Glenn Beck
Fox News
Dear Mr. Beck,
Your fantasy #1 is that, “We (meaning your rightwing crowd of nuts) made the civil rights movement and we can take it back.” Welcome to the real world, Glenn! May I call you Glenn? Your 1960 counterparts were in fact the main opposition to Dr. King, SNCC and the Freedom Movement.
Mr. Beck, I suspect that you know better. You’re telling a huge lie, because your willfully ignorant, know-nothing, sheep-like followers might not believe a lesser lie. You fancy yourself a historian. Have you ever heard of Massive Resistance? What exactly do you think your God Father, (Governor George Corley Wallace of Alabama - the cradle of the confederacy) was resisting? He was resisting the Civil Rights Movement? Yes?
If you are such a smart historian, standing ready to assume Martin Luther King’s mantel of civil rights leadership, tell me about the famous Southern Strategy of your hero, President Ronald Reagan. Why do you think the Solid South switched overnight from Democrat to Republican? Was it because Republicans, like their best president, Lincoln, supported freedom for black people? No, Glenn, it was because Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi, where the three civil rights organizers were murdered during Freedom Summer, 1964. Candidate Reagon famously talked about “states rights,” code for allowing the South to maintain segregation by all means necessary.
This was a wink, wink, and meaningful signal to segregationists. Republicans realized they no longer had to shout “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” like their teachers, George Wallace and Ross Barnet, not to mention Bull Connor and killers like Byron De Lay Beckwith and James Earl Ray.
The Southern Strategy worked, Glenn, because your ideological brothers, whom you claim were “making the civil rights movement,” convinced white southerners that Republicans would be “reliable” on civil rights. Your Tea Party, and your unmitigated hubris in standing in the footprints of Dr. King will not work. I knew and worked with Dr. King. You, Mr. Beck, are no Martin Luther King.
Your big lie is designed to convince white working people, north and south, that they are better off shelving their economic interest in exchange for Republican support for a conservative social agenda, like opposition to affirmative action and freedom of choice.
Glenn, as a thirty-million dollar per year big shot TV personality, isn’t your real allegiance to the wealthy two percent in our country who are paid $300,000 a year or more? You yourself must be making over ten times that amount.
Why don’t you fess up and come clean with your followers that you are leading them down the garden path? What a pretty way to state that you want to keep them ignorant and poor.
So, Mr. Beck, your fantasy that you can become the civil rights leader without ever having supported civil rights, or doing anything at all to secure those rights, is a personal affront not only to me, but also to hundreds of thousands who bled and suffered to make the movement a success over the last four hundred years in this country.
Talk about sensitivity concerning the building of a mosque in lower Manhattan. Where is your sensitivity when you claim something that in no way belongs to you? This is personal with me because I know, as a white male southerner, that it is my responsibility to oppose racism, sexism and religious persecution in all its forms.
To this end, I was arrested over 18 times in seven states standing up for justice and human rights. I am careful not to claim any credit for the success of the freedom movement because I know it was lead by women and men of color all over this country, primarily in the South. The people in the communities and martyred leaders, both men and women, were the ones who made the civil rights movement, not me and certainly not you and your political ilk.
Finally, Big Shot Beck, are you aware of how ridiculous you looked strutting up and down on that historical stage? Will your silver tongue be able to explain to your followers your second big fantasy?
For the life of me I don’t know why the Democrats are not talking twenty-four hours a day about your biggest fantasy – that the way to help General Petraeus win the hearts and minds of the Afghans is to bash Muslims for trying to build a church near Wall Street? Beck, does this actually help win the war? No. Frank Rich laid it out clearly in his New York Times opinion piece, so that even Democrats could understand.
Let me get this straight. You and your millions are the last American holdouts supporting the war in Afghanistan (other than our Muslim President, Obama), and yet you are the same megalomaniacs declaring world war on Islam? You don’t want to fight the small numbers of fringe Muslims, the tiny minority embracing terrorism. You really think it is better to hate and war against ALL Muslims all over the world- even those in Texas and Murfreesboro, Tennessee?
As Imus used to say, and Joe Scarborough is now saying, - Glenn Beck, ARE YOU NUTS?
Sincerely,
Bob Zellner
Fox News
Dear Mr. Beck,
Your fantasy #1 is that, “We (meaning your rightwing crowd of nuts) made the civil rights movement and we can take it back.” Welcome to the real world, Glenn! May I call you Glenn? Your 1960 counterparts were in fact the main opposition to Dr. King, SNCC and the Freedom Movement.
Mr. Beck, I suspect that you know better. You’re telling a huge lie, because your willfully ignorant, know-nothing, sheep-like followers might not believe a lesser lie. You fancy yourself a historian. Have you ever heard of Massive Resistance? What exactly do you think your God Father, (Governor George Corley Wallace of Alabama - the cradle of the confederacy) was resisting? He was resisting the Civil Rights Movement? Yes?
If you are such a smart historian, standing ready to assume Martin Luther King’s mantel of civil rights leadership, tell me about the famous Southern Strategy of your hero, President Ronald Reagan. Why do you think the Solid South switched overnight from Democrat to Republican? Was it because Republicans, like their best president, Lincoln, supported freedom for black people? No, Glenn, it was because Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi, where the three civil rights organizers were murdered during Freedom Summer, 1964. Candidate Reagon famously talked about “states rights,” code for allowing the South to maintain segregation by all means necessary.
This was a wink, wink, and meaningful signal to segregationists. Republicans realized they no longer had to shout “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” like their teachers, George Wallace and Ross Barnet, not to mention Bull Connor and killers like Byron De Lay Beckwith and James Earl Ray.
The Southern Strategy worked, Glenn, because your ideological brothers, whom you claim were “making the civil rights movement,” convinced white southerners that Republicans would be “reliable” on civil rights. Your Tea Party, and your unmitigated hubris in standing in the footprints of Dr. King will not work. I knew and worked with Dr. King. You, Mr. Beck, are no Martin Luther King.
Your big lie is designed to convince white working people, north and south, that they are better off shelving their economic interest in exchange for Republican support for a conservative social agenda, like opposition to affirmative action and freedom of choice.
Glenn, as a thirty-million dollar per year big shot TV personality, isn’t your real allegiance to the wealthy two percent in our country who are paid $300,000 a year or more? You yourself must be making over ten times that amount.
Why don’t you fess up and come clean with your followers that you are leading them down the garden path? What a pretty way to state that you want to keep them ignorant and poor.
So, Mr. Beck, your fantasy that you can become the civil rights leader without ever having supported civil rights, or doing anything at all to secure those rights, is a personal affront not only to me, but also to hundreds of thousands who bled and suffered to make the movement a success over the last four hundred years in this country.
Talk about sensitivity concerning the building of a mosque in lower Manhattan. Where is your sensitivity when you claim something that in no way belongs to you? This is personal with me because I know, as a white male southerner, that it is my responsibility to oppose racism, sexism and religious persecution in all its forms.
To this end, I was arrested over 18 times in seven states standing up for justice and human rights. I am careful not to claim any credit for the success of the freedom movement because I know it was lead by women and men of color all over this country, primarily in the South. The people in the communities and martyred leaders, both men and women, were the ones who made the civil rights movement, not me and certainly not you and your political ilk.
Finally, Big Shot Beck, are you aware of how ridiculous you looked strutting up and down on that historical stage? Will your silver tongue be able to explain to your followers your second big fantasy?
For the life of me I don’t know why the Democrats are not talking twenty-four hours a day about your biggest fantasy – that the way to help General Petraeus win the hearts and minds of the Afghans is to bash Muslims for trying to build a church near Wall Street? Beck, does this actually help win the war? No. Frank Rich laid it out clearly in his New York Times opinion piece, so that even Democrats could understand.
Let me get this straight. You and your millions are the last American holdouts supporting the war in Afghanistan (other than our Muslim President, Obama), and yet you are the same megalomaniacs declaring world war on Islam? You don’t want to fight the small numbers of fringe Muslims, the tiny minority embracing terrorism. You really think it is better to hate and war against ALL Muslims all over the world- even those in Texas and Murfreesboro, Tennessee?
As Imus used to say, and Joe Scarborough is now saying, - Glenn Beck, ARE YOU NUTS?
Sincerely,
Bob Zellner
