Glenn Beck Building Bridges? Please

Among right-wing pundits, no one has reached further than Glenn Beck. Rush Limbaugh may gather huge audiences for his radio show, but Beck has the power to summon fans to giant rallies and dominate the media in a more relevant way than Limbaugh, who remains primarily a divisive figure. So is Beck, no doubt about it, but he has some kind of freakish staying power that can’t be completely ignored. On his TV show, Beck usually acts like a non-partisan figure who simply wants to take the country back to its roots. Conservatives buy it wholesale… but anyone who isn’t conservative is unable to take the man seriously, which of course is a telling sign of the fact that he will only remain an icon to a certain group of people. Beck though won’t have any of that. In the fascinating Fox News interview above (which is labeled exclusive even though the man is paid by the network!), he’s commenting on his attempt to hijack 8/28, the date in 1963 when Martin Luther King led the March on Washington. The so-called “Restoring Honor” rally yesterday gathered a huge crowd of conservatives acting as if what they were doing is equal to Dr. King’s achievements. And so did Glenn Beck who has the audacity to pretend like he’s “reclaiming civil rights from politics”, even though there would never have been a Civil Rights Act if people like Beck and his supporters were in charge back in the ’60s.

Oh, Beck has put on his reading glasses and acts like he’s a great philosophical leader now. When Chris Wallace confronts him with the tape where he calls President Barack Obama a racist (as Limbaugh would), Beck looks like he’s so tired of having to answer questions from ignorant journalists/liberals and tells Wallace that it’s really about “faith” and “the content of one’s character, not the color of one’s skin.” The problem is though that Beck overemphasizes the role of religion in the question of America’s future (what exactly does Beck think atheists get out of his “Restoring Honor” rally?), relies on divisive politics even though he claims not to (Sarah Palin was a speaker at his rally) and has no interest in building bridges to the minorities of his country (8/28 was an insensitive date to pick).

Still, Beck is a far more dangerous person than Rush Limbaugh. After all, who likes Limbaugh? Beck is almost likable, if you buy into his dishonesty as much as he does. He has influence… but Wallace’s question in the end, whether or not Back would run for president along with Palin, made me laugh. That would be a dream for Democrats. And Glenn Beck was smart enough to shoot the idea down.

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