Richard A. Stitt: Red State Nut Country

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
by Richard A. Stitt

Bob Herbert, in his The New York Times column this past Saturday, The Scourge Persists, referred to the Oklahoma City bombing, and the assassination of King and the Kennedys. Herbert wrote, "On November 22, 1963, as they were preparing to fly to Dallas, a hotbed of political insanity, President Kennedy said to Mrs. Kennedy, 'We're heading into nut country today.'"

The fear is that history may well repeat itself. According to sources inside the Secret Service, there are about 30 threats every day against Barack Obama.

Who knows what nut cases such as those who showed up at one of the town hall meetings in Arizona this past August, one with a holstered Glock and another with an AR-15 assault weapon, will take the next step?

We cannot, nor should we forget those same incendiary, violence-prone birthers, teabaggers and Tenthers (those who claim the 10th Amendment states' rights supersedes federal laws) at the Washington, D.C. mall with signs proclaiming, "We came unarmed -- this time!"

The media, the so-called Fourth Estate? Time Magazine Managing Editor Richard Stengel wrote in the September 28 issue, featuring Glenn Beck on the cover, sticking his tongue out, "One of our jobs as journalists is to be the referee, the honest broker who sorts through the accusations and says, This is fact and this is fantasy."

Well, that's all real cutesy, Beck sticking his tongue out, but it doesn't even come close to the hatred and violence that this deranged, vitriolic individual is spreading and which the mainstream media opt to brush aside as politics as usual.

Hewing to the claim that they want to be "fair" is the same thing as saying, "Yes, we know you all say Adolf Hitler did some bad things but, to be fair, let's hear his side." That's how I see Time Magazine's infatuation with Glenn Beck.

Stengel goes on to cite editor-at-large David Von Drehle to shed light on the Glenn Beck phenomena as well as the anger of American politics today.

Von Drehle writes, "Clearly, Glenn Beck is extremely talented and the man has struck a chord, but the nature of politics right now rewards the people who play the least harmonious tunes."

Preceding the four-page Glenn Beck article are two pages featuring his mug on one side with a caption beneath proclaiming, The Agitator. On the other side are a few of the less toxic (perhaps muted by the editors?) signs being waved by protesters who gathered at the mall in Washington, D.C. two Sundays ago.

Glenn Beck and his agents and sponsors at Fox News are doing everything they can to usurp our democracy, spread their venomous seeds of hatred, and help vault the Republicans back into power in 2010 and beyond. If Barack Obama is assassinated, they will have succeeded in their much-thirsted for goal.

Their goal has nothing to do with taxes, nothing to do with health care but everything to do with getting rid of Barack Obama. Only confounded people such as the Time editors think otherwise. Then again, they, and the rest of the mainstream media, bought into the WMD lies and garbage sold by Colin Powell at the UN so the Republican, court-decreed president Bush, could put over 4,370 U.S. military in body bags and nearly one million Iraqi men, women, and children in early graves.

G.W. Bush, as he reminded one reporter when asked on the eve of the Iraq bombing if we were going to war answered, "I get to make the call, not you." And the media fiddled while Bush's approval numbers soared.

Time Magazine editors and owners abet and promote violence and animosity whenever they elevate people such as Beck, Limbaugh, and others who want to see our president and our country fail.

The magazine editors skirt around it with the disingenuous claim that they are just the referees sorting out the facts from fantasy. Of course, they also understand that those who play the "least harmonious tunes" will get the big bucks, and possibly for flagging media distribution, increased readership and revenue, even when it means sowing hatred and dissension and inevitably, bloodshed.

Is this just the set-up for the Glenn Beck Time Magazine Person of the Year? It sure looks that way to me.

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

Richard A. Stitt
Austin, Texas