Fools on Parade

Remember when individuals associated with TV news rarely if ever got the opportunity to give their opinions on the air? Remember when a journalist giving an opinion was often seen as tacky and unprofessional? Probably not because the reprogramming of American brains has successfully washed away the past in favor of an agenda-filled present, and a rather frightening future.

These days, it seems that a growing segment of the U.S. population not only wants but expects propaganda in place of objectivity. In a bizarre and ironic twist, they also criticize anyone else they think is doing the same. One wonders if they're idiots or hypocrites and, if we employ logic, must arrive at the conclusion that many of them are both. That may sound harsh but the facts are indisputable.

The dictionary defines a propagandist as one who participates in the "organized dissemination of information, allegations, etc, to assist or damage the cause of a government, movement, etc." Let's dissect that definition for a moment and apply it to those performers who, under the guise of truth and fairness, actively spread disinformation and paranoid theories in service to an extreme Right Wing agenda. We're not talking about the relatively reasonable conservatives of old here.

The most influential and loathsome mouthpiece of Right-wing ludicrousness is Rush "Tax the poor" Limbaugh, whose self-titled "Excellence in Broadcasting Network" boasts millions of listeners each day of the week. Nobody is denying his talent as a broadcaster, but his skills as an accurate deliverer of facts are non-existent. Although he regularly claims he is "executing assigned host duties flawlessly" with "zero mistakes," Limbaugh employs the worst sort of second-hand, unsubstantiated rumors and passes them off as undeniable facts

Where Limbaugh comes off as the ultimate poseur, Fox News pundit Glenn Beck evokes the type of irrational madness we read about in history books dealing with the Middle Ages. His long-winded diatribes and staged sobbing fits aside, the context of his commentaries is downright frightening in its sheer absurdity. Beck's main cause seems to be convincing us that President Obama is a racist with comments such as, "Everything that is getting pushed through Congress, including this health care bill, are transforming America. And they are all driven by President Obama's thinking on one idea: Reparations. " Try to ignore the unbelievable poor grammar and focus on what he's saying.

When Beck isn't claiming the president is trying to get reparations for slavery, (an odd cause for a president whose African father wasn't even from this country) he's telling us why we voted for him. "You were voting for - not change, but change, I think, in race. You were like 'Hey, let's put this behind us.' I think a lot of people were there. They weren't necessarily for his policies. " It's a good thing someone on the level of a Glenn Beck is here to tell us why we do things he doesn't understand

.Continuing the neo-con tradition of fun house mirror distortions of history, Beck has continually done his best to claim concepts that gave birth to the Civil Rights Movement for his own purposes. He refers to high government spending as "turning us into slaves." He's also described the policies of the Left as ". Slavery to government, welfare, affirmative action, regulation, control..."Perhaps the most amusing and nonsensical comment is when he said, "You know what this president is doing right now? He is addicting this country to heroin -- the heroin that is government slavery. It is -- it's just the government giveaways."

During his recent controversial "Restoring Honor" weekend, Beck unveiled the Black Robe Regiment, a clergy group he endorses and claims represents 180 million people. He repeatedly denied the "coincidence" of the event taking place on the same site as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech but continually compared himself to King when he was there. He even went so far as to paraphrase King's "I don't know if I'll be there when we reach the Promised Land," comment. In addition, he said, "I can relate to Martin Luther King probably the most because we haven't carved him in marble yet." It seems as if Beck is doing everything he can to ensure that doesn't happen

.One needs look no further than his endorsement of The Red Network by Elizabeth Dillin, a racist, xenophobic diatribe first published in 1934 written by an unrepentant Nazi sympathizer. The Restoring Honor weekend was, according to Beck, about "reclaiming the Civil Rights Movement," whatever that means. Beck is, to paraphrase a character from the Tim Robbins mockumentary "Bob Roberts," a rebel conservative using the methodology of the Sixties to his advantage.

Some hopeful types on the Left predict the eventual disappearance of Beck and Sean Hannity and the other extreme Fox pundits whenever republicans retake the White House. That's not the point. The point is that these frighteningly irrational fools can appeal to so many when things aren't going their way. In other words, the extreme Right allows these seemingly unbalanced individuals to speak for them because deep down they are just as unbalanced and want someone to say it out loud so they can feel better about it.

Last time I checked, that's how fascism gets a foothold.