April 29, 2009

We all know that Glenn Beck is making a career out of saying bizarre things and getting all kinds of facts wrong.

Yesterday he was downright brazen about trotting out flat falsehoods as part of his rants. The first came when he started ripping President Obama for supposedly overusing his teleprompter. In the process, he resurrected the myth of Saint Sarah "Evita" Palin and how she read her entire speech without the use of a teleprompter after it broke down on her.

Well, yeah, except said story is complete BS, though that didn't prevent Palin from repeating it anyway.

But, as with all right-wing populists, the myth and its maintenance are more important than piddling little facts.

Such as Beck's subsequent rant about the New York City flyover fiasco, in which he painted a portrait of the scene that made it seem as though Obama himself were on board the plane:

Beck: Then yesterday we had the 'secret photo op' of Air Force One flying over Manhattan. Which gave a lot of people flashbacks to 9/11. See all those people on the street? They were evacuating buildings. These people are running in fear because the president flew his plane over for a photo shoot! He's yelling at General Motors, and now he's yelling at Chrysler -- which the unions own, and we own -- General Motors -- Now, he talks to them about coming to meet Congress on their private planes. But he's taking Air Force One, a jumbo 747, out from Virginia to fly it up to New York for a photo op!

In case there's any confusion besides Beck's (which can't be fixed, it seems): Obama not only was nowhere near the plane's flight (this was only one of several planes that serve as AF1), he was furious that it had been authorized at all.

But telling his audience that would ruin Beck's little fable.

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