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One of the real wonders of modern conservatism -- as Thomas Frank explored in some depth in What's the Matter With Kansas -- is the way it manages to convince working- and middle-class people that looking out for the interests of America's wealthy, in lieu of their own, is really their most important political undertaking. Their chief method for doing this is propaganda that convinces large numbers of people, mostly through culture-war-type appeals, to vote against their own interests.

Glenn Beck put on a really perfect display of this Tuesday on his Fox News show, when he spent the first half telling his audience that the poor in America don't have it so bad because they have TVs and microwaves, compared to what folks looked like back during the Depression.

Then he came back with a segment extolling the virtues of Depression-era poverty, when people canned their own food and made their own clothes. Then he said:

Beck: We think of poverty now as not having enough money for cable or high-speed Internet.

So saith one of the country's richest men -- a guy who has never canned his own food or raised his own garden or even worked an honest day in his life. A guy who knows NOTHING about the conditions of Americans living in poverty today, let alone yesterday or any other day. But he sure can stand back and admire the character of people living in poverty from afar.

FWIW, here's a site, Poverty in America, dedicated to standing up for people living in poverty today. Their main concern today isn't getting cable TV -- it is, indeed, making sure there's food on the table for their children. Just like in the old days.

But Glenn Beck wants us to think there's some nobility in all this -- as in: "Get used to it, suckers! This is how you're gonna live now!" Sounds about right for a rich guy.

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46 Comments
ysbaddaden's picture
)O(

Diabolus est Deus Inversus

Limp-Dick Blimpaugh's picture

He's just a Fk'n stupid, racist, Reslug asshole.

Nangleator's picture

Easy as pie to get any wingnut to talk about austerity and tightening belts and suffering, but you suggest that wealthy people suffer one iota and you'll get back roaring silence in return.

John F A's picture

the same way that they praise the military--from a safe distance. Of course none of them would ever put on a uniform (unless it was a Confederate or Nazi uniform for fun & games) and none of them would ever think of doing anything to help another human being.

ysbaddaden's picture
)O(

Diabolus est Deus Inversus

innocent bystander's picture

i don't have a tv or microwave, and i never, ever eat out, tho i do have internet access, a requirement of my occasional employment and constant job-hunting . . . now i feel like bourgeois scum for not breaking my apartment lease by growing veggies on my balcony . . . if i did that, maybe i could afford to go to the doctor for the first time in three years or do something about this tooth abscess that's been haunting me for the past 8 months


there is a time ... when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. you can't even passively take part -- mario savio

Now please tell us how you deserve 32 million dollars a year vomiting utter non-sense like that.

Only terminal dumbasses or Fox stockholders can endure listening to such bullshit.

Alerta_Alerta's picture

"32 million dollars a year"

Damn, where's the vaporub? I'll cry, rant, rave and grief. Making retarded connections backed up by my own deluded mind. Revising history where ever i can to sell a program. I'll be the new glenn Beck.

I'm a Beck Novus! (show me the money, MOFO)


Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/

When I was a boy in the early 1970s, my middle class parents could afford a big house in the subburbs, 2 late model cars, and were able to put their kids through college, plus every winter take the who family on ski trips in NH.. I could never afford to do any of that.
Now that I'm in my mid 40s, working in the same field as my parents, I can only afford a studio apt, can't afford a house, car or health insurance. This is one of the few times when a generation is by and large less well off than their parents. I have used the food assistance card, and that recently expired.

Why rich people think the poor have it easy is beyond me.

Right wingers like Beck despise FDR- FDR helped bring Americans out of the Depression of the 1930s- FDR put people to work by building on national infastructure (road, dam, bridge construction, etc).

In the twisted world view of Beck and people like him- what do they think should FDR have done about the tens of thousands of unemployed?
I suspect that Beck would love to see a return of for profit debtors prisons. Could we be heading in that direction? The large network of prisons we have in this country is a for profit enterprise.

Someone once posted on C&L that liberals see Charles Dickens's stories as cautionary tales; wheras conservatives see them as blueprints for the ideal society. ( a world where the rich have everything, and the poor have nothing).
I wonder of Republicans see 'A Christmas Carol' as a tragedy, with Scrooge renouncing capitalism, and embracing the Jesus-esque philosophy of giveing to others and helping the poor?
Right wingers despise the concept of helping others- which is why Republicans despise Jesus Christ. (although they use him as a figurehead in the Christ cult- the actual teachings of Jesus mean nothing to Christians)

ps- someone please remind me why these right wingers worship Jesus?
Jesus condemned wealth, advocated charity, and was a liberal and a socialist...

left of center's picture

ps- someone please remind me why these right wingers worship Jesus?
Jesus condemned wealth, advocated charity, and was a liberal and a socialist...

they think attending church is for networking purposes. they mingle with other rightwing nut jobs after the service, talk business and politics, not the message of the sermon they did'nt pay attention to.
its these kinds of people that have turned churchs into big business not the clergy (not talking about tv preachers). they hide as elders or deacons in these churches and turn them against everything that was once right. oh, churches do some good, spending monies on missionaries in other countries while ignoring the needy right here in our own backyards. why? Do they think the score more points with God if they spend their money in south america or overseas? or maybe its true, They just hate Americans.

and no, i am not lumping all churches into this catagory, I know some churches help the local unfortunate. i also know that some churches are more worried about their bottom line than they are about the soup line.

Nicole Belle's picture

On exactly that.

We did a radio show together and he went off on a rant about how anti-Christian Republicans were and although I didn't get a word in, I just loved every second of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMTplOQbEDc

ysbaddaden's picture
)O(

I would agree with everything but the socialist part, if by that you mean socialistic governance.

He didn't advocate a system of governance, which made boosh's answer that Jesus was his favorite political philosopher so hilarious (and alarming).

However, I also noticed you didn't use the upper-case on socialistic, so maybe that's not exactly what you meant, but between cohorts and peers.


Diabolus est Deus Inversus

Samson-'s picture

i strongly encourage lectures like this from glenn beck.

i'm sure that making light of people's dire economic situation will only add to his fan base.

beck: please, more lectures on why things aren't so bad for the poor!! they love it.

RayC's picture

And what Glenn did the government do to try and make sure that poor and middle class Americans would no longer be subject to the excesses of the very wealthy that was the cause of the great Republican depression? Well lets start with women's suffrage; federal deposit insurance; Social Security; the investor protections of the Securities Acts of 1933 and `34; public power; unemployment compensation; the minimum wage; child labor laws; the 40-hour work week; the Wagner Act, which gave private-sector workers collective bargaining rights; the Civil Rights Act; the Voting Rights Act; federal fair housing laws; Medicare; federally sponsored guaranteed student loan programs; Head Start; food stamps, Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). I am sure Glenn you support wholeheartedly all of these programs.

Sungrey's picture

Everything you listed are what the GOP is trying to remove, with the help of their ignorant electorate who would not benefit from these programs' demise.

These rich Republicans view us as their modern day slaves who need a periodic whipping keeping us in line. Make their food, washing and drive their cars, entertain them, etc. hell but not for the rich us ignorant slaves would starve to death.

You can't survive on the minuim wage? Fuck you!

ysbaddaden's picture
)O(

Diabolus est Deus Inversus

One thing that impresses me about Canada as well as the UK (my 2 favorite places) is that they care about their citizens. The health coverage in England is superb. A question to any Brits accross the pond or to Canadian friends north of the border, what is your reaction to the callious indifference of American right wingers when it comes to their disatin for the poor?
Is there an equivilant to right wing American capitalist republicans like Glenn Beck and the FOX news zoo in canada or England?
I wonder if the BNP is anything like the Republican party. Both groups seem very racist and nationalist.

A friend from London asked me- how can Republicans mean it when they claim 'they love America', when it is so apparent they hate Americans?

ysbaddaden's picture
)O(

The Londoners?


Diabolus est Deus Inversus

real_earl's picture

Is there an equivilant to right wing American capitalist republicans like Glenn Beck and the FOX news zoo in canada or England?

Yes.
In Canada an outfit called SUN TV (or "Fox North" a tiny little divison of Stephen Bush Harper's Conservative(TM) Party) has slithered out from a septic sludge pool to get approval from the Regulatory agency here to begin spewing slanted right wing opinions loosely called news to the detriment of Canadian journalism. As we can see from their crappy hand made website they are employing the very subtle and creative "get a smoking hot blonde with the ethics of a pit viper" to read the 'news' technique.


I'm Boycotting NewsCorp! Heres what not to buy: http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=news...

pissed off patricia's picture

I was thinking about stuff like this today. I'm pretty sure all dyed in the wool tea party people would turn their back on help for the unemployed and give a thumbs up to extending the tax cuts for the wealthy. I wonder how many of those tea party people are unemployed and losing their homes? They support the very things that do them or their neighbor harm while at the same time giving no support to what they or their neighbor might need.

So going back to the time of the depression is what Beck admires? Okay where's that "hope" he carries the flag for? He doesn't give a flying damn about the people he is talking to, he just cares that they keep listening to him and he keeps getting his big mother check.


Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.

Sungrey's picture

Beck knows nothing about real poverty. What he described was the working poor, or people who have full-time jobs and make enough to clothe their family, pay for an apartment or small house, cover bills and that's about it.

Real poverty is people living on the streets or in shelters or under highway overpasses. They are people who might receive housing assistance to live in a crappy studio apartment in a bad part of town while their kids get one or two meals a day thanks to those public schools that Republicans are still trying to dismantle.

Sen. Barney Frank appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show recently and said it best. He said the GOP is trying to take this country back to the 1920s or earlier, when there were no safety nets and the rich owned their employees. The elderly and disabled died in the streets in those days.

BobD's picture

People canned because they had no refrigeration. It was either can or watch food rot. They didn't have apples from Chile in the supermarkets. Food was seasonal.

Those photos, were they staged? Were they the equivalent of "stock photos" today?

I wonder what his trash can looks like? Do you think he saves broken things so he can fix them? Or does he just throw them out? Do you think he knows how to wire a lamp, or does he just go out and buy a new one? Does he change his spark plugs, clean and re gap them or does he just drop the car at the garage and have them do it for him?

Teach me self reliance asshat by showing me self reliance. Don't hold up a book, show me by your worthwhile example, asshat.

botanybayinak's picture

...some of these idiots walking down a sidewalk, so I could grease the undercarriage of my 1984 Oldsmoblile Delta 88 with them. Would it help the situation, not in the least, but it would put such a broad grin on my face :)

Stupid Git's picture

This is who the conservatives listen to:

Glenn Beck
Yale University - dropped out (first semester)

Rush Limbaugh
Southeast Missouri State University - dropped out (second semester)

Sean Hannity
NYU - dropped out

Sarah Palin
Hawaii Pacific University - dropped out
North Idaho College - dropped out
University of Idaho - dropped out
Matanuska-Susitna College - dropped out
University of Idaho (returned) - B.S. in Communications
and
Governor of Alaska - dropped out

Proud ignorance is their way of life.

glogrrl's picture

political hucksters and hate merchants for the Rethuglican Party.....they preach to the ignorant and willfully uninformed and bilk them out of money selling them crap like survival food and overpriced gold coins.

What a bunch of con artists!


“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”

merkin's picture

Ah the Great Depression...

My grandfather said they didn't even notice it.
They never had anything anyway.

At that time, 95% of Americans still lived in rural areas. So they actually had fields and resources to keep their lives together.
Now that number is reversed and most Americans live in suburban areas. They CAN'T just go out and get some wood for a table. They need money to buy it. They need a car to get around.
No one has fields to plow, now one has even the basic understanding or skills to start practicing agriculture in any effective way.

John F A's picture

This ain't the Waltons, Becky, we live in the 21st Century.

woodytus's picture

and collects millions.

This guy acts the prankster and gets time:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/prank/deg...

Evet's picture

Mark Zuckerberg - Conservative

Harvard . . dropped out.

Stupid Git's picture

Yup. But at least he accomplished something beneficial to humanity (even if he did it hte conservative way - lying and stealing).

Alerta_Alerta's picture

"something beneficial to humanity"

Hu? What's "beneficial to humanity" about FB?


Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/

AGold's picture

It's true. A girl I know just deleted hers until the end of the semester because she finds it so addicting and distracting that she can no longer get her school work done. I like to use it to chat with my friends mainly, and share news/music/videos. Some people take it way seriously and post every facet of their fucking lives on the thing, and it's really just kind of sad, because deep down they only do it because they already feel like no one cares, so they post photos of everything in hopes that someone might. Attention seeking.

MedfordTim's picture

"...a guy who has never canned his own food..."

He might have done this in one of the Mormon co-ops. My grandmother (Mormon) took me to one as a "learning experience" on how to share the load and get things done for the community. He might have done a stint in one; never know.

Come to think of it...his religion is WAAAAAAY more "socialist" than anything Obama has suggested - even "communist" when it gets down to it. All the things he rails about on his show, his church embraces on a basic level.

Disconnect, anyone?

wxgeek93's picture

One watches this and can't help but laugh uncontrollably in listening to Beck wax poetically on the virtues of honesty. I mean seriously, the guy isn't qualified to speak on anything more than perhaps tying a necktie or a noose!

dadams's picture

this kind of stupidity from beck just makes
you want to rip off his family fake jewels

JohnnyBravo's picture

Before Beck talks down to us, maybe he should wipe off that cocaine mustache first.


NOBODY 2012

southernman's picture

God Damn Glenn Beck to hell and back

Evet's picture
Jeanne's picture

I have lived that moment in time when hope doesn't exist. I felt like my family was disappearing from the landscape of America. To hear some spoiled ranting dumb ass tell people who are scraping bottom through no fault of their own, other than believing their country believed in them, is an insult beyond what Jesus could stomach. And Beck is a Mormon? . He doesn't have a clue what 'not having it so bad' is. The fact that Fox News could tolerate this trash in the face of real suffering in America makes me even more disgusted. This is so far beyond acceptable. Here's one for you Glenn, you lame idiot, poverty today is dying because you couldn't afford to live. Poverty today is the mechanic's kid or the laid off cop's kid going hungry. Poverty today is the Iraq war veteran's kid becoming homeless. .


Jeanne

Jeanne's picture

Get out of your car and walk down the streets of Detroit. Sit in an unemployment line or a union hall and look into the vacant eyes of the person next to you.. Wait in the rain for free health care and watch small children shiver. You want to find Jesus? He ain't on Faust news where everybody has sold their soul to the devil, he's on the street.


Jeanne

ysbaddaden's picture
)O(

Diabolus est Deus Inversus

Ape-Man's picture

They keep Beck in a straight-jacket until show time, in his own separate Temple of Doom, away from the rest of the FOX crooks, for the safety of all concerned.


"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-

Edwin's picture

I never watch Beck clips. I don't even read about them, but that screen shot is priceless. The filled chalk board using primer print chalk, the noble peasants... etc. It reminds me of communist art (which I quite like).


far left loon >.<

Winski's picture

Our sense of humor is getting thin beck.... once you lie more than you can lie to cover up the other lies - Ooops!

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