Glenn Beck probably should have seen this coming when he launched "Glenn Beck University": the "liberal media" is signing up and mocking Beck's online classes.
One person to pay the $79 joining fee was Keith Olbermann, who presented highlights from the first online lecture, "Faith 101," on Thursday's "Countdown."
The lecture featured right-wing historian David Barton, and focused on the idea that, as Beck said in his introduction, the notion of the American separation of church and state is "not what you've been sold," but that in fact the founders wanted a much closer relationship between the two. Olbermann said the lecture also promised to teach the participants "more about American history than [they had] ever learned."
After running some clips of Barton discussing purported links between the Declaration of Independence and religious sermons, Olbermann brought on Huffington Post blogger Chris Rodda, who also joined the online classes. Rodda said she has followed Barton's work, and challenged his assertion that the Declaration is based on the Bible:
"If you Google the Declaration, 27 points from the Bible, you'll get probably thousands of hits. Because basically he usually just--he doesn't go into detail of where he gets this from in his other presentations. But he says all 27 points are based on the Bible. And people just keep parroting that and parroting that. But I guess if you asked them what those 27 points are, they wouldn't be able to name a single one."
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Talking Points Memo also dispatched one of its writers, Jillian Rayfield, to Glenn Beck University.
Horn-rimmed glasses? Check. History textbook generously amended to give due credit to religious figures in American history?
Knew we forgot something...
The lecture, which was followed by an interactive Q&A session, had only a short intermission -- cartoon Glenn Beck showed up to give viewers a pop quiz on Barton's class. But don't worry, cartoon Beck assured us. Pop quizzes were never his thing either.