How was your week? Glenn Beck’s was pretty good, thanks. On Saturday he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and faced a crowd conservatively estimated at one million people (but liberally estimated at 87,000). “Something that is beyond man is happening,” Beck said. “America today begins to turn back to God.”
Two days later, Beck launched an Internet news website, The Blaze. (“The flame of freedom is dwindling,” he told a different crowd last week. “If you don’t want it to go out on our watch, then you must stand in the blaze. The fire of truth that does not burn those who stand in it, but consumes everything that is not.”) As I write this, The Blaze’s front page has three stories about the “Ground Zero” mosque, one about the “ballooning welfare state,” four about Glenn Beck and three about how Al Sharpton’s simultaneous Washington rally wasn’t as good as Glenn Beck’s.
Also on Monday, a Gallup poll showed the largest Republican lead over congressional Democrats that Gallup has ever measured.
What you will make of these events will, in a profound way, depend. Christopher Hitchens, sometime advocate on behalf of Republican presidents, was baffled. “What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated?” he wrote. “Who wakes up believing that there is no appreciation for our veterans and our armed forces, and that without a noisy speech from Sarah Palin, their sacrifice would be scorned?”
Hitchens’s answer was that what it takes is “white self-pity.” Whatever it is, there seems to be a lot of it going around. That crowd in front of Beck was big, and people who think like the Fox News host are contributing many of the foot soldiers for the Republican wave that seems set to push back hard against Barack Obama’s foundering presidency in November’s mid-term elections.
I’m not sure my own opinions about Beck are as important as the simple observation that so many other people have such strong feelings about him. And opinions about Beck, like opinions about so much else in public life today, are written in acid and invective.
[More]
Notes:
Paul has written an interesting column today. I do not agree with his thinking because there is a lot he has left out but at least he IS thinking unlike some I could name and that’s a start.
Right?
Reading the comments on Wells’ article, one can sure see that there is a political divide in Canada. The “left” are about to fall off a cliff and want to drag as many with them as they can.
There is something satisfying about being “right on the Right” and I’m left handed!!
I get so frustrated reading the “lefts” cry of angry (MEAN) conservatives. If you don’t agree with them, they try to call you names or shut you down.
He can say 87,000 people and continue the lie, but there were many thousands there. And when he showed pics of other crowds of previous events, with the numbers, and superimposed them on his crowds he could put three or four pics of the other crowds and still not cover all of his. Plus, there were several thousand listening and following the live feed.
And in comparison, his crowd left the mall clean and spotless, unlike the mess left after the inauguration crowd.
Well we at least know now that Paul Wells considers himself as one of the”urban elites”.
To go back to the days when Lord Black was the publisher of the NP it was him and his journalists that did the Reform movement in. I have not bought an edition since that time!
Re: #4 — “I have not bought an edition since that time!”
Then you have missed a lot. I’m not surprised because you are not alone.
That’s clear from watching the CBC, CTV, the Globe, the Star and many, many others.
You only have half the picture and that’s not your fault. It is the media’s fault but efforts are ongoing to fix that minor problem as “Fox North” continues it’s war with the CRTC. I expect them to come online in the Canadian media (TV) in the new year and if I must pay for it I will.
After all, I pay for Fox News now and watch it everyday. Why would I not pay for “Fox North”?
You can bet “your sweet bippy” that when it does become available I will be one of the first to send viewers right where they need to go to watch it.
I need not point out that if you think Beck and Palin draw crowds you have no idea.
The news organizations mentioned can bend over and kiss their ass goodbye.
“You can take that to the bank.”
At Macleans, the CPC is called the Stupid People’s Party,
Coyne wrote about it and the the Macleans pack agree.
When that is the mentality at Macleans, the premise of all things Coye/Wells/Wherry,
why would one read their thinnly disquised anti-conservative/Harper garbage….
Bravo Jack ! I know that we really can take every word you wrote to the bank; ‘Good as Gold’.