Antonin Scalia and Glenn Beck: Just Two Degrees of Radical Separation

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

Not long ago, I wrote a blog entry about how Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion in a capital punishment case appeal in which he made the chilling and mind-boggling argument that the Consitution did not prohibit executing an innocent man.

Don't believe it, read his dissenting opinion.

Scalia portrays himself as a "strict constructionist," but he -- like Glenn Beck -- is a far fringe extremist who the right wing has successfully shifted into mainstream credibility.  Scalia and Beck just have different venues.

Most recently, Scalia -- who single handedly began the coup that put George W. Bush in the White House by declaring an end to the Florida recount since if Al Gore ended up with more votes it might hurt the reputation of Bush since he was "the presumptive winner" (i.e. the winner chosen by the Supreme Court, not the voters) -- Scalia astonished Constitutional scholars and non-Christians alike in a case regarding a cross on public land allegedly honoring veterans.

Here is the New York Times account of Scalia's exchange with the plaintiff's lawyer:

The question of the meaning of a cross in the context of a war memorial did give rise to one heated exchange, between Justice Scalia and Peter J. Eliasberg, a lawyer for Mr. Buono with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California.

Mr. Eliasberg said many Jewish war veterans would not wish to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.”

Justice Scalia disagreed, saying, “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead.”

“What would you have them erect?” Justice Scalia asked. “Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?”

Mr. Eliasberg said he had visited Jewish cemeteries. “There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew,” he said, to laughter in the courtroom.

Justice Scalia grew visibly angry. “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

It reminds me of an account I read a few years back of a speech that Scalia gave to a synagogue in Alabama for some reason (and recounted in an article in a state newspaper). Scalia, a Supreme Court Justice who one would assume would defend the separation of church and state in the Constitution, "reassured" the congregation that Jews would have nothing to fear from a Christian America because no Christian nation had ever persecuted the Jews.

Uh, Hitler, the Inquisition, the Pogroms, Ghettos...the man isn't brilliant, as the esteemed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called him, he's a radical danger to the Republic.  He already did 8 years of damage with installing of Bush as president.

But what's to be remembered here is that in the world of the Washington elite -- Democratic and Republican -- Scalia is considered a legal wizard, respectable, part of the establishment.

Similarly, we are seeing a process whereby the extremist, incendiary entertainer and demagogue, Glenn Beck, has moved from basically a provocateur of a militia movement to the cover of Time and interviews with Katie Couric.

I have applauded Color of Change for the outstanding job that they have done in putting corporations who sponsor Beck on notice and getting dozens to at least temporarily remove their advertising from Beck's program.  But as I noted awhile back, FOX is not going to fire Beck. Period.

In fact, Beck has grown even into more of a mainstream media force -- including bestselling books -- not a more marginalized one.  He got Van Jones removed from the White House and other White House staff removed from their positions.  He's going after another one now, and he's taking on the FCC, which is possibly going to finally do something about the consolidated corporate ownership of big media -- and that's a threat to Beck's benefactor/boss, Rupert Murdoch.

No, Beck is not going anywhere except to become more of an accepted "star" in the media world.  The corporate mainstream media has, over decades, ignored and dismissed anyone on the left it considers fringe, but embraces demagogues on the right and legitimatizes them.

That's one of the reasons BuzzFlash started the Turn Off Fox in public places campaign, which we plan to grow into a larger initiative to marginalize FOX in particular, which is basically 24 hours of corporate demagoguery that brainwashes Americans who are susceptible to emotional manipulation and bias that favors entrenched wealth.

It's not just, as Color of Change focused on, Glenn Beck's revolting accusation that Obama is a "racist" that's the issue.  It's the entire mainstreaming of FOX and how it skews the corporate mainstream media to the right.

Since a famous memo about 40 years ago by Lewis Powell that described the need for a right wing Republican think tank and media infrastructure to reframe "the debate" in America, the Democrats and progressives have been caught flat footed.  Even the White House, which thank God just denounced FOX as an arm of the Republican Party, lets the corporate media define the frame in which public policy is discussed.  (Rahm Emanuel is a great believer that there is a mythical fixed "center" to American public opinion that leans right, even though Obama won the election handily and most polls show the vast majority of Americans support individual progressive issues, but are persuaded by corporate media and GOP message points to view them from a distorted, misinformed lens.)

BuzzFlash is committed to getting progressives off the dime and ending the gaper's block fascination with FOX and the right wing media shills. 

It's time to return FOX and the entire dangerous-to-America, fringe GOP apparatus to the disreputable margins of society. That's why we started the Turn Off FOX campaign.

There's only two degrees of separation between Glenn Beck and Antonin Scalia. Until the radical right wing is discredited, they both will be embraced by the wealthy corporate media as reputable.

And that is of great risk and harm to democracy.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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