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Glenn Beck’s ‘I Have a Dream Speech’
This is the ‘I have a Dream Speech’ that Glenn Beck would give at the Lincoln Memorial if he were being completely honest.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from tax increases or increased regulation of your speculative financial instruments. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of government takeover and staggered by the winds of police laxness toward Mexicans and minority crime. You have been the veterans of creative suffering, under our current strange mixture of fascism, communism and Islam (Islamo-commie-fascism as I call it). Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering cannot be cured by a government take-over of health care.
Go back to the Hamptons, go back to Grosse Point, go back to Alaska, go back to Utah, go back to Idaho, go back to the suburbs and exurbs of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation of having an African-American president can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that some men are only worth 3/5s of others.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down and recognize that our president doesn’t like white guys.
I have a dream that one day even the borough of Manhattan, a borough sweltering with the heat of socialism, sweltering with the heat of Islamic fascism, will be transformed into a mosque-free oasis of freedom for people just like me.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their gold portfolios.
I have a dream today. . .
satire
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39 Comments so far
Show AllI didn't know that Juan Cole could bring teh funny. Amusing...
Amen/ or Awoman!
Most estimates of the crowd of 200,000 to 300,000 at the MLK Dream speech in 1963 say it was 20 to 25% white. That means between 40,000 and 75,000 white people attended King's speech at the Lincoln Memorial that day. How many black people were there in Beck's rally? 20 to 25? I doubt that many. But Beck is a recovering Roman Catholic now Latter Day Saint with no education, ADHD and growing signs of a pernicious bipolar disorder. Apparently though he now thinks that religion is his ticket. As long as the religion doesn't concern itself with social justice--and what religion would that be? (I read somewhere that Beck said God dropped a cement bag on his head--would that it were true.) Stay tuned, it is only a matter of time before he pulls a Dr. Laura on Fox and they cart him off--faux tears flowing, history lessons waving, clutching a crucifix.
The question is why doesn't Brian Williams or Katie Couric or Christiane Amanpour or some real journalist call him out?
"The question is why doesn't Brian Williams or Katie Couric or Christiane Amanpour or some real journalist call him out?"
Why? Because they are actors in the same Kabuki show. None of them are going to question too deeply anything about the system that rewards them so well financially.
They all wear a self imposed golden muzzle.
Exactly.
You are right and the only thing left is to be right.
"The question is why doesn't Brian Williams or Katie Couric or Christiane Amanpour or some real journalist call him out?"
Because he's one of them. His position, like these three including the likes of Limbaugh, Maddow, and the rest, is to produce and develop an audience & fan base. Its about the money, that's all. Nothing will be changed by Glenn Beck. Not our warmongering foreign policy or the ripping-off of the American people because both parties are the same. Jon Stewart, Glenn Beck. Both types exist only to piss off the others audience and keep them returning for more. Same Kool Aide–different flavor. You could say its just all for laughs. The murder continues regardless of what bunch of these ass-wipes are holding office.
By and large, Beck is harmless, so chill.
Btw, WTF credibility does these three MSM nitwits–Williams, Couric or Amanpour–have anyway? (OK, I'll give you Amanpour, but only by a hair.)
I don't think Beck is harmless. He and Palin are inciting whackos to 'lock and load' and get that n------ out of 'our Whitehouse'! IMHO
This is correct - Beck is extremely dangerous, influencing something like 3 million people a day.
To say that both parties are the same, as asserted once again by some poster above, is absurd.
Both are paid by the same pay group, chicken livers and chicken hearts are different, but they come from the chicken and served as a meal.
Bring America Back !!!!
**Juan Cole mocks Glen Beck with his satirical version of the MLK dream speech.
**Glen Beck mocks our common sense trying to idolize and honor our beloved troops in military service, where no doubt over half our troop strength is black.
**They pull off these tea party rallys because they can,
and because they string out c-rated journalism like Coles.
Glenn Beck’s dream is to have a bigger audience so that his paycheck will be bigger. Beck is a media whore trying to break into the business of being a political whore. He’s a great Capitalist but a bad American.
Hoa binh
Since,
You are right on the money! We live in a time of carefully measured and targeted demographics...Every talking head is aware of the location of her/his piece of the American pie. These gals/guys make a lot of money presenting a specific world view (not necessarily their own) to a specific audience who share that particular world view...It doesn't matter if the particular view is from the so called right or the so called left..They are simply actors who profit from the respective roles they play...Everything they do, think, and say, is carefully scripted to reflect the views of their targeted demographic
I suspect O'Reilly could have easily acted in the role currently played by Olbermann and vice versa.......I believe Beck could have done the same.....
Olbermann = $8'000,0000 plus a year....
O'Reilly = $10,000,000 plus a year
When it comes to playing the game of what passes for media in this country I certainly would not call Beck stupid...he is laughing all the way to the bank....It is all about the money....It is a very sick game....
Check out Beck's association with a company that sells gold. (Goldline International) He frightens people into buying gold to 'protect' themselves for when the dollar crashes.
Hoa binh
Satire or not the 3/5 reference is an indication of ignorance on the part of a supposed scholar. As the compromise was being hammered out and the southern states deeemed slaves property the northern state negotiators said something along the lines of "...fine we'll count foundries, mills etc as property too to increase our basis for representation..." I'd offer to Cole that he study less of the Middle East and study closer to home. Study of someone like Frederick Douglass may get the sand out of his eyes.
You are nit picking. The point you mentioned has nothing to do with the objective of the article. It is very peripheral and unimportant.
The article has no point other than childish mockery. I guarantee that quotes from this tripe have already been posted on the web by bloggers who attribute them to Beck himself. I suggest that Beck probably has the cojones to make whatever speech he wants. Cole only wishes Beck had made this one, to confirm his own bias.
Yep! you got that right.
Dear Clarence:
I'm sure that Juan Cole knows exactly WHAT the 3/5 value refers to and that's why he used it . Mr. COLE wrote the speech AS IF Beck had written it. I think Mr. Cole was right on the money with that one, because I'm sure that Beck really does believe that 3/5 value of the black male as a voting body count; although, in reality, Beck would make it 1/100th value.
Why would an esteemed scholar resort to what is correctly called childish mockery by a post below? I have a hunch he needs to please some superior or has to please and thereby ensure some entity's funding. I surmise the 1/100th ratio you use is a projection of how you value Beck's life.
Everyone just like you, read into thoughts the way they want, to their satisfaction; you want the dictatorship of demanding, they think like you?
Yes, the 'childish mockery' as practiced by such hacks as Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift. Some call it 'satire' or 'parody' and some others just have no taste for either, especially conservatives.
I'm a great fan of Swift and Twain, not to mention Heller, Chaucer, Aesop, Poe, Dickens, Will Rogers and Dr. Seuss to name a few. (I could add at least 20 more.) Cole is conspicuously absent from the lists of competent satirists. It's not that Cole isn't engaging in satire, it's just that he's not any good at it. It takes more than bitter disagreement to make good satire. It takes enlightement and intelligence.
That's great, waltdimm, I enjoy those writers as well. I don't think you could fairly say, after reading his columns, that Juan Cole lacks in either intelligence or enlightenment, so it just comes down to taste. I liked Cole's satirical piece; you didn't. However, that doesn't change my point that conservatives often have a hard time with satire and parody -- some believe Stephen Colbert is a 'for real' conservative despite his sly Comedy Central show, and his devastating speech lampooning Bush right-wingers at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006 with his incisive line: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Surprisingly, the same people who idolize Ronald Reagan's presidency, worship Sarah Palin's perspicacity, believe Newt Gingrich is an accurate historian, and think that Glenn Beck knows what he's talking about, just don't 'get it' when it comes to certain forms of humor.
RSJ,
Much is to said for your points. I concede that Mr. Cole may indeed be intelligent and enlightened, I just found no evidence for it in this particular work...
You might be surprised though to know that many conservatives don't "idolize Ronald Reagan's presidency, worship Sarah Palin's perspicacity, believe Newt Gingrich is an accurate historian, and think that Glenn Beck knows what he's talking about". Many actually observe, analyse, read, study, think, and still disagree with progressives, liberals, socialists, communists and other left-minded folks.
Broad-brush criticism is a gereralization, and to quote a well-known satirist -- "All generalizations are false...Including this one."
I'll give you that, waltdimm, perhaps I should have said 'Republican conservatives' or 'neoconservatives.' I actually have some intelligent friends who lean toward the older, more thoughtful and principled conservatism of William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater; I may not agree with them, but at least they can present their case without screaming, blustering, peddling a unique interpretation of the Bible, or resorting to regurgitated talking points. These conservatives have no use for Palin, Gingrich, Beck, Fox News or the rest of the wrecking crew, although they do have a certain nostalgia for Reagan, without idolizing him. We agree on respecting the constitutional barriers concerning the place of religion in a secular government; that citizens ahould be free of government intrusion in matters of drug use or sexual practices; and believe endowing faceless corporate entities with the rights of a human individual is ridiculous. They also have a good knowledge of history that was not revised by one of Karl Rove's legions or a Christopublican Elmer Gantry. Of course, while they may be 'conservative' in certain areas of their thinking, they left the Republican Party long ago. Or, as they might say, the Republican Party left them. And, BTW, they 'get it' when it comes to satire and parody, even the kind they don't particularly appreciate.
Mr Beck raises sophism to new lows.
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin sing the gospel of greed:
"Left Behind by Jesus"
Jesus loves the rich, you know
Ask them, they will tell you so
Help the poor? Why that's a crime!
Best to work them overtime
Off the books, though, lest they say
That you owe them extra pay
Jesus loves those tax cuts, too
Just for some, though, not for you
See a poor kid that's a clerk?
Send him to Iraq to work
Jesus loves the army, see?
Just the place for you and me
Not the rich, though, they don't serve
What a thought! What perfect nerve!
If you think this life's a pain
Wait till Jesus comes again
Then on Armageddon Day
He will take the rich away
Sure, you thought that you'd go, too,
Not that you’d get one last screw
Just like your retirement
That the rich already spent
Jesus with the winners goes
Losers, though, just get the hose
What on earth would make you think
That your lord's shit doesn't stink?
After all he left you here
With the rich, so never fear
They'll upon your poor life piss
In the next life and in this
Jesus loves the rich, so there!
Don't complain it isn't fair
Jesus said to help themselves
Then he'd help restock their shelves
So they did and he did, too
What has this to do with you?
Jesus loves the rich just fine
Why'd you think he pours their wine?
Jesus votes Republican
Ask them: they'll say "He's the One!"
Still a few loose coins around
That the rich have not yet found
Gotta go now, never mind
If you end up left behind
Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006
Republicans it's plain to see
Piss Michael off quite thoroughly
The Democrats he mentions not
Thinketh he they're really hot?
They too claim rights to Jesus favor
And the smell of cash do savor
So chuck these creeps and start off clean
Say no to both, and yes to Green
I voted for Ralph Nader twice -- once when he ran for president at the head of the Green Party ticket. I do not regret the votes, given the alternatives presented by the Democratic and Republican Party tickets at the time. None of this, however, deflects from what long-time Republican Party analyst Kevin Phillips calls Republicans now: namely, "the first religious political party in America's history." See, American Theology: the perils and politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st century.
As for legitimate criticism of the (chicken) "hawk" Democrats and their craven continuation of Deputy Dubya's debacles in the Middle East:
"Changing Commanders-in-Brief"
The last guy-in-charge said, “Go shopping.”
This war, he said, wouldn’t last long;
Our victims, he swore, would repay us
For plundering them for a song.
In six months, at most, we’d be winners;
The enemy vanquished and fled;
And then, with our mission accomplished,
We’d leave them to count up their dead.
Our generals trained for the last war,
Their learning-curve zero or less.
In six years they’ll figure out something;
Just what, will be anyone’s guess.
They had them a “surge” in their payments
To “enemies” placed on the dole
So they wouldn’t shoot us so often
Because of their land that we stole.
The new guy took over, saluting,
A race that had already run
Its course, ‘cause the bungler before him
Had exploited all of the fun.
The new guy got rolled up like sushi.
He blew his chance early to leave.
Now forty-one dead just this last month
What next has he got up his sleeve?
It sounded so good while campaigning:
One little “good” war for one bad;
Except that the Afghans hate bombings
As much as Vietnamese had.
Our generals, though, won’t admit it:
They’ve taken eight years to do what?
Yet somehow they think we’ll applaud them
For not knowing doodley-squat.
They say they need more stuff and faster
Yet won’t explain what they would do
Except to extend their disaster
By breeding more pooches to screw.
In common-sense language, the answer
Replies to their “more, more, more” rant:
“You would have, of course, if you could have;
You didn’t, therefore, so you can’t.”
The new guy Obama, like Dubya,
Thinks playing Commander-in-Brief
Means mission-creep “surge” and saluting
The Pentagram treasury thief.
“A trillion a year?” Oh, who’s counting?
“And all for what?” Don’t be a bore.
“And who will pay?” No one, we promise.
It’s what we call slush-funded “war.”
Obama won’t ask the right question,
To wit: “What on earth have we ‘won’?”
Like Pharaoh, he thinks he can dictate:
“So let it be written, then done.”
He cried: “Yes, we can!” while campaigning,
This slogan he sold and we bought.
In office, however, he’s changed things:
Himself. Now he says, “We cannot.”
Our Wealth Care rules out Single Payer
Our troops must remain on patrol.
The votes don’t exist in the Congress
That Democrats cannot control.
We gave him majorities, plenty,
Yet these he seems ready to blow.
Now Wealth Care and Quagmire have named him:
Commander of Old Status Quo.
Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2009
Whoever the Greens have running for President in 2012 had better get started. If President Obama has really -- and I mean not just rhetorically -- gotten America's military out of Iraq by then, he'll have a lot less to worry about on the Green flank. The Republicans just seem bat-shit nuts.
Without attempting to join
the seasoned poet's exalted ranks,
just let me say to Michael Murry the Green,
exuding lean rhyming verse from his
computer machine,
a simple and sincerely felt 'thanks!'
My head I hang low for implying
That Michael thought Demos high flying
He recognizes we see
Their du pli ci ty
And it's Greens that can save us from frying
--- Nice work Michael ---
A great poem!
Media Matters and the MSNBC website have revealed some stunners from our Fox News 'Non-Political' Messiah Glenn Beck's 'Gull on the Mall' rally and his acolytes.
First, Messiah Beck has claimed 240 preachers that showed up at his party, his 'Black Robe Regiment,' as he calls them, somehow represent the views of 180 million Americans! This must be the miracle Beck was promoting!
Here's the MM video:
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201008280018
And last night Beck enthused:
"This is the beginning of the great awakening of America ... We must give voice to what God says we must do … My message to you tonight is stand where He wants you to stand and trust in the Lord. If He tells you to do it, do it. If you can't figure it out, He will. Just do it."
-- Glenn Beck yesterday on his 'Restoring Honor' rally message, as quoted by NBC news services, Aug. 28, 2010.
Is Glenn Beck listening to God or Nike's advertising agency?
Then there are the comments left by some of his supporters at the MSNBC site. Did you know Martin Luther King Jr. had conservative views and was not a progressive? (Strange that he was condemned as a 'liberal' and 'communist' by conservatives of the '50s and '60s and no less than FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself, their former anti-commie hero who has been put back in the conservative closet due to his cross-dressing gayness.)
Yes, and the Beck Godly are getting rid of all of those nasty entitlement programs, too, presumably right after the 'blood on the streets' clears from next November's elections where they will 'take our country back.' This should be popular with all of those Marxist-Leninist retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. (Expect a run on bootstraps in the stores.) The Good Christian God who speaks to Beck dismisses charity, good will and altruism as aberrations that have been destroying our country and He demands a return to selfish 'personal responsibility' where everyone has a job and takes care of their own because, as we all know, anyone who really wants a good-paying job can find one -- especially those deadweight 80- and 90-year-olds.
Finally, the reason we're in such desperate economic straits is due to the 'progressive' Republicans and Democrats who run our government! (Progressive Republicans? Name three.) Just how far crazy-crap right do you have to be to write that?
Beck says it's "gone dark in America." Yes, Glenn - because you are blowing out all the candles.
do wetbacks have wet dreams?
Read about one Southern white candidate who is fighting the Tea Party while getting no help from the Tennessee Democratic Party.
See votejohnwolfe.com
Wolfe's opponent has hired Chip Saltsman, an R.N.C. insider who would have Michael Steele's job had he not sent out 168 copies of "Barack the Magic Negro" to Republican insiders as part of his effort to win their votes for the chairmanship.
Yup, they're the same people who fifty years ago called King a "Communist."
About ninety, ninety five percent of black people vote Democratic. Is this simply an endeavor on Beck's part to hone away some of that vote, and to get many more blacks to vote Republican? Blacks, it appears, know who is on their side. Even if Rangle is found guilty of something Harlem will probably vote him back in, that is if he wants to run again. Whites may sometimes occupy the hearts of some blacks (JFK, Clinton, others) but they don't tell them how to think, feel, or vote. Beck is attempting to bamboozle the entire country, and he may even believe whatever happens to be coming out of his mouth at the time. The wilder the better. But one would have to be an Elvira King in order to swallow his Christian/Beckian gospel whole. Unfortunately, there a lot of whites who take Beck's fantasies seriously. And even if there is nothing new about all that in American history it is nevertheless truly scary.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Chris Wallace's Fox McNews interview with Glenn Beck the day after his staged pablum was far more revealing than anything said at the event itself. You can find a link to the video of this interview on huffingtonpost.com
Beck publicly stated that he disagreed with Martin Luther King's economic message of uplift for the poor. He repeatedly tried to simplify MLK's message to limit it to "content of character" as being all that is sufficient for all Americans to be "given a shot" economically. This is equivalent to Newt Gingrich's early '90s GOPAC bloviation that all Americans "have the right to PURSUE happiness but not necessarily to achieve it." Newt didn't define what he meant by "happiness" and Beck doesn't define what he means by being "given a shot."
Beck's call for America to "return to honor" and other "traditional American values" is equivalent to the Newtzis' calls for a "return to family values." Different decade; same empty rhetoric.
For every adherent of Republicanism and Libertarianism I've ever encountered, economic happiness means affluence. For most liberal and progressive working-class folks they would be happy just to have the basic necessities for even a very frugal life without having to exhaust or ruin their body and mind to have them. The true Left understands the difference between needs and wants. Not so the capitalist right and far-right. They insist for themselves on economic and cultural dominance and that requires sufficient affluence not just to live luxuriously but to buy controlling political and media power.
Beck also said that he doesn't believe in any economics that is understood in terms of economic oppressors and economic victims--notwithstanding the fact that all of human history is replete with countless, exhaustively detailed examples of economic oppressors and their victims. This is a key part of the self-serving fairy-tale mythology that is Libertarianism--along with the fictitious "free market" (that has never existed from the time governments first began to levy taxes and control the issuing of money--thousands upon thousands of years ago).
Ask any right-winger or Libertarian about traditional liberal economics and they will go on about how you "can't give everything to everyone" even as they serenely ignore the obscene, god-like, uber-hedonistic "lifestyles" of the plutocrats who over-concentrate political power, industrially rape natural resources and exploit cheap labor on a global scale in order to hoard vast wealth and devastate our planet. They do this while they luxuriously ignore the chaos, outrageously cruel & needless human suffering and destruction they leave in their god-like wake. Of short, medium or long-term ramifications they could care less.
Many on the right simply do not believe that the poor, no matter how poverty stricken or blameless for their poverty, deserve an America that ensures that they have even the basic necessities to survive, let alone the things necessary to prosper enough to comfortably afford to rent a small apartment, let alone own a home. They have no valid religious or moral grounds for this. For every scripture in the Bible whose meaning they will twist to support things like slavery or indifference to poverty there are a hundreds more that refute that contrivance. Over 300 anti-poverty verses in the New Testament alone. Luke, Chapter 11, versus 1-13 is just one of them. You can look to Amos, Elisha, Isaiah and Jeremiah for others.
Most sinisterly, Beck used economically and politically coded "spiritual" language referring to "individual salvation" versus "collective salvation" to try to assert that Obama believes--as a tenet of black liberation theology--that "individual salvation is dependent on collective salvation."
First of all, there is an enormous difference between concept of spiritual salvation and the idea of worldly or material "salvation." Beck self-servingly conflates these ideas in his rhetoric in order to wield this language as a politicized, deliberately vague, all-purpose economic AND spiritual generality. A long oppressed group like black Americans might understand a third meaning for the language "collective salvation" in terms of freedom from broad racist cultural oppression of which economic repression is only a part.
That said, a case can still be made that physical "collective salvation" of a people from the cultural and economic device of slavery (in economic terms: forced free labor) is ALWAYS LINKED to broad economic repression based on race or religion (or other identity factors) by definition of slavery as an institution. In the Bible's Old Testament the ancient Israelites received "collective salvation" from slavery in Egypt. That physical salvation from slavery may be what enabled them to continue to survive as a people culturally united by their religion to this day in order to continue pursuing spiritual salvation, both individually and collectively.