Saturday punditry and weekend opinion. Here's a trio from the NY Times (Saturday is their good day, so they need to position Krugman and Egan to shore up the weak spots.)
Bob Herbert:
America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?
Charles Blow:
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was already dead when I was born, and yet I idolized him the way most children idolized athletes and pop stars. I had the poster and the T-shirt, I knew the speeches and the places he’d marched.
He was smart and brave, steadfast and unmovable. He was a man consumed by conviction and possessed by the magnificent radiance of the earnestly humble. He was an eloquent speaker and a beautiful writer. He cared more about justice and equality than fame or fortune. He was a beacon of light in a world beset by darkness.
That’s why the nightmarish idea of Glenn Beck (who has called President Obama a racist and compared Obama’s America to "The Planet of the Apes") holding a "Restoring Honor" rally on the 47th anniversary of — and on the same site as — King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, so incensed me.
Why would you be incensed that an ignorant blowhard tries to get rich by making America hate each other on the anniversary and location of Rev. King's speech? The guy's just trying to make ends meet.
Gail Collins:
Personally, I would love for us to have a national cow with that sort of milk-giving capacity. But Simpson, who gets very impatient with people who want to preserve current Social Security benefits, did not mean it as a compliment. Now, his remark is getting a lot of attention, and that is only partly because the rest of the news has been so depressing that Bristol Palin’s rumored agreement to compete on "Dancing With the Stars" was a high point of the week.
Dana Milbank, Village chronicles:
Beck as the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream? And you thought 'War of the Worlds' was frightening.
When you've lost Milbank...
For those not familiar with Timothy Egan:
Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.
Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. "I have read about him," she said, "and he’s not — he’s an Arab."
McCain was quick to knock down the lie. "No, ma’am," he said, "he’s a decent family man, a citizen."
That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.
WaPo:
A growing number of Republicans are breaking with the party's traditional stance to publicly state their support for same-sex marriage, a shift strategists say stems as much from demographics as from the renewed focus on economics and the "tea party" movement.
A solid majority of adults younger than 30 - about six in 10 - support the right of gay and lesbian couples to legally wed, according to a Washington Post poll in February.
But even many older Americans and self-identified social conservatives have changed their view on an issue that just six years ago galvanized voters in support of President George W. Bush's reelection.
Does the name Ken Mehlman ring a bell? Michael Gerson:
But the collective indifference on the right to Ken’s news indicates a broader shift in attitudes.
For those demanding change, change is here.