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Glenn Beck cries of false gun bans is mimicked by PA shooter, earns the Media PUTZ award

Submitted by Chad on Wed, 04/08/2009 - 9:00pm.

BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

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April 9, 2009

Glenn Beck

For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

Once again, Keith Olbermann names Glenn Beck the World's Worst Person, this time for scaring people under false pretenses into buying and potentially using guns.

Glenn Beck could have won the Media PUTZ any week in the last few weeks. His hypocrisy over the 9/12 project when he admitted he hated -- HATED -- 9/11 victims, people who lost loved ones in a horrible, visible fashion. His call for revolution just because his candidate for president lost an legitimate election. His fake tears.

Beck has spent his newly christened FOX "News" Channel show in a more obscure timeslot by trying to draw dramatic attention to himself through his rantings and emotional outbursts. Being a crazy, right-wing talk show host just isn't enough to get noticed, since there are so many of them.

This week, Beck has finally earned the honor. So what put it over the top? Why does Beck win the honor this time?

With the rights -- the rights Beck goes on and on about -- comes responsibility. When you have on NRA executive VP and CEO Wayne LaPierre on your show talking about Obama's quest to take away guns, and you know it isn't true, someone could get the wrong message. That someone could have been Richard Poplawski in the Pittsburgh shooting, one of many mass shootings in the last two months.

Poplawski killed three Pittsburgh policemen, claiming according to a friend, Edward Perkovic, that Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."

Where have we heard such rhetoric? Now, Beck claims that he is just a flight attendant in this crashing airliner: 

Blaming TV or radio hosts for the nutjob who killed three Pittsburgh police officers over the weekend is like blaming a flight attendant after a terrorist takes down a plane. In other words: Giving passengers a safety talk to prepare them for a worst-case scenario doesn't mean you are responsible should a terrorist make that worst-case scenario happen. One person is providing important information. The other is a nutjob who would've acted no matter what.

But Beck isn't providing important information, or even information. As Beck says about himself, "if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot." You might want to try flashing those words on the screen every time you say something that is untrue. If you did that, you might as well not even flash the words, since they will have to remain on all the time, like a news ticker resting at the bottom of the screen.

Beck is right in one sense: no one forces another person to do something. But he is very, very wrong on another major point. When fictional TV shows get blamed for inciting actions, the common thread is that most people can tell fiction from reality. FOX "News" Channel presents the Glenn Beck show five nights a week as if it were reality, and it's not.

Responsible television stations try not to confuse reality from fiction, and make a point to separate the two. Recently, two Chicago TV stations rejected a commercial from a clothing store that was made to sound like a 911 call. They said the ad sounded too realistic and would be confusing for viewers who might have thought it was coming from the news department.

As badly as TV stations need ad revenue, they felt responsible broadcasting was more important, a standard Glenn Beck fails to meet on a regular basis.

When a show is portrayed as reality, people are going to believe it. When Beck and LaPierre say Obama is going to take guns away, there are many who will believe it, no matter how crazy Beck sounds on the air or how many tears he sheds.

And it's not just one conversation. There have been cries of fascism, irresponsible for multiple reasons, but cruely ironic that Beck was silent on the freedoms crushed under George W. Bush.  

As often as we use the words "crazy" and "Glenn Beck" in the same sentence, there are people who are more off-balanced than Beck, and more dangerous. They don't need anyone else to rile them up, especially under false pretenses. For that alone, Glenn Beck wins the Media PUTZ of the Week award.  

Glenn Beck previously won the Media PUTZ of the week on December 18, 2008 and October 25, 2007.

BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

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Unfortunately, I nominate President Obama for next week's award

Submitted by Kevin Schmidt S... on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 1:29pm.

In today's 'What's the Buzz' column, Buzzflash says:

"Obama is Wrong to Push Bush-Era State Secrets Claims"

'Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration's made two deeply troubling arguments.

First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue "would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security." As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence.

It's an especially disappointing argument to hear from the Obama Administration. As a candidate, Senator Obama lamented that the Bush Administration "invoked a legal tool known as the 'state secrets' privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court." He was right then, and we're dismayed that he and his team seem to have forgotten.

Sad as that is, it's the Department Of Justice's second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes.

This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.

Previously, the Bush Administration has argued that the U.S. possesses "sovereign immunity" from suit for conducting electronic surveillance that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, FISA is only one of several laws that restrict the government's ability to wiretap. The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes.

Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ's radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama's own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.

This isn't change we can believe in. This is change for the worse.

For further reading, we suggest Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald and The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder.'

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush

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The best face I can put on this...

Submitted by marlow on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 6:11pm.
...is pure political cowardice. I expected Obama to remind the American people that we are a free people and that in freedom there is a degree of danger. We could all live "safer" in a police state which monitors our every move and invades our privacy regularly. I expected him to work to revoke the TRAITtiot Act, not use it as the cornerstone for continued illegal surveillance. Instead what we have is a president too scared of the political consequences of an attack coming after he has done the right thing for the nation and the Constitution. Sad, and a HUGE disappointment.
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We wouldn't be the first country...

Submitted by marlow on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 11:18am.
...in the world to fall under the threat of militarism, authoritarianism and fascism, And I'm actually proud for my nation and people that we've resisted that final capitulation for many years now, despite the unopposed ravings of thugs like Glenny-boy and despite the "thirty percent" of traitors who would welcome tyranny with open arms. Germany, Italy, Spain, France (under Napoleon), and many others have lost their democracies and fallen under the sway of Generalissimos who thought a lot like Beck and Limpdick, but it's not happening quite so fast here, and they are obviously pissed as hell that it hasn't. So, good work, but a long ways yet to go.
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Beck is seditious,

Submitted by Atmost11 on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 10:49am.
Beck is seditious, anti-American, hates Americans because we are free - any Conservative who dismisses him as less than a traitor is in cahoots. Beck isnt a clown, ha ha, big joke, it isnt funny. Beck hides behind legalistic gibberish about how he didnt mean what he said. Bring on your civil war, Conservatives - keep agitating - the US Army or the SWAT Team or the ATF or the local police will bust your ass and give you something to cry about, Conservatives.
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observation

Submitted by davy on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 2:47am.
To me, personally, this shows me how lucky I am to be an X pat. How on earth can people not see through these guys ??? Yikes. All I can think is "dumbed down".
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"...and then some..."

Submitted by christopherflynn on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 9:03am.
"...and then some..."
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