The Week's "Glenn Beck's 8/28 Rally: An instant guide" explains the rally by asking and answering several questions:
Why is Beck holding a rally?
Who is speaking?
Wait, Sarah Palin is speaking? I thought this was non-political.
How many people will be there?
Are people angry about Beck's choice of date and place?
How does Beck explain the choice of date?
What do pundits make of it?
The magazine also has a "Glenn Beck Under Fire" section, which contains several articles about Beck.
Posts
12 comments:
My previous post quotes a Forbes article in which Glenn Beck says he does what he does for money.
Palingates has put up a sensationalizing post comparing the rally with what happened in Germany about 75 years ago, under Hitler. Making that argument diminishes what happened there: Beck hasn't done what Hitler did. He isn't likely to get the opportunity, even if he wanted to. It's doubtful that he wants to. Here, in America, honor isn't a dirty word. The motto of the U.S. Military academy is "Duty, Honor, Country."
Excerpting Wikipedia ... Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's law of Nazi Analogies) is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1989 which has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." In other words, Godwin put forth the sarcastic observation that, given enough time, all discussions — regardless of topic or scope — inevitably wind up being about Hitler and the Nazis.
Godwin's law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread reductio ad Hitlerum form. The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.
There is also a laziness in referring to them; a quick leap to an image, and then explain why.
Its lazy. By always using the extreme there is no extreme.
The PG post uses 'nazi's' however I find it mostly about marketing. Marketing is propoganda. Start to finish.
Its about selling and getting honks to buy using any method you can. You find an emotey word and you sell something with it.
To fall deeply into the nazi-thing bypasses the real manipulation of selling 'emotey' people loads of shit.
Its always been successful *until!* the US became a jobless 3rd world country.
We cant buy goods so they shovel bullshit emoteys.
They have fallen down to Rush Limbaugh's level.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200911060051
"Beckstock" turns out to be a bizarre combination of religious revival, hostile corporate takeover of civil rights, and massive mental breakdown over having a black man in the White House.
Two comments have been moderated:
1) 5:42 AM Ken Roberts has left a new comment on your post "Martin Luther King's Dream vs Glenn Beck's Nightma...":
Wow are you naive Joie. It's how it started in Germany. Anyone who believes it can't happen here is severely deluded.
My wv is shect. The comments today are shect.
2) Anonymous 6:14 AM has left a new comment on your post "Martin Luther King's Dream vs Glenn Beck's Nightma...":
If you don't like PG, stop reading it. All you do is bitch and whine about that site.
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It isn't naive to say that palingates erred by comparing the rally with what happened in Germany. Doing that trivializes what Hitler and the Nazis did. They committed horrific crimes. The naivete -- to be kind -- is palingates'. With a better understanding of American political history, Patrick might understand that Glenn Beck is just another in a long line of hucksters and demagogues.
I did not "bitch and whine" about palingates. At times I'm critical of them and will call them out on their BS; for example, when they attempt to sensationalize something or post erroneous and/or incomplete "research." That needs to be done, because if they're going to be critical of Palin they need to be credible. When they offer sensationalism, half-baked research, innuendo and insinuation, they give honest critics of Palin a bad name: it's too easy for the palinbots to say, "look at this BS palingates wrote ... all those blogs are just haters ... "
They did some good work on some of the 'gates,' and it is a shame that they are discrediting that and themselves by going tabloid.
In his Washington Post column, Greg Sargent recognized it for what it is, demagoguery. And what resentment are they playing to? "Beckstock" turns out to be a bizarre combination of religious revival, hostile corporate takeover of civil rights, and massive mental breakdown over having a black man in the White House.
The NY Times has "At Lincoln Memorial, a Call for Religious Rebirth." There is a slideshow, an excerpt from Beck's speech and Palin's speech.
The Daily Beast's John Avlon wrote of a "good Beck" and a "bad Beck" struggling for supremacy in Beck's head:
... You can’t profit from fear and division all week and then denounce them one Saturday on the National Mall in Washington and hope nobody notices. ...
... What accounts for this split personality? I’ve argued in the past that there is a Good Beck and a Bad Beck, and they are usually struggling for supremacy inside his head.
The Good Beck is genuinely patriotic and deeply religious, ascribing his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction to his family and his newfound Mormon faith.
The Bad Beck is such a talented broadcaster that he knows how to manipulate an audience’s emotions. He uses conflict, tension, fear and resentment to keep their attention day after day, buying his books, attending his rallies. ...
"I could give a flying crap about the political process." Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. "We're an entertainment company," Beck says.
The celebrity Glenn Beck has organized a festive and apparently harmless public event for the Washington Mall that he calls “Restoring Honor.” This theme is so deeply bland that it invites us partisans to look for inner meaning, such as the fact that August 28 is the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s revolutionary March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, or such as Beck’s Fox News Channel seeking a low-budget reality show to sell for the dog days of summer programming.
The trick here may be that Beck’s event, which will feature the celebrity Sarah Palin, is not about anything at all. It is a farce of an event in the way the bookish Karl Marx meant it, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
John Batchelor's "The Beck Rally Is Harmless," at The Daily Beast.
Enjoy what's left of the weekend. Monday steals up on us too quickly.
Joie, re Palingates. I think you're right, but an unwillingness to curtail/moderate/create guidelines for commenting there has given the site a bad case of gas. The work they've done becomes "territory" to be claimed and protected, touted with non-stop echo chamber feedback. Apparently that's fine with the site managers, and they seem too enamored of their hit numbers to be concerned. But credibility suffers and the energy level expended in the comments masks that. IMHO. They'd be wise to turn off disqus once in a while and make everyone take a forced vacation.
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