Sunday, October 3, 2010

Village idiocy

Glenn Beck, the conservative television and radio host, is an amateur historian. Very amateur.
One day, he rhetorically asked his Fox News viewers: "Why did we buy Alaska in the 1950s?" A good question -- because "we" purchased Alaska in 1867. Another day, he gave his version of European history: "We have the Age of Enlightenment, 1620 to 1871, uh, 1781. This was a time when people said, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute, we can think out of the box.' This is coming out of the Dark Ages." That was thinking outside of the box, because the Dark Ages ended in about 1000 AD, six centuries earlier than Beck claimed.
Beck has created an online "Beck University" to spread his unique views of the past and has hosted "Founders' Fridays" on his television show, devoted to rewriting the nation's early history as that of a fundamentalist state.
When the subject turns, as it usually does, to President Obama, Beck again sees lessons from history. In particular, he has seized upon two individuals who he believes provide excellent historical parallels to the 44th commander in chief: Woodrow Wilson and Adolf Hitler.


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3 comments:

  1. I think you're being too literal, Waldo.

    Regarding Alaska, perhaps when Beck said the US bought Alaska in the 1950s, maybe he was referring to the federal government paying Alaskans money each year to rape and pillage their state.

    And perhaps Beck was right when he says the Age of Enlightenment ran until 1871, which was, of course, the year Bismarck unified Germany.

    And if you can't see the parallels between Obama and Hitler - fascists hellbent on taking over the world - then you're just a dupe for the mainstream media/Democratic Party/Planned Parenthood/et al., ad nauseum.

    As for Obama being like Woodrow Wilson - well, that's just crazy talk.

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