What is it with these "family values" guys that compels them to mock and belittle kids? First Glenn Beck does it, then apologizes. Sort of. Now Rush Limbaugh, fresh from his honeymoon with wife #4 decides it's ok?

Enough with the mean Malia impressions already. My kids are both older than she is and they ask me the same question. Contrary to Rush's bombastic nasty worldview, they actually care whether the Gulf drowns in a pool of oil.

This is tag team desensitization, in my opinion. Rush knows full well how audiences on both sides reacted to Beck's nasty mockery of Malia Obama after the President's press conference. By engaging in the same behavior, he slowly brings his already-receptive audience around to the idea that it's perfectly all right to mock and belittle a 12-year old girl.

I sure am glad the right wing cares about family values. Aren't you?

(h/t Media Matters)

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Glenn Beck decided to follow up his brief and lame apology on his website for his wildly unpopular attack on 11-year-old Malia Obama last week on his radio show by giving a heartfelt, sincere mea culpa on his Fox News show yesterday.

Apropos of someone for whom "sincere" is just a schtick, the mea culpa was all about Beck -- a tale of how he was an a-hole to his wife, snapping at her and cursing self-righteously when she asked him what he was thinking, and then realizing he was wrong and begging her forgiveness and now the world's.

Funny thing about Beck and forgiveness: He's always preaching about the power of self-forgiveness -- that's what his whole "Christmas Sweater" schtick is all about -- but I always get the feeling that he never takes the crucial step of obtaining forgiveness from the people who he's actually wronged. I've always wondered whether he ever sought the forgiveness of the wife of his rival DJ in Phoenix who he called up on air and humiliated over her recent miscarriage. I'd wager not.

Nor did he yesterday at any point seem to contemplate that he's horribly wronged a young woman who has done nothing to earn such a vicious and nasty attack. Instead, it was all about Beck realizing he had broken one of his "rules".

What are Beck's "rules"? He put it this way -- when the subject was Sarah Palin:

Beck: There's a difference! Leave my family -- leave people's families alone! I don't think I've -- I mean, I don't think I have ever -- I mean, I made this when it was Bill Clinton -- you don't go after Chelsea Clinton! You don't talk about the Bush kids! Now, the minute they get into politics, that's a different story. You leave the families alone! We've never done anything but protect the families, and question why the White House would bring their children into political debate. Leave the families alone!

Yesterday, he continued on the same note, describing his apology to his wife:

Beck: I said, 'Honey, you are right. And there is absolutely no excuse or reason to ever, ever, EVER -- even come close to the line of dragging somebody's family into the debate! I- I've never done it! I've never done it! Until last Friday. And I hope that's my bottom.

It probably won't be, because Beck's self-delusion is still very much intact insofar as what constitutes "dragging somebody's family into the debate."

Because we still recall vividly what remains the scummiest Beck show ever on Fox News -- the one where Beck smeared President Obama's dead mother:

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You'll recall he tried much of the same kind of denial:

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While CNN's Rick Sanchez isn't exactly an imposing media figure, and his "List" schtick doesn't exactly shake the world, but it does have an interesting quality -- it's drawn to a large extent from viewer input.

And so it was interesting that Glenn Beck's attack on Malia Obama and his subsequent lame-ass apology that really angered CNN's viewers. So Beck wound up on Sanchez's "List U Don't Want 2 Be On" this week:

This is apparently what many of you've been waiting for. It's around this time every day when I tell you who is on my list that you don't want to be on.

Sometimes we debate this throughout the day with my staff, our producers. Just about everybody gets in on the conversation. We take this pretty seriously, because it casts the person in a rather bad light oftentimes.

There seems to be, today, no debate, not from my staff, not from writers, not from my producers. And judging from what I'm reading here throughout the day on Twitter, not from you. In fact, you could say today's is a slam-dunk.

We are talking about the Fox News host and the radio jock who has been known to take repeated shots at President Obama, most notably at one point calling the president a racist. Defenders of this popular TV and radio personality say it's simply part of his schtick, but now many of you on Twitter and on blogs that I've been reading have come to the conclusion around the country and are saying that in this one case, he has gone too far.

Glenn Beck went on relentlessly last week on his radio show making fun of Malia -- Malia, the president's daughter. It seemed to go on and on and on, while Beck seemed to be literally -- you'll hear it for yourself, folks -- cracking himself up at the expense of an 11-year- old.

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Glenn Beck evidently realized that he had set himself up for endless mockery and serious public disgust by attacking Malia Obama yesterday on his radio show, so he promptly issued an apology -- of sorts:

In discussing how President Obama uses children to shield himself from criticism, I broke my own rule about leaving kids out of political debates. The children of public figures should be left on the sidelines. It was a stupid mistake and I apologize--and as a dad I should have known better.

As Keith Olbermann observed, in naming Beck his Worst Person in the World:

Well, that obviously changes things, because Beck at least has shown that he realizes his own hypocrisy, and he deserves -- wait a minute! He did the very thing he was apologizing for, and he did it in the apology!

Olbermann points back to the opening line of the "apology":

In discussing how President Obama uses children to shield himself from criticism ...

Olbermann observes:

In apologizing for putting kids into political debates, he put the president's kids back into political debates! This guy is so feral, that even in his brief moment of semi-sanity, he's still completely nuts!

It's also worth remembering that Beck's "rule" doesn't just pertain to children -- it regards politicians' entire families:

Beck: There's a difference! Leave my family -- leave people's families alone! I don't think I've -- I mean, I don't think I have ever -- I mean, I made this when it was Bill Clinton -- you don't go after Chelsea Clinton! You don't talk about the Bush kids! Now, the minute they get into politics, that's a different story. You leave the families alone! We've never done anything but protect the families, and question why the White House would bring their children into political debate. Leave the families alone!

As Zachary Pleat at Media Matters observes, Beck's apology is thus incomplete, by multiple standards:

Beck involved Obama's children in another attack on the president earlier this week, comments Beck did not address in his apology today.

Further, Beck limited his apology to just "my own rule about leaving kids out of political debates." But he has repeatedly stated that entire families are off-limits -- and he has dragged President Obama's family into "political debates" several times over the past year. In a sexist attack on the president's wife just last week, Beck referred to an image on the Drudge Report of Michelle Obama at a White House state dinner for the Mexican president and his wife, stating:

I don't think I've ever seen the first lady with her -- excuse the expression -- but with her breasts all smooshed up.

Beck has also repeatedly brought up Obama's parents on his Fox News and radio shows -- specifically in the context of discussing Obama's politics -- and more than a year ago, he made fun of President Obama's aunt.

Glenn Beck's apology is incomplete until he apologizes for all the other instances in which he dragged the president's family into his political attacks.

Indeed, probably the scummiest show Beck has ever put on was devoted to tearing down President Obama's late mother. He certainly never came close to apologizing for that.

But I think Beck's apology is incomplete in a much more important sense, as Karoli pointed out in her update: He failed to apologize directly to Malia Obama for mocking her, and to her parents for attacking their child.

Any real man making a real apology would have done that. This was not a real apology. This was half-assed ass-covering, at best.

You know, there are a lot of things Glenn Beck the nutbag does that make me crazy-angry, but most of the time I just write him off as a crazy, desperate has-been Rush Limbaugh wannabe and ignore his ugly self. Not this time.

I am mom. And I roar, scratch and bite when someone thinks it's perfectly okay to mock an 11-year old child for any reason, but especially when it's to stoke up more political hate toward the President and his family.

For this, he ought to have to get on his knees with real tears in his eyes, look in her eyes and beg forgiveness before he does the same to the President and First Lady. There is absolutely no excuse -- NONE -- for mocking an 11-year old child.

Obama remarked yesterday during his press conference that Malia asked him of the Gulf oil spill: "Did you Plug The Hole Yet, Daddy?" Beck, taking off on this, mockingly affected Malia's voice, asking "Daddy" why he "hates black people so much." Then Beck attacked Malia's intelligence, saying: "That's the level of their education, that they're coming to - they're coming to daddy and saying 'Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?' "

This routine continued for several minutes, as Beck and his co-hosts touched on a variety of topics and laughed the entire time, all of it at the expense of an 11-year-old girl.

Yet it was only a few days ago that Beck, on his radio show, demanded that liberal pundits "leave people's families alone" when it came to Sarah Palin:

Beck: There's a difference! Leave my family -- leave people's families alone! I don't think I've -- I mean, I don't think I have ever -- I mean, I made this when it was Bill Clinton -- you don't go after Chelsea Clinton! You don't talk about the Bush kids! Now, the minute they get into politics, that's a different story. You leave the families alone! We've never done anything but protect the families, and question why the White House would bring their children into political debate. Leave the families alone!

Beck proves every day how excrementally evil he is. He should not have the microphone or the platform. There will come a day where he'll look in the mirror and actually see who he is.

I hope his children grow up to be just like him, but liberals. That would be a start toward making the universe right again.

(h/t QueenofSpain)

Update: Beck has issued a half-hearted apology. If he apologized with half the passion he laces his invective with, I might even believe it. He rang the bell and did it evilly. He didn't bother to apologize to Malia or to the Obama family, so as far as I'm concerned, he's still on the hook.

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(Photo courtesy of Time)