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Fact-Free Hypocrisy from CNN's Glenn Beck
A response to Glenn Beck's "Tax-free hypocrisy from higher education" on CNN.com
There's an industry out there, and it's making money hand over fist while you're barely able to cover your mounting credit card debt.
It's an industry where it's not uncommon for companies to make upwards of four billion dollars in net profit in a single year.
The corporations that comprise it can afford to hire armies of accountants and lawyers whose sole job it is to avoid tax liability through tricks such as mark-to-market accounting and the relocation of corporate "headquarters" to places like the Cayman Islands. Often, these corporations don't have to pay any taxes at all.
Sometimes, these companies even give voice to previously-unheard-of new hires, not because they believe that they'll provide high-quality services or create products of considerable value, but solely for the purpose of creating controversy where there really is none.
Are you angry, because even if there was a Congressional committee that took investigations seriously, it's most likely that nothing would come out of a lone hearing anyway? Well, you should be, because I am of course referring to the media industry, and Glenn Beck's recent commentary on Harvard's endowment is a prime example of everything wrong with it.
Beck begins by suggesting that Americans should be outraged at the combined amount of wealth that the top five institutions of higher education have amassed in their endowments, citing a figure of $100 billion. It's a large number, no doubt. Outrage would seem to be in order if universities were squandering this money on frivolous benefits for professors and students -- year-round Alaskan crab in the dining halls, perhaps -- but even having seen some of the new attractions that universities have binged on just to lure students, such as new gymnasiums, I haven't felt much outrage. Actually, some might even say that it's great that education is taken seriously enough in the United States that alumni actually want to give their money back to the same system that they derived benefit from.
Of course, Beck says, he has no problem with schools being wealthy. If we're to take him at his word, then his real grievance is that "colleges and universities are only working to spread the radical political views of some of their professors."
The mere notion that the sole purpose of institutions of learning is, or has somehow been twisted to be, the dissemination of "radical" views alone, is so absurd that Beck should be embarrassed to have written it. By definition, learning involves the introduction and analysis of original thought. Given the necessity of learning for survival, it's self-defeating to equate places that people learn with connotations of danger and subversiveness. Perhaps when Beck is one day in need personally of some radical economic ideas to boost his employer's stock price, radical statistical modeling to explain his television show ratings, or radical medical research, he'll change his mind. But probably not.
With a masterful generalization, Beck also frets that the liberal elitist professors locked away in their ivory towers have nothing better to do than raise the price of private education beyond a level that any typical family could conceivably afford. The phrase "financial aid" does not appear once in his diatribe, making it seem as though the practice does not even exist. In fact, a recent Bloomberg article with the headline "Harvard, Yale Struggle to Attract Low-Income Students With Aid" states the following: a student "was persuaded to apply when recruiters said financial aid would cover almost all of Harvard's $47,215 in annual costs, including room and board. 'It was so influential,' she said. 'It was actually cheaper for me to go to Harvard than to go to a state school where I live.'"
One has to wonder what exactly is wrong with Glenn Beck. I don't particularly care that he identifies himself as a conservative. I have many conservative views myself. The problem, I think, is that he doesn't actually know anything. Not everyone at Harvard, let alone every university, is a liberal. When I was at Harvard four years ago, two of my roommates campaigned for George W. Bush and the remaining one was a Muslim who went to mass more frequently than he entered a mosque. The endowments are huge because university alumni, on average, take what they've learned, put it to use, and give back -- often with complicated restrictions that make it difficult to spend what's accumulated except in extremely specific scenarios.
Beck's conclusion, that universities fail at "consistency and accountability," seems to be based on nothing more than the kind of sound byte CNN loves to play about every political issue.
Harvard, and education in general, should be affordable. Each school's endowment does present a vehicle by which the financial burdens of students should be eased whenever possible. Then again, Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, is a multi-national corporation with a fifty-nine billion dollar market capitalization. With his calls for Harvard to donate more due to its wealth, I'm sure Glenn Beck wouldn't mind if his employer decided to give his salary to charity this year. Or every year.
This article originally appeared on aarongreenspan.com.
Aaron Greenspan is the author of the forthcoming Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era.
Follow Aaron Greenspan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thinkcomp
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Non sequitor the comic strip had a good one that showed an old guy at a booth with a sign that said "all questions answered" and a young person in a booth next to it that said "all answers questioned". We should question everything...or else we will be lead like sheep...into recession, into debt, into war, into hell
For someone like Beck inconvenient facts are precisely that, inconvenient. They must not be acknowledged within any ideological propsition. To acknowledge that he is ignorant is to lose his soapbox. To admit that there may be shades of gray in and around his black and white viewpoints is to admit that he is incapble of clear thought..
What's really scary is that I've met people who think the Glen Beck has the answers to pretty much everything.
It's not just Glen A. Beck thats in the stupid club. Add Rush A. Limbaugh, Sean A. Hannity, Michael A. Savage and the rest of these so call conservative talk show host. It does't take long to figure out they have no idea what they are talking about.
Why spend real momney on real reporters when one person blowing out his hindquarters rakes in all thoise viewers and advertising dollars.
Beck didn't even go to college, amusingly enough.
Quelle surprise. Somebody translate that for Beck, will you?
There's no mystery here about what Beck and his masters are after.
From Laurence Britt's 14 elements of a fascist state:
- 3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
- 6. A controlled mass media.
- 7. Obsession with national security.
- 11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
Conservatives don't want or need any schools open to the public. Schools just give people ideas, after all. Best if the cattle don't start thinking about things on their way to McDonald's.
"education in general, should be affordable"
Education is affordable if you use it in the right way. If you invest in yourself and get a business degree, you can easily pay it off. If you get a sociology or art degree, well, good luck because you won't be able to do much with it.
conservatives believe if the facts don't conform to their idealogical viewpoint then those facts are not only wrong(?)but are biased against them and should therefore be suppressed and/or denounced.The Iraq War,the environment,science,healthcare,education,the economy.in all these cases the facts didn't fit their political agenda so the facts were thrown out in favor of rhetoric that told them what they wanted to hear.and look at the results
You do realize that your argument easily goes both ways?
Cnn's Glen Beck is just vapid TV. Seinfeld joked that his show was about nothing. It was a hit. Beck's show is about nothing and its awful.
I used to listen to Beck on late night AM. I know, only losers do that. I think Beck is just a goof-ball that still cant believe the money he is making. He just spouts a lot of crap and for some reason he caught on. He reminds me of Pee Wee Herman.
Pee wee had a better act.
Corporations pay less than 5 % of their profits in taxes. Republicans would have you believe that Big Corporations pay the majority of the taxes in the USA. The GAO proves them wrong year after year.
Care to provide a link for evidence?
the PROBLEM isn't that he doesn't know anything- that's the SOLUTION. the creation of knowledge out of the analysis of data is a process conservatism is hostile to because outcomes are not preconceived and are blind to beloved conservative norms and institutions. for beck, praxis is to advance his own simpleminded assertions and simultaneously devise a negative-value strawman counterbalancing them against which he nobly does battle. this is a psychological process proper to beck and similar mental midgets. it never attains all fours with any element of objective reality- especially the great citadels of higher learning. beck is literally not visible to the naked eye from those i attended.
Kevin James infamously proved on Hardball that knowledge of facts is not a prerequisite for being a right wing blowhard pundit. Beck is no different.
Kevin James is nothing compared to Glenn Beck when it comes to success.
"Care to provide a link for evidence?"
You can always rely on the rabid right to spew hatred and lies.
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