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Why Every Atrocity Isn't the Holocaust...And Why It Matters

Back 2006, I wrote this post about my disgust at the urge to compare every act to the Holocaust. Having re-read it, it still holds true today after reading numerous comparisons between Nazis and Glenn Beck supporters.

I'm Sure Glad Glenn Beck's Rally Is Over

I just couldn't take any more of the civility and biparisanship on display from the Left.

Pot-Smoking, 9/11 Truth Lovin' Registered Democrat Pentagon Shooter...Must've Been a "Rightwing Extremist"

If there was ever any doubt about the current meme regarding violence, the story of John Patrick Bedell should lay them to rest.

John Patrick Bedell: Did right-wing extremism lead to shooting? screams the Christian Science Monitor. Pentagon Shooter Was Right-Wing, Anti-Government Terrorist soberly reports Think Progress. And both links talk about Bedell as an anti-government guy who was a 9/11 Truther.

Of course, as Newsbusters notes, 9/11 Truthers are leftwingers, not rightwingers. And given that Bedell was a registered Democrat, the liberal bullshit about rightwing extremism looks even more self-serving.

But that doesn't stop nuts like Jesse Taylor from blaming Tea Partiers and trying to equate Debra Medina with John Patrick Bedell. Taylor must be a yoga master to twist around to draw that comparison.

Shocking! Many Tea Party Activists Are Also--*Gasp*--Republicans

Bud Kennedy of my hometown Fort Worth Star-Telegram is really concerned about the Tea Party movement (see here for his latest column). Apparently, it's a scandal that many Tea Party activists/supporters/organizers also are Republicans.

When you sign up for e-mail from the supposedly nonpartisan Common Sense Texans network of Tea Party members, you’re giving your address to a Dallas Republican lawyer and social-networking-campaign expert who has been an activist for private-school vouchers...

For example, the Web site commonsensetexans.net, a sign-up and information site for 34 Tea Party and 912 Project groups in Texas, is registered to Dallas lawyer and Tea Party coordinator Ken Emanuelson, a Fred Thompson campaigner and veteran Republican organizer.

Wow! How bizarre that an umbrella website for Tea Party groups in Texas would be run by someone both interested in conservative politics and has experience organizing political groups? Must be a conspiracy!

Apparently, Kennedy, along with many on the left, is most concerned that Tea Partiers aren't all rubes with pitchforks and without political savvy. The idea that Republicans might also agree with many of the 9 principles and 12 values of the 912 project is too difficult to accept as anything other than a hoax for some people.

Kennedy's column also leaves some big unanswered questions. If one of the four Tea Party groups serving the Grapevine-Keller-Southlake area (a cluster of posh suburbs in Tarrant County) is run by a "veteran Republican organizer," who runs the other groups? Is there a reason being a Republican precludes one from also supporting the Tea Parties? And if 1/3 of Tea Partiers "claim libertarian views," what does that say about the other 2/3?

It's obvious that the Tea Party movement, with its call for less government spending and more limited government, chafes against those who support Democrats and their principles of off-the-charts spending and government encroachment on private citizens. It would make more sense for those Democrat supporters to spend their time arguing why spending trillions of dollars we don't have for programs we don't want is a good thing, rather than attacking their opponents as illegitimate.

Fox to Fire Beck?

That's a HuffPo fantasy to be sure, but it's instructive of what the Left doesn't get about either Glenn Beck or Fox News.

When news show host Glenn Beck explicitly called Barack Obama a racist, it caused a media hailstorm and an advertising exodus from his show that reached as far as the U.K (Beck's show is broadcast on Murdoch's 'Sky News' channel). On a recent political talk show tour, President Obama sat down with five networks, none of which were Fox. The Murdoch-owned network was humiliatingly replaced with the Spanish language channel Univison. In another spat, the White House press secretary publicly criticized the network for not airing Obama's health care speech, a move it would never have considered with any other network.

While Glenn Beck is not the lone voice of dissent within Fox News (O'Reilly, Hannity and Malkin are similarly offensive), he does epitomize what is wrong with the network, and just how out of sync it is with the mainstream. His continued assault on the President which consists of a remarkable slew of accusations and innuendo (Obama is a socialist/communist/Nazi/racist), does not reflect well on the network, regardless of how right wing it is.

Teh One's snubbing of Fox News says far more about him than it does about either Rupert Murdoch or Fox News itself. Liberals hated Fox News long before Beck moved to that network and will hate it long after Beck has fizzled out. Why? Because Fox News has dared to offer news and perspective that is not "the mainstream," which is to say, isn't liberal.

Most Americans have argued for 40 years that news organizations are too liberal, but it's only been in the last 15 or so that those same viewers have had an alternative to the liberal bullshit of the MSM. That alternative is Fox News, and despite the hopes and prayers of HuffPo writers, it's not about to tank any time soon.

Both Beck and Fox News have managed to scoop "the mainstream" multiple times, the only sort of "snubbing" that actually matters. And as HopeNChange continues to fumble, flub, and flip-flop, Fox News will continue to chronicle it. Will Murdoch fire Beck? I have no idea but there's no reason to think so at this point. His ratings are fine and he's no more unreasonable than Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow. When you see MSNBC dropping those clowns, maybe Beck should moderate.

Radicals in the Obama Administration: Vindication for Glenn Beck?

Glenn Beck has been vilified for calling President Barack Obama a racist with a "deep-seated antipathy for white people." In fact, Eric Boehlert practically had a coronary because Fox News hasn't canned Beck for the statement.

In Boehlert's view, the fact that Truther Van Jones, who is leading the group bent on crushing Beck--and also is "Green Czar" for the Obama administration--has managed to get many advertisers to forego commercials on Beck's highly rated program means that Fox News should either fire Beck or make him apologize.

At Fox News, that smear has been flushed down the memory hole, and all that's left to do is play victim...

But here's what I don't get: Why doesn't Beck go on TV every day and simply defend his "racist" claim? Why doesn't Beck stand up for the racist remark and stake his reputation on it? Because right now, the pathetic, squishy approach he's taking where he limply lashes back while pretending the ad boycott sprang from some mysterious place -- where Beck plays the victim and pretends he never made the "racist" smear -- is just too lame for words.

The host has never apologized, so it seems logical that he stands behind the claim. (And that's what he claimed one month ago.) And if he stands behind it, why doesn't he set aside a few minutes on each program to detail how Obama is a racist? Why doesn't he educate his viewers.

In fact, just after the controversy exploded, Beck took time on his highly rated radio show to explain why he said President Obama was a racist:

and here:

It's hard to argue that Beck didn't explain himself. But more to the point, Beck has moved on to doing a little journalism, you know, what the MSM is supposed to do, and discovering who Van Jones actually is. Rumor has it that Obama may toss Jones under the bus, but one has to ask if the fact that Obama picked Jones is proof of Beck's charges?