A FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) Action Alert was in my Inbox yesterday morning, recounting the egregious, outrageous, insulting, demeaning racism and xenophobia promulgated on CNN's Headline News programs by the fecal, vulgar spewings of (former Philadelphia) 'personality' Glenn Beck.
Beck was the person, you'll recall, who braced Keith Ellison (D.,Mn), the first Muslim ever elected to Congress, on his program and demanded him to PROVE he was a patriotic American: "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."
Mr. Ellison demonstrated better than any number of pages in the Qu'ran could that Islam is a religion of peace when he didn't succumb to the temptation to mash the bullet-headed, baby-faced, chubby fascist Beck's face into the furniture (of course, Beck was in NYC, and Ellison was in Minneapolis, which probably made Ellison's decision easier; and made Beck's insulting behavior possible in the first place, given the cowardice he typically displays). According to the FAIR press release castigating Beck for his Nazi tendencies, "The New York Times (12/4/06), profiling new CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck, called him "brash" and "opinionated," with an "unfiltered approach." The conservative talk-radio host-turned-cable news announcer, the paper reported, "take[s] credit for saying what others are feeling but are afraid to say."
Having lived in south Louisiana, I recognize this "saying things others are feeling but are afraid to say" as code. It was something said a lot by his admirers of David Duke, the notorious racist and white supremacist who rode the raygun revolution in the South into the pulic consciousness as among the most odious of demagogues. The FAIR piece continues: "But as press critic Eric Alterman pointed out (Altercation, 12/4/06), as offensive as that question (to Ellison) is, it doesn't begin to suggest the poisonousness of Beck's rhetoric about Muslims." The FAIR article linked under the Headline, above, continues the account of Beck's transgressions. Read it.
I am not one who would ever promote prior restraint upon the speech of public figures in a public forum. But I do believe that speech acts (cf., Austin, Searle, et alia) should carry the same consequences as any other acts.
So I am urging that, after reading the remainder of the FAIR article, anyone meeting Mr Beck on the street should hit him squarely in the nose with any convenient, large, durable object. (Aside: The foto represents one of the reasons why I regard Al Franken as a fucking, gutless putz.)
No comments:
Post a Comment