Coincidently (or maybe not so coincidently), this past weekend, on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and their cadre of followers marched on Washington. Why were they there? Umm, I’m not so sure, and apparently no one else was either. As Alexander Zaitchik of The New Republic observes, it wasn’t exactly a political rally, considering that no active politicians were present. Sure there were religious overtones, but the hodgepodge of Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and Mormons, but the hodgepodge of believes hardly lends itself to that kind of event. So what was going on? Well, like what happens when a lot of rich White people get together, a lot of entitled whining, and navel gazing self pity.
But before we begin, take yourself back a few months to the G20 conference that happened here in Toronto. When throngs of protesters, anarchists, and activists descended on Toronto, what was the number one complaint from the disgruntled White, Toronto middle-class? Not the wanton destruction, but the notion that these people had nothing better to do. They had the time to protest!? Don’t they have jobs!? Despite the silliness of the criticism, there was a certain nobility to the protestant work ethic values that underpinned it. And yet, here we are just a few months later, and the very same silent majority that supposedly form the backbone of our society now have the time to travel across the country to listen to a guy speak that you could listen to every night on television for free.
Beck’s theme of the day was to have America ‘turn back to God.’ What that means exactly of course was a little unclear. How has America turned away from God exactly? Was it America’s inevitable march towards accepting Gay marriage? That was probably the feeling within some of the crowd, although Beck himself oddly enough is not opposed to Gay marriage. Could it be the advent of the new Atheist movement, led by men like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens? Maybe a little. But alas no, the real fear is that they’ve elected a Black president with a Muslim-sounding name.
Throw in the fact that within the next few generations, Whites will no longer be the majority within their own country, Beck followers believe they have plenty of reasons to be skittish. As Chris Hitchens himself reported regarding the rally, there was an air of nostalgia in the air, as rally goers longed for a simpler time, when all their neighbours looked like them, everyone spoke English, and they could go on never knowing what a mosque was exactly.
As the Washington Post quoted a Beck acolyte at another rally, "We want our country to get back to its original roots," adding that "her ancestors were on the Mayflower and fought in the American Revolution." Granted, such simpler times meant that White middle classes would have to do their own labour and not rely on migrant workers willing to work for a buck twenty five an hour, but why sully such a pretty memory, even if it never really existed?
At the centre of it all are Beck and Palin, making millions off of their gullible audiences, stoking their fears and indulging their ugliest tendencies. Palin was making so much money off the lecture circuit that all that public service was getting in the way, leading her to quit office. Beck, a former ‘Morning Zoo’ radio DJ needed a way to differentiate himself from all the other Howard Stern imitators out there, and decided to get into the surprisingly lucrative conspiracy theory game. Like how Jon Stewart capitalized making fun of Bush’s incompetency to bemused (and horrified) liberals, Beck has done the same to those scared of Obama’s ‘otherness’. Like I’ve been saying all along, the money is right there for anybody to make, you’ve just got to be willing to lose all semblance of shame and self-respect to get it.
As Beck claimed the mantle of MLK last weekend, it became obvious how low were willing to go.
Comments
C
Perhaps the most ghastly thing about that rally is his part about "reclaiming the civil rights movement." How utterly insulting.
Perhaps the most ghastly thing about that rally is his part about "reclaiming the civil rights movement." How utterly insulting.