Appearing on the O’Reilly Factor (3/25/10) to discuss being named by Joy Behar as one of the media figures the View panelist (3/22/10) says are inspiring hate among Tea Party activists (“There is a difference between free speech and hate speech, and we’ve been listening to it from Beck and Limbaugh now. And these people are all juiced up by these two. That’s what’s happening”), Glenn Beck attempted to demonstrate his tolerance for his political foes in the following exchange:
BECK: Have you or I ever said Michael Moore shouldn’t be allowed to make a movie?
O’REILLY: No.
BECK: Michael Moore shouldn’t be allowed to speak? Michael Moore shouldn’t have his own TV show? Never.
O’REILLY: Never. Never.
BECK: Never. Because we believe in freedom of speech. George Washington called it the battlefield of ideas.
O’REILLY: Right.
While it may be true to say that Beck has never expressed a wish to see Michael Moore censored, precisely, he has expressed a desire to kill Moore with his bare hands:
I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out–is this wrong?
Reasonable people might see this as a desire for an extreme form of censorship–and hateful to boot.
UPDATE: O’Reilly too has fantasized about assaulting Moore–in a non-censorious way, of course. See FAIR Blog, 10/6/09.
I blame their parents for their utter lack of conscience and sense of decency towards those who think or believe differently than they do. I imagine their parents have the same utter lack of decency and honor. How pathetic that Fox gives these hate-mongers jobs, much less high paying jobs. I don’t want to think about what this says about our culture. We are surely damned if these people are cultural icons.
Its an embarassment to this country that these two fools (beck and orally) and the rest of that ilk are even taken seriously in the news genre. If they fit then so should the guy that does DNA tests for his rediculous show and any of the other so-called reality shows. Is it my imagination or does ‘right’ thinking cause brain shrinkage?
News reporters and politicians should be required to pass sanity tests. Seems like there is an inordinate number of psychos drawn to these professions.
These people are dangerous. Please check out the culture and arrests/non arrests of demonstrators in Weimar Republic during the lead up to NAZI rule. We are not there yet but this threat must be taken seriously.
I grew up in an ultra-conservative family. They were racist, sexist, religious fundamentalists, us-and-them and down-right mean-spirited. Beck and O’Reilly are perfect examples of what still exists in the conservative/Republican corner. // Jean Clelland-Morin
Bill & Jean, I ran into a good book, UNMASKING ADMINISTRATIVE EVIL, by G. Adams & D. Balfour. Those that profit from lies, don’t want to see the truth. Michael Moore’s videos help expose truth & lies.
Michael Moore seems a much more caring, decent kind of human being than either of the 3 “conseratives” mentioned.
I know some poor, misguided people who actually think that Lush Rimjob and his ilk are giving some kind of information when they speak. It would be bad enough if they actually lived the way they tell us that we should be living. But of course, they practice do as I say, not as I do politics. Hate is NOT news.
It’s all about profits period. Corporations like Fox News, don’t give a rats butt about accuracy, ojectivity, fairness, or fact checking. Ditto for CNN and MSNBC and all the realty shows. Bullshit and hate are VERY profitable and profit comes before ANYTHING else in the great USA. Beck, Limbaugh, and O’Reily should be covered with honey and steaked out over ant hills in the sun. (this would not be torture, just ENHANCED punishment for inciting civil unrest). They will go away only when they stop bringing in the big bucks and that will only happen when Americans have had their fill of hate and bullshit……and that could some time yet, because one man’s bullshit in another mans truth.
In the case of these birds, just follow the money. Ruperrt Murdick pays millions to get people who are the worst; the meanest dumbest and most hateful. Folks get so angry watching them they tune in for more. Apparently we like feeling this angry. Trouble is this has grave degenerative social consequences – up to and including bloody murder. They know this. Beck doesn’t care, by his own admission. He’s an entertainer. Talk radio has been at this for years. Clear Broadcasting and Murdoch’s Newscorps make business model’s on hate speech becauze they can and it works. Sue Murdoch, that sleazy decayed and completely corrupt sleezzzzeball.
“What is the ground for the general protest uttered on these pages? It is the conviction that the United States, are in grave danger of ceasing to be what they claim to be: the home of liberty, where justice is defended with free speech, where truth is accessable to everybody, where everybody is alike responsible, enlightened and concerned, and where responsibility is sustained by a deep foundation of ethics. In actual fact it would seem this country has become frankly a warfare state built on affluence, a poweer structure in which the interests of big business, the obsessions of the military, and the fobias of political extremists both dominate and dictate our national policy. It also seems that the people of the country are by and large reduced to passivity, confusion, resentment, frustration, thoughtlessness and ignorance, so they blindly follow any line that is unraveled for them by the mass media.” -Thomas Merton in 1962.
If there is a problem here, the solution might be to require all news agencies and broadcast media to require testing of their employees for the presence of drugs and alcohol, and for the effects of drug and alcohol abuse when such a process becomes feasible.
Leo Toribio
Pittsburgh, PA
Rupert Murdoch did not become an American citizen until 1985, eight years after he began buying-up American news media. He’s not really an American, just an opportunist who doesn’t give a damn about us. So why would anyone think that Murdoch would care about the health of our country?
i.e. political and social health.
Fox News- Tabloids of the twenty first century. I have not heard one unbiased quip from them in years.