TEA PARTY PART III - COMFORTABLY DUMB
"All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years." --Sarah Palin, unable to provide the specific name of a newspaper she reads when asked by Katie Couric, CBS News, October 1, 2008
It's called the "Glenn Beck Program" for a reason. If you are uninformed or have a real chip on your shoulder, you may be susceptible to being programmed when you watch it. A skilled manipulator, Beck knows his audience and he knows what to say to get the response he wants.
The comfortably dumb are simply so ignorant of American history and current political events that they easily fall for Beck's self-serving interpretation of the Constitution and oversimplified "good versus evil" description of complex issues. The comfortably dumb do not analyze. They do not step back to ask themselves whether or not something is reasonable. They do not seek out alternative sources of information and draw their own conclusions. They want ready-made conclusions fed to them which reinforce their uninformed, one-dimensional worldview. Anything else makes them feel angry and insecure. Untraveled, undereducated, unread and unexposed - this crowd does not do nuance.
Thank goodness the comfortably dumb have Professor Beck to explain everything to them in nuance-free terms. His show is the Cliff's Notes version (an evil, twisted Cliff's Notes version) of American government for the angry, ignorant and lazy. For example, Beck likes to condense two hundred plus years of Constitutional law down to four easy pages, which, he says, is the length of the Constitution. All case law should be thrown out immediately. Law school must be for liberal elites who are looking for ways to waste time and money. Why spend countless hours reading hundreds of cases when all you really have to do is read the "four pages" of the Constitution? Following Beck's reasoning, Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education, Yates v. United States, New York Times v. Sullivan and even Ricci v. DeStefano must be mere fluff, mere surplusage, and not essential to understanding Constitutional provisions. In fact, they are worse then fluff, according to Beck - case law is an evil tool used by progressives to pervert and undermine the Constitution. This is right out of W. Cleon Skousen's 1958 book The Naked Communist, which lists as one of the Communists' goals: "16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights." Seems like paint-by-numbers McCarthyism, using a 50 year old playbook.
It appears that Beck has never watched a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. If he had, he may have noticed that senators on the judiciary committee (even the Republicans) tend to ask the nominees about their take on major cases, not the bare bones language of the Constitution itself. Could you imagine if Justice Sotomayor had responded to a question regarding Second Amendment rights by stating that she had not read any of the applicable case law, and further, that she wouldn't bother analyzing or applying case law precedent because the words of the Second Amendment itself are sufficient? If she had said that, she would have been laughed out of the hearing - by Republicans and Democrats - and her career as a judge would be over. Yet Beck insists that if you just read the Constitution itself, that's pretty much all you need to know. It is ridiculous for him to suggest that the original Constitution stands alone, without all of the interpretive case law that is now part and parcel of such document. The Founders provided a framework, not a specific resolution for all possible issues that would arise in the future of the nation. Certainly they expected future generations to carry part of the load in figuring out how to solve problems (i.e., they didn't expect us to be complete mouth-breathing navel-gazing morons - they expected us to actively participate in our democracy). Even the Miranda rights Beck insists must be followed have their origin in "evil" case law. But the comfortably dumb don't seem to have any issue with the absurdity of Beck's claim. They are comforted by his confirmation that all that extra reading and difficult studying is unnecessary and useless. Those who spend years studying Constitutional law are just effete schmucks. What an appealing message for the comfortably dumb!
This little trick also, conveniently, makes it possible for Beck to declare himself a Constitution Czar, the sole all-powerful keeper of this sacred document. If you only have to learn four pages and you abjectly refuse to recognize any and all other authorities - it probably doesn't take too long become a master (the master in fact) of the subject! And there's an added benefit of leap-frogging ahead of, and making completely irrelevant, every single other person who has put in the time, the hard work and the research to become an expert. It is a super shortcut to the head of the class! While mocking President Obama's recent graduation speech and distorting the President's words to imply that he does not want people to have information, Beck is concurrently arguing that everyone who studies case law in any respect (attorneys, professors, regulators, etc.) possesses too much information.
Left unexplained by Beck's radical, extremist views on Constitutional jurisprudence is the mechanism to resolve questions regarding the meaning of the provisions. No matter how well-written, there will always be a disagreement as to what certain language means. For example, many people interpret the Second Amendment as giving the right to bear arms only to state-sponsored militias - not to individuals. How does Beck propose to resolve issues like this one without the court system and case law? Let me guess - all issues to be resolved by unilateral, dictatorial edict of Chairman Beck based on God's voice he hears in his head. Just last week, Beck railed against those who would purport to interpret the BIble and take that power of interpretation away from the common people. Yet it is Beck who wants to take the power to interpret the Constitution away from everyone except himself. That should scare you.
To play a little CYA and paint himself as reasonable, Beck often chants "I hope I'm wrong" and "do your own research". Yet he will be the first one to tell you that you can't trust any other source of information. The media is corrupt. Schools have been corrupted by progressives. Progressives have re-written history to hide the truth. The government is corrupt and lying to you. How convenient, yet again - there is no authority Beck will allow his audience to accept except himself.
In addition to insinuating that hundreds of years of American Constitutional jurisprudence is irrelevant, Beck has the comfortably dumb believing all manner of other nonsense. Fortunately for Beck, the comfortably dumb are painfully gullible. Did you know that the White House is using the "cash for clunkers" program to take over your computer and spy on you? President Obama is using Americorps to indoctrinate your children into joining an armed civilian force to help him pursue his fascist vision for the nation. There is an army of thugs being built right under our noses. The government will silence dissenters. Obama is trying to shut down Fox News. There's no scientific consensus on global warming (despite extensive evidence to the contrary ). The government will use the census to identify dissenters and persecute them and to "increase slavery". There are subversive Communist paintings in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center. The progressive federal government is grabbing up vast tracts of land – secretly by executive order. Barack Obama wants to stop you from fishing:
BECK: Forget about the frickin' fish. People are losing their rights. Who's more important: the fish or you?
BECK: "How about a fishing ban? A fishing ban that would put jobs at risk in the middle of an economic crisis, but beyond that, you and your son being told you can't go there to fish! What the hell is happening to us?
Okayyyy.....
Beck has advised his followers not to pay their taxes in order to starve (crash?) the system (not like Cloward and Piven I hope!) yet he freely calls members of the Obama administration tax cheats for purportedly not paying their taxes. (Beck's own little tax issues get a pass of course.) "Net neutrality" is a Marxist plot by Obama to control the interent. ACORN is a corrupt, inept organization which nevertheless managed to significantly influence a national election. The right-wing Christian extremist Holocaust shooter was actually a leftist, and the shooting itself was indirectly Obama's fault. Adolf Hitler, the fascist, was also simultaneously a leftist. Communism, Marxism, Socialism and Fascism are not at all mutually exclusive. Obama is deliberately trying to destroy the country in order to rebuild a new world order from the ashes. And possibly worst of all, President Obama timed his December 2009 Afghanistan speech to pre-empt the Charlie Brown Christmas special to stop small children from hearing Linus talk about the birth of baby Jesus. (Yes Glenn Beck really did say that! ZOMG!) And all of these accusations were made by Beck within the span of only about a year! Yes - it all sounds perfectly rational. Not at all like some raving, frothing, self-contradictory, bizarro conspiracy-theory crazy talk or anything like that. Wow.
One way Beck convinces the comfortably dumb to believe his bunk is by simplifying (i.e., distorting beyond reason) complicated economic or political issues. For people who are not well-versed in either, this seems to work. For example, Beck seems to believe that graphic clips from popular movies and television shows are educational. He has used them a number of times as teaching tools. On his October 30, 2009 show, Beck showed a clip from the movie "Mission Impossible III". In this particularly explicit clip, Tom Cruise's character injects Keri Russell's character with an adrenaline shot. This, Professor Beck exclaims, is exactly how the stimulus legislation affected the economy! Again, on his December 2, 2009 show, he played a clip from the television show "24". The clip shows Keifer Sutherland's character demanding that a suspect be given a shot of epinephrine for the purposes of getting him to talk, even though everyone knows that the shot will kill the suspect. Beck explains that the stimulus works the same as this shot - it will help in the short run and then destroy the economy in the long run. With visual aids like these, who needs a degree in economics?
And who could forget the episode where Beck showed a scene from the movie The Untouchables wherein Robert DeNiro's Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. Beck, while intensely staring into the camera and menacingly waving an actual baseball bat, presented this clip as a comparison - a bizarrely bloody, brutal comparison - to President Obama's so-called "war" on Fox News. It is almost as if Beck is saying, "When you think of the Obama administration, I want you to think about violent death at their hands." Other movies in the Beck education vault - Angels and Demons and Titanic. (The Constitution is a life boat.)
This is how one best communicates with the comfortably dumb, apparently. By giving them familiar characters, dumbed-down explanations and a little visceral shock and awe (complete with scenes of bloody beatings and murders) to really hammer it home. With over-the-top melodramatic showmanship, Beck plays to emotions over reason. His goal is to have the comfortably dumb believing in their hearts that Obama is just like the violent, murderous villain or terrorist who they hated in that movie or TV show - believing it so deeply that no fact can ever convince them otherwise.
The comfortably dumb probably think professional wrestling is real as well. "I can see it with my own eyes," they exclaim, "so how could it not be true?" Beck often says the same. After laying a foundation constructed of insinuations, fear-mongering and half-baked conspiracy theories, he shows a carefully selected video of his target-of-the-day appearing to make a damning statement which very conveniently fits neatly into Beck's deranged narrative. Beck then proclaims something along the lines of, "There it is, you see it with our own eyes - these are his own words! How could it not be true?" But the problem is, it isn't true. Beck has a track record of taking a person's words and making outrageous claims about their meaning, claims which are completely contrary to the actual intent of the speaker. He twists and distorts the remarks to suit his own malicious purposes. For example, Beck used a single quote from former Interim White House Communications Director Anita Dunn to "prove" she is a lifelong "Maoist". "Mao Zedong," intoned a solemn-faced Beck, "shot his political enemies in the head" (which Beck helpfully demonstrated using his own finger gun). Beck's grotesque message was that Anita Dunn, by virtue of uttering a single particular sentence at a high school graduation, must be a reprehensible person who "loves" and "worships" a mass murderer. Oh, and by the way, she is also a hard-core Communist. As crazy as it sounds, this really did happen on the Glenn Beck Program. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth and certainly Beck must know this unless he is an abject idiot.
On his October 19, 2009 program, Beck showed the applicable statement from Dunn in full, as follows:
Two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa -- not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices…
How on God's green earth could anyone in good faith interpret that to mean Dunn "loves Mao" and that Mao is someone she - for all purposes in her life - "turns to most", as Beck asserts? It is utterly ridiculous to claim that this one reference to Mao, with no bona fide corroborating evidence, makes Anita Dunn a lifelong rabid, mass-murderer-worshipping Communist. It is surreal that a tactic so obviously disingenuous would work. Who would be stupid enough to believe such hogwash? Apparently, the mindless drones who comprise the comfortably dumb are. Beck has them indoctrinated to such an extent that they swallow their leader's noxious spin without question. What can you say to someone who would allow themselves to be so easily misled, except, possibly, get your head out of your behind?
On other episodes of his show, Beck played a cropped version of Dunn's remarks a number of times:
Two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa -- not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most.
Apparently, the cropped version suited Beck's purpose better than the full sentence. Playing Dunn's complete sentence would have taken an additional four of five seconds and Beck does not have time to waste. Never mind the ethical problem of removing the context. We can't have people actually figuring out that Beck's interpretation is baloney. When Dunn issued a statement describing the "favorite political philosophers" clause as irony (obviously), instead of taking Dunn at her word, Beck, like the relentless prick he is, continued to gleefully incite his audience and contemptuously accuse her of being a Mao-lover. Do you see what Beck did there? Yes, you saw it with your own eyes, but the way Beck presented and described it was not the truth.
This is not pro-wrestling. This is a person's life, reputation and career. Beck smeared this woman, possibly because he knew that Dunn would eventually conclude her interim position (which fact was public knowledge as early as April 30, 2009 ), but he arrogantly wanted to be able to claim that he caused her to resign. A lesson for us all: do not even think about uttering the word "Mao" or Glenn Beck will issue a patriotic fatwa on you. Don't expect him to be mindful of the messages of understanding, forgiveness and redemption in his book The Christmas Sweater while he drags your reputation through the mud either.
Beck feeds the comfortably dumb exactly what they so desperately want to believe, and the message is so welcome that they have no interest in fact checking or questioning him. Beck is a hero to the comfortably dumb because he vilifies the right people, i.e., Obama Administration officials, Democrats, progressives and the so-called liberal elite, and puts a happy face on certain views that deep down the comfortably dumb know are wrong (irrational hatred, racism, homophobia, misogyny, greed). Far from feeling shame, Beck tells them they can and should feel good. Don't let the liberal elites silence you with their whining about political correctness! Feel free to express what you really think about minorities, immigrants and liberals, no matter how backwards, racist, sexist or xenophobic it sounds. Ignore your internal impulses to keep your rhetoric within the bounds of reasonableness and decency. Beck tells the comfortably dumb that all the people they perceive as responsible for the purported destruction of America are in fact responsible - the comfortably dumb have been right all along! Nothing that you have been taught is true. The progressives have been evil and bad and wrong all along and now they’re just covering their tracks! All the so-called liberal elites with their city livin' and fancy book learnin' are not only America-hating murderer-worshipping socialist Communists, but they have nearly wrecked the country, if not the world! And here the comfortably dumb were, thinking they were the stupid ones. The self-esteem comes flooding back. Ignorance is bliss when you're a follower of Glenn Beck.
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Related in this series:
Beck's Dark Secret: Hell in a Handbasket
He Blinded me with Skousen
Glenn Beck: The Moron Whisperer
Tea Party Part I - The Sore Losers
Tea Party Part II - Left Behind