Despite his mea culpa, the heat of outrage against Glenn Beck for ruthlessly mocking President Obama’s daughter Malia has turned the rest of his body the same color as his neck: fire-engine red.
The ranks are also swelling with those who believe that Fox should be subjected to sanctions for enabling Beck to cross the demarcation line of good taste on a repeated basis. Beck has gotten increasingly distasteful, more flagrant and more vile as time has gone on in his mindless criticism of his philosophical opposites, particularly in his opposition to everything Obama.
I’m not alone. An “anti-Beck” group formed by Bary Pavlich on Facebook, seeks to pluck the right-wing on-air commentator from his national platform.
“Glenn Beck is a total douchebag who constantly spews BS theories and is largely responsible for the ignorance of many people in America. I’d like nothing more than to see him taken off air,” Pavlich said.
Beck should also be censored for his blatant hypocrisy alone. Beck violated his own rule against attacking any member of a political family for any reason. When former presidential candidate Sarah Palin was on his show, Beck gave an impassioned, over-the-top plea for all media to refrain from reporting on the travails of family members of political personalities:
“Leave my family, leave people’s families alone,” Beck said resolutely. “When it was Bill Clinton, you don’t go after Chelsea Clinton. You don’t talk about the Bush kids. Now the minute they get into politics, that’s a different story. You leave families alone.”
This last statement makes the actions of Beck, 46, against an 11-year-old girl like Malia Obama all the more inexplicable, inexcusable and indefensible. When Obama’s daughter made an inquiry into the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Beck pounced on the defenseless girl like the bloodthirsty jackal he is and, with animal lust, began ripping and tearing relentlessly.
Beck’s fiendish tirade was almost savage in nature and lasted for several minutes as he gleefully, ghoulishly stomped on an adorable schoolgirl. “That’s the level of their education, that they’re coming to — they’re coming to Daddy and saying, ‘Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?’”
That’s what makes the following apology ring hollow and is seemingly empty rhetoric aimed at blunting the sharp arrows of rage againt Beck. Like a kid who cowers after being outed for throwing a rock through a window, Beck cobbled together this apology to the media:
“In discussing how President Obama uses children to shield himself from criticism, I broke my own rule about leaving kids out of political debates. The children of public figure
s should be left on the sidelines. It was a stupid mistake and I apologize — and as a dad I should have known better,” he said in a statement.
Was this apology enough? Or should Beck be subjected to fines, suspension or termination? –terry shropshire
