I enjoyed reading Dana Milbank rip of Glenn Beck's huge "civil rights" rally being staged at the Lincoln Memorial here in DC today. It just so happens to be the 47th anniversary of King's "I have a dream" speech in the same location. The breathtaking gall of this is something Alexander Zaitchik discussed on my previous hosted episode of Point of Inquiry; now here's Milbank:
Let's review Beck's history as a civil rights pioneer, a history I've studied while writing a book about Beck. When Beck was a radio host in Connecticut in the 1990s, his station apologized for an on-air skit in which Beck and his partner mocked an Asian American caller and used their version of an Asian accent. As a CNN host a couple of years ago, Beck interviewed Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, and challenged him to "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." President Obama, who Beck says was elected because he isn't white, is "moving all of us quickly in slavery," Beck has asserted. On his radio show, he declared that "you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. . . . You take the name Barack to identify with . . . the heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical." He accused Obama of seeking "reparations" from white America, seeking to "settle old racial scores." Beck has spoken on air about "radical black nationalism" in the White House and "Marxist black liberation theology" influencing Obama. He has further determined that the New Black Panthers have "ties to the White House in a myriad of ways" and are part of Obama's "army of thugs." This is not quite the ideal background for a man who would claim to be King's heir...
But with Beck, facts don't really matter. Neither does intellectual analysis generally. The outrageous thing is that, as Zaitchik explained on the show, this rally is going to get Beck a massive amount of attention. It's being treated as the leading story in the country today by the Washington Post. So even as the Zaitchiks and Milbanks of the world use their powers of reason and intellect to criticize him, Beck wins--he gets the last laugh.
