The Obama administration offered some mild criticism of Fox News the other day. It called its reporting opinion, and not news, and labeled it a de facto arm of the GOP. Now Glenn Beck has responded by likening this onslaught to the murder of six million Jews.
Beck said: "When they're done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, 'first they came for the Jews, and I wasn't Jewish' {comes to mind}."
By now we should all be used to the right's use of the millions of Holocaust victims (Jews, gays, Gypsies, Poles, etc), as political footballs against Democrats, against health care reform, against taxes, against anything the right doesn't like. But, for some of us, getting used to it is hard.
My wife was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany after her Polish Jewish parents survived the Holocaust and made it to the American sector in Germany. My kids -- American born and in their early thirties -- are missing dozens if not hundreds of cousins because of the mass murder Beck trivializes. And our family had it easy compared to most European Jews.
It is, frankly, disgusting that Beck likens this slaughter -- including 1.5 million children -- to criticism of his rolling-in-dough network. I don't care if he apologizes; who needs an apology from the likes of Glenn Beck. I just hope that Jewish and other anti-discrimination organizations (like the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee) condemn Fox and Beck for their use of hate speech against Jews and others. Because, in my book, trivializing the Holocaust, like denying it, is hate speech.