The Glenn Beck Report

Glenn couldn’t let go of the tongue-lashing that Fox News got from Anita Dunn without a GOPER-style slimefest. Of course, if anyone says anything bad about him, there must be something WRONG WITH THEM. So he sent his minions out to see if there was anything they could find on MS Dunn. He told them to dig deep, drive their Lexus to the Nexis!

The minions came up with a video where MS Dunn is speaking to a group of high school students. In the speech, she states that she is an admirer of Mao Tse Tung and Mother Theresa. That’s it! That’s all the proof Glenn needs to PROVE WITHOUT A DOUBT that Anita Dunn is just another one of Obama’s socialists! She says it in the video, no kidding! She says she admires and turns to Mao… but… why? How did Anita Dunn become an admirer of Mao?

If you think you can find out from Glenn Beck, you’re wrong. He won’t show you where she takes the line of thought, he only plays the clip long enough to make it seem that all she does all day (when she’s not watching his show like a TV lizard) is read Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and who else? Glenn has TWO stacks of books he says came from his office and he claims to have read them all! More on that in a minute.

Anita Dunn was making a point about how to choose your decisions carefully. Glenn wouldn’t understand the point, because he can’t. He’s not wired for it. He’s not wired for honesty, either. He takes Dunn out of context (obviously) and then starts cramming words, er, books into her head! In the second stack of books Glenn brought in “from his office” he has the Bible, books about American icons like Washington, Adams, and so on. But… he does NOT mention the Book of Mormon. OK, I really don’t care about the religion, it’s all pretty much crap to me. But why does Glenn Beck bring in the Bible but not the Book of Mormon, the book that changed his life? Because he’s a LIAR, that’s why. The Book of Mormon only pops up when Glenn is raking in cash from the faithful.

Glenn goes way off the leash here with a wild claim that he is responsible for the announcement that Anita Dunn will be leaving the White House staff. Oooh, they’re scared of you Glenn! They’re going to let her go because YOU called her a Maoist Marxist Socialist Communist Fascist! They are so scared that they won’t call the Red Phone!! Head for the hills, Anita, Glenn Beck is after you!

Sigh. If only it were true, you’d be such a hero, at least in your own mind. But Glenn, if you weren’t so busy daydreaming about the Mormon afterlife, you could have just used the Google to find out that she is interim White House Communications Director and will be leaving at the end of the year.

Pffffffffffft. That’s the air escaping from the blow-up clown doll that is Glenn Beck.

Update 10/19/09

Media Matters is undoubtedly one of the finest sources of news media fact-checking. If you have perused this site, you will have noticed that some of the video links are from their site. Bless ‘em.

Their Research Department came up with the full quote from which Glenn Beck dishonestly put together the video that made it appear that Mao is Anita Dunn’s go-to guy. As I reported above, Beck used a portion of the video to make it seem that she is an acolyte of Mao and then started a rant about what books she reads when he has no way of knowing that and his assumption is based on a false premise that he knowingly created.

But once again Glenn Beck is busted by the inconvenient truth. This time Media Matters came up with the whole video, which is something I was planning to do Monday but I got busy with students. So here’s the real quote:

A lot of you have a great deal of ability. A lot of you work hard. Put them together, and that answers the “Why not?” question. There’s usually not a good reason.

And then the third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa -- not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you’re going to make choices. You’re going to challenge. You’re going to say, “Why not?” You’re going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here’s the deal: These are your choices. They are no one else’s.

In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, “How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?” And Mao Zedong said, you know, “You fight your war, and I’ll fight mine.” And think about that for a second.

You know, you don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don’t have to follow other people’s choices and paths, OK? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what’s right for you. You don’t let external definition define how good you are internally. You fight your war. You let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.

And then Mother Teresa, who, upon receiving a letter from a fairly affluent young person who asked her whether she could come over and help with that orphanage in Calcutta, responded very simply: “Go find your own Calcutta.” OK? Go find your own Calcutta. Fight your own path. Go find the thing that is unique to you, the challenge that is actually yours, not somebody else’s challenge.

The reason I knew that Anita Dunn had said that she was talking about making the point about choices was that Beck himself aired a longer portion of that cliop on his October 15 show. I got the link to the original report from Twitter, from @Moms4GlennBeck (watch them block me). Beck went on to clip the video for his shocking “special report” and then start his character assassination attempt against Anita Dunn, who was the first from the White House to point out that Fox in general is NOT a news organization.

There has been some news show chat with talking heads wondering why the White House would take on the yucky task of cleaning Fox News off of their shoes. I suspect this was a shot fired across Rupert Murdoch’s nose to let him know that Fox stands to lose their press credentials (meaning they would not be allowed on Air Force 1 or in press briefings) if they don’t clean up their act. Time will tell.