As much as I disagree with the hosts on Fox News, I have never called for any of them to be fired. I defended Don Imus when he got in trouble with his incendiary comments. That's because I believe a talk show host should have wide berth, even to offend. They are the conversation starters and at the heart of our political discourse.
Of course, as a talk show host I'm very biased on this issue, but I think it helps the national conversation to hear everyone out. That's even if what they're saying is outrageous or not even remotely true. Let there be a battlefield of ideas and I think the truth will win out in the long run (though it loses many battles in the short run).
Now that you know how strongly I feel about that -- I think Glenn Beck should be fired. He has told a lie so grotesque that it goes beyond the pale of even dirty politics. Just when I thought he couldn't shock my conscience anymore, he has done it. Let me explain.
George Soros survived the Holocaust. He is Jewish and when the Nazis caught up with his family his father saved his life by bribing an agricultural official to pretend Soros was his Christian godson. At one point, that man took the fourteen year old Soros to survey and appraise the property that had been confiscated from another Jewish family. Obviously Soros did not have a choice in the matter. Soros eventually survived the Holocaust.
To most this would be an amazing and harrowing story of survival during the Holocaust. To Beck it was an opportunity to paint Soros as an anti-Semite and smear him with one of the worst lies I have ever heard.
First Beck started by horribly warping this story on his Fox News show. He said of Soros:
[When he was] 14 years old, he had to help the government confiscate the land of his fellow Jewish friends and neighbors.
That's not what happened at all as you can see from above. He didn't help confiscate people's land. He didn't actively participate in betraying his Jewish neighbors or friends. The implications are horrible. But what Beck did next is much worse. He twisted the story further until he came out with this inexcusable lie on his radio show:
[H]ere's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.
That lie takes my breath away. That is a lie that cannot be told.
The ADL has now condemned Beck's statements as "horrific."
Michelle Goldberg has a terrific article in The Daily Beast explaining how Beck's two part series on Fox News Channel about George Soros was classic anti-Semitism. He even named the series "Puppet Master." Nazi propaganda used to call Jews the "wire pullers."
The Nazis would say in their propaganda pieces that Jews secretly controlled everything and brought down whatever governments they didn't like. Beck's two part series on Soros talked about how he was the secret force behind the progressive agenda and surreptitiously brought down governments he didn't like (Communist governments by the way, but apparently he doesn't get credit for that). And Beck concludes by saying that we might be next. Soros might destroy our country. This is anti-Semitism 101.
One man has already tried to assassinate people who worked for the Tides Foundation because Beck accused them of being tied to George Soros. That man was caught in a shoot-out with cops before he could kill the people who worked there. Beck undeterred by what he is spurring people to do, has put his foot on the gas pedeal to try to stoke the fires more.
Fox News has told and spread many lies, ranging from the absurd (President Obama is going to spend $200 million a day in his trip to India) to the politically devastating (they invited John Kerry's accusers on-air to smear his Vietnam service repeatedly during the 2004 election). I know that's what they do. But even I didn't know it went this far. If Beck doesn't get fired over this, what else can he say? I literally cannot think of anything more outrageous.
They call themselves a "News Channel." Is this the kind of "news" people want to participate in?
This is the kind of thing people should resign in protest over. This is the kind of thing that guests shouldn't go on the channel over. This is the kind of thing that people shouldn't want their names associated with.
If Fox doesn't fire Beck over this, well then you know exactly where they stand. It certainly isn't as a news channel.
Follow Cenk Uygur on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks
MJ Rosenberg: UPDATE: ADL's Foxman Condemns Glenn Beck
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Apparently, it depends upon whether or not they agree with it.
You must be the smartest cat in the bag. Not only did you miss the point of Beck's statement, you horribly took it out of context.
I can understand you taking it out of context, because Beck may have as well...
Beck's point being that his childhood was traumatic! That he actually cannot imagine how rough or terrible it could have been. I know so many kids who feel responsible for their parents getting a divorce when it's not their fault, who's to say that Soros didn't feel the same way, even though he may not have been directly involved?
Glenn Beck uses that as a counter for the video of Soros saying that his childhood while he was pretending to be a gentile, was the best of his life. Which sounds awful inconjunction with what is going on all around him.
Honestly, you're lack of follow through in your argument or facts makes me weep. Reporters have lost sight of what should be inherent in their profession, thorough research, not emotional BS that tries to soften it's ignorance and bias by saying up front "I'm biased."
Everyone know's your biased, because everyone is biased. Whomever doesn't realize this, won't have their mind changed by a persuasive argument
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
On the second highlighted point, here is Beck's full statement:
"Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps. I am certainly not saying George Soros enjoyed that, even had a choice -- I mean, he’s 14 years old. He was surviving. So I’m not making a judgment, that’s between him and Godâ€
----Sinclair Lewis.
Glenn Beck is the face of 21st Century American fascism.
2. If you think Glenn Beck would have any objection to "big government" as long as he could guarentee that this government would always be controlled by people who look like him, and think like himself.....
I have SEVERAL bridges that I'd like to sell you.
Glenn Beck is the 21st Century Father Coughlin. A reckless, irresponsible demagogue who panders disingenuous libertarian rhetoric and false "history" to the ethnocentric and paranoid, who are terrified of actually living in a free-and-diverse society.
We've known exactly where they stand for years, WAY off to the far, far right, which is the far, far wrong. Fox won't fire him. This is what they pay him to do.
[Excerpts from The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 |]
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
This sounds like Beck and Fuax Noise to me and according to Hannity's thinking, anyone that associated with him. Guilty by association.
If it walks like a duck and sound like duck, its a duck!!!
1. It conveys defintional "goodness" and "superiority" to a particular TRIBE of people. Who are better, more moral, etc....than others not by virtue of what they do, but by virtue of who they are. ("Real Americans")
2. It preys upon the fears and vanities of the unsophisticated. Their uncritical trusting of authority. Their fears and hatreds of those who are different than their "tribe"...and the need for convenient scapegoats as the cause of their problems.
3. It needs the notion that society is somehow "fallen" (usually because of the actions of those being scapegoated)...and the only way to save society is to return to some mythologized "golden age" (Back to the Future). When the values of the definitionally "good" predominated.
In short, fascism is what you get when you mix ethnocentric tribalism with malicious ignorance.
Seems Soros could sue for liable, though I admit I know nothing about such laws.
http://www.colorofchange.org/beck/