People converged on Washington this weekend with one thing in common: they want to help Glenn Beck restore honor or salute troops or whatever vaguely patriotic way he wants to spread fear and hate towards President Obama while hiding behind the flag.As I mingled through the crowd -- I live right across the river from the Lincoln Memorial, where Beck's rally was held -- I discovered that the people there actually had a lot more in common. Just about every single person was white, old, middle class, somewhat overweight, extremely misinformed, and hyper-conservative. Actually, take back that first line. The entire gathering was homogeneous and in every way the GOP's target demographic.
More on the crowd and speeches after the jump
Scanning the crowd, it looked like a massive AARP convention where someone kept giving out extremely tacky American-flag and Glenn-Beck themed t-shirts. Slowly succumbing to heat stroke, Tea Partiers, hailing from red states where Martin Luther King Jr. spent his life fighting against injustice, sat in shade on their motorized wheelchairs, listening to the rambling and furious ravings of a college-drop-out alcoholic formerly-drug-addicted Mormon-convert turned radio-fear-monger. The indecipherability of Mr. Beck over the loud speakers and the sharpness of his delivery style made it sound like one massive German political rally, say in Nuremberg... circa 1933.
Generally, I found the Beckheads to be nothing short of crotchety-- freely cussing the DC residents trying to make their way around them as they glacially moved across every sidewalk and up every escalator. Closely to their chests, they clutched printed maps of DC highlighting dangerous areas to avoid, which only coincidentally was where the black people live. As for the content of the speeches, the whole thing seemed to be one humongous promotional event for Beck himself and all the brands of revisionist history and demagoguery he sells. I'm sure that Beck stands to profit handsomely from this event.
At one point Mr. Beck sought to dispel the notion that he was a fear-monger, likening his work to the iceberg watchman on the Titanic. Surely we wouldn't call that man a fear-monger! But we would if that guy said that icebergs would rain from the sky in the middle of a desert unless you voted liberals out of office. And that's the apt comparison.
So, good-bye Mr. Beck and thanks for shitting on Dr. King's legacy while clogging the Metro system.
wow, you must be all of 12, and i guess you will never be older than say,20, since you trash-talk the over 50 group so well. guess you are just better than anyone else. my prayers will include you and i wish you well. learn to love all people not just some people.
ReplyDeleteWell said. While I dislike them for their views and mock them for their ignorance, I hate them for jamming my metro full of cholesterol-ridden hate-mongers who only venture to the "dark" city of DC to get an earful of justification from the nutjob-in-chief. Some of us are in DC working day and night to make this country better, and they think strapping a flag to their motorized wheelchairs and listening to Palin for a weekend makes them important. Sit down, shut up, and let the big dogs go to work, bigots.
ReplyDeleteif you fools only knew the outcome of your thinking...you insult and show your ignorance with all you speak. in the end you will know where you really went wrong. i am sorry for you.
ReplyDeleteYou're missing the point. Beck's Tea Partiers are often portrayed in the media the way third parties/independents might when in reality they are just a homogeneous collection of the GOP's most radial wing. They get their news exclusively from Beck, making them even less informed. They don't understand politics and American history (case in point: believing the founding fathers to be theocrats), and if they think that they are in any way picking up the mantle of Dr King by advocating for nullification (by states of federal law), for religious intolerance (anti-mosques), and against social/economic justice, then they are the worst mix of stupid and evil.
ReplyDeleteIn mere years, we will look back on this period in American politics with shame and puzzlement.