he's simply an entertainer,
a political comedian. I don't trust
his viewers to make that distinction. In a
recent interview Beck said, "If you take
what I say as gospel, you're an idiot."
Idiots are Fox's key demographic.
If Beck tells these backwoods revolutionaries
their government is going
to round them up and throw them
into Federal Emergency Management
Administration concentration camps,
they'll believe it. At what point does
one of these mouth-breathing hill people
grab his rifle and scale the town
clock tower?
Times are tough, people are pissed,
and Beck's spreading propaganda as
incendiary as the Turner Diaries or
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It's got me looking to the horizon, on
vigilant watch, for rebel-flag flying
four-wheelers.
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