Glenn Beck Calls for Violence Against Elderly Professor and Makes Himself The Victim

Glenn Beck Calls for Violence Against Elderly Professor and Makes Himself The Victim

Instead of showing any decency, Glenn Beck, under fire for his relentless attacks on a 78 year-old professor, pulled a Palin. Ignoring his inflammatory witch hunt against Professor Frances Fox Piven, he made himself the victim. Oh, and while he was at it? He likened Piven to an assassin about to kill him.

On his radio show Monday (1/24/11), Beck discussed the New York Times article about his attacks on Piven. “If I didn’t say (she’s an enemy of the constitution) I should have,” Beck sneered. He and his co-host mocked the article and laughed about the quote, “Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response.” That came from a letter from the Center for Constitutional Rights to Roger Ailes asking him to show some decency at long last and put a stop to Beck’s attacks (which Fox News refused to do).

Beck jeered, “It’s (CCR) a liberal non-profit group – now can we look into just to see if there’s any Soros money?” He laughed contemptuously.

Then Beck played his victim-of-violence card. “My so-called threat was saying she’s making violent threats. I’ve never seen this before. You know what this is? This is someone calling 911 and saying, ‘There’s a guy who’s outside of my door and he’s saying he’s gonna kill me,’ and then the guy who’s outside of the door calls 911 and says, …’Did he just call the police?’ ‘Yes, he did, Sir, and we’re on our way.’ ‘I’d like to lodge a complaint. He is putting me in danger because you guys could come here and shoot me or hurt me at the door.’ Excuse me?!?”

“And then the police arrest the guy inside the house,” Beck’s co-host said.

“Yes!” Beck exclaimed with incredulity. “…This is the most incredible thing. This all stems from me saying, ‘Left or right… if she’s calling for violent riots, which she is… at 78 years old, she is still calling for violence.”

Well, not quite. Beck seems to have been referring to Piven’s recent piece in The Nation in which she said, “An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.” She’s talking about civil disobedience, yes, calling for violence? I don’t see it.

But even if she were, if Beck were really concerned about incitement to violence, he would certainly not characterize Piven as someone about to assassinate him - which is a far cry from anything she has said. If he had any decency, he’d express some concern for the death threats Piven has been receiving (some right on his own website) and dial back his criticisms to something less inflammatory.

But that, it seems, is just asking too much from Beck.

Thanks to Ellen at Newshounds for the analysis. Beck's incoherent and dishonest rants have become standard fair on the rabid Right. The punch lines is always turned the argument inside out and portraying themselves as the victims of the dishonest and dishonorable attacks they started. It was conservatives who lied us into a $3 trillion dollar war and failed to police Wall St - a major cause of the worse economic crash since 1929.