Glenn Beck is positioning himself to be King of the Whiny Right – the master propagandist of conservative, white male victimhood. Everywhere and every day, right-wingers, conservative Christians, gun owners, businessmen, and especially white males are being oppressed, according to the narrative of the Whiny Right. Here’s a particularly galling example of this culture of white victimhood from the Glenn Beck show:
BECK: Why were they asking the race question, you said when, in 1790? … Right, they want to know, do you count as three-fifths? Do you count at all? So, you have to know how many slaves did you have? People find that offensive today because the idea was, if we’re going to count, we want to know how many are here for services etc. etc. and slaves would get less. Well that’s not right. One. One. ‘I’m not three-fifths, I’m one. Whites are not worth than me.’ Now reverse it, why are they asking this question today?
CO-HOST: Because minorities are worth more than whites.
BECK: Exactly right. So you will get more dollars if you are a minority. So you are worth more as a monitory. Well there is no difference. The reason you don’t answer the race question is because one, everyone counts as one. All men are created equal. If you were offended back in 1790 about slavery and that everyone should count the same, do not answer the race question. How dare you. How dare you. At least in 1790, they were doing it to slow the South down on slavery. To try to stop it as much as they can. Today they are asking the race question to try to increase slavery. Your dependence on the master in Washington. No way, don’t answer that question.
Here’s where we are in the victimhood of the right: a white male conservative of questionable intelligence, little education, and with only the skills of a sinister carnival barker is capable of making something like $18 million dollars in a year for his buffoonery, and yet is still willing to compare himself to the plantation slaves of the late eighteenth century.
I’m sure he would gladly trade places with today’s over-privileged minorities, right?
Whenever the nightmares start, and the cold sweats and nausea seem overwhelming (you know – whenever you imgaine Sarah Palin as President), just remember moments like these:
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care — admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada’s single-payer system.
“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic?”
These sorts of remarks should, hopefully, be reassuring; it seems she’s just too dumb to actually run a full presidential campagin. I honestly don’t think she’s smart enough to realize that admitting to sneaking into the alleged socialist hell-hole of Canada to get healthcare tends to undercut, rhetorically speaking, her demonization of single-payer systems. There’s no telling how many such missteps she could make between now and 2012 that would render her campaign absurd even to those who don’t already despise her.
I hope that helps with the nightmares and cold sweats.
H/T: D
I really hate what he just said.
Fish’s claim that everyone is now getting nostalgic for the good old days of George Bush may literally be the dumbest and most pointless thing I’ve ever read. It is difficult for me to imagine a universe in which the text on the other end of the above link could could be considered reasonable, thoughtful or productive. In a sane world, merely expressing these thoughts, much less writing them down in the NY Times, would be grounds for immediate execution.
I’m not sure which of these things is more annoying: the fact that what he says is so emphatically and demonstrably false or that a central pillar of evidence used to bolster his claim is a billboard in rural Minnesota.
We live in a world of almost unimaginable stupidity.
Swim off and die, Stanley.
Election day in Iraq was marred by a rise in violence, in which at least 38 people were killed in Baghdad alone. In what is hopefully good news for the people of Iraq, however, election turnout was higher than expected, and reports indicate that the insurgency is weakening.
