Glenn Beck's Idiocy Has Real Consequences

2009-04-06

Glenn Beck's Idiocy Has Real Consequences

Image by The Rocketeer via Flickr

I was in a gun shop not too long ago looking to arm myself in preparation for the coming zombie apocalypse (better known as Easter). They didn't have what I was looking for, so I left empty-handed. Before doing so, however, I was treated to an earful by the guy helping me. When I commented that they didn't seem to have much of a selection, he quickly told me that their guns had been flying off the shelves since it first began to look like Obama might win the election. Not realizing what I was walking into, I stupidly asked him why he thought that was happening. He went on a rant that would have made Glenn Beck proud about how Obama was going to abolish the Second Amendment and make gun ownership a crime. He breathlessly told me that Mississippians were buying guns in record numbers while they still could. I left the store wondering whether racism had as much to do with this as fears about gun control.

Given that President Obama has shown absolutely no signs of pushing new gun control legislation, it seems odd that so many people would be convinced otherwise. Then I discovered that Glenn Beck, a Fox "News" blowhard who has made a career of sobbing like a certain Ohio Congressman with a ridiculous fake tan and a name that would make Beavis & Butthead giggle, had been pushing just such a load of crap. Americans with a tenuous grasp on reality who get take Fox punditry as news were being fooled.

Oh well, I told myself, at least gun sales would be good for the economy. And then a likely member of Beck's audience went berserk in Pittsburgh and killed three police officers. How many more of these events need to happen before we are at least willing to discuss the likely impact of right-wing hate in society?

H/T to Library Grape