Mr. Beck, Meet Mr. Beatty

Our favorite moment in Network is not the Mad As Hell Chorus, not the Black Nationalists arguing contract points with the network execs, not even Faye Dunaway literally having an orgasm over demographics.

No, our favorite moment is when Howard Beale is summoned to the office of Ned Beatty’s conglomerate chairman because he went too far:

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear?

You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet.

That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU… WILL… ATONE!

Another round of this, and Howard Beale relents with the best line of the movie: “I have seen the face of God.”

Glenn Beck fancies himself a real-life Howard Beale, and Thursday afternoon he took off on what should have been an unremarkable rant:

Do you remember what happened right after 9/11 with Rudy Giuliani? Do you remember Saudi Arabia came and said, we want to help.

This guy came over and said “I want to give you a $10 million dollar check.” Rudy Giuliani said, you see that over there? I don’t think we want your help. You already sent us help. And you flew that help into the plane, into the the trade centers.

The same prince later blamed the U.S. policy for the attacks. Giuliani said, take your check, we don’t want your money.

Par for the course. Except for one thing: The same prince — Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud — also owns 7 percent of News Corporation.

Oops.

We’ve been waiting months for this moment. Problem is, we’re having a hard time imagining Ned Beatty with an Australian accent.

Beck Blames One Of Fox News’ Largest Shareholders, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, For 9/11 [Think Progress]
9 Comments

Whoa, hold on there Nojo soldier – you’re treading on serious journalistic waters here. You freakin scooped the nooz hounds, dude! Well played.

Plus I noticed your piece’s time stamp is from when I just landed out here. Which I means I missed Dreck’s Jan 22 piece on “the hidden connection between Che, Mao and Stalin”. I’m assuming of course that has nothing to do with commie-ism, maybe swimming? Cigar smoking? Fashion forward headgear?

Once again, well-played, sir.

Oh, and for anyone keeping score at home, I managed to get in a swim (clothed), plus a nap on the pool deck, before the sun dipped behind the poorly placed high riser between me and the ocean. I’m good for a few more hours now!

A Saudi Prince own 7% of Fox News? LOL! Sure does help explain why most Fox Viewers blamed Saddam Hussein for 9/11 even though the vast majority of 9/11 conspirators were Saudi. Wish I’d known this fact at the time.

Off Topic, but, everyone should read this wonderful speech given by David Souter at Harvard’s commencement, what a nice, sane, reasonable man: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/05/text-of-justice-david-souters-speech/

Of course, anything done by a Bush that turns out to have been a good thing, like appointing Souter, must of course have been an accident.

BTW, is he, maybe, the first gay Justice?

@Prommie:

I think so. his gayness has been rumored for years.

itsnt he the “goat fucking pedophile”

@Nabisco: It was well established in the literature that a lot of the support money for the 9/11 kamikazes came out of Saudi accounts and from Saudi sources. That’s why it was so important for the Bush White House to get his friends from Saudi Arabia, including Bin Laden family members, out of the country in 9/12, a day that the only things flying in the airspace over the US were military aircraft and one jet liner specifically cleared by the White House to spirit Saudi nationals out of the US. Bush and his people knew better than anyone one they were complicit or, at the least, were perfect hostages to draw out Bin Laden. The director of the Mass Port Authority, former PR lady for a former GOP Governor, attempted to hold the plane out of instinctual understanding of what was at hand, only to be barked at by criminal collaborators, descendants of Hitler’s banker, who happened to control the White House.

@Prommie: Cardozo was the first gay Justice…or at least of the 20th Century.

@FlyingChainSaw: Our corrupt and censored media then embarked on campaign, which lasted for years, of attacking and smearing anyone who attempted to make this secret Saudi flight known to the public. Snopes even labelled it a myth.

Just 3 months or so before 9-11, the wife of the long-time Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar, affectionately known in DC for years as “Bandar Bush” because of his closeness to the Bush crime family, gave a personal check in the amount of $2,000 to one of the hijackers.

Even Bin Laden’s supposed $300 million fortune was part of the disinformation campaign. The myth was fostered that Bin Laden personally bankrolled al queada, in order to draw attention from the fact that al queada was and still is entirely funded by donations from Saudi Arabian wahhabi clerics, Saudi citizens, and members of the Saudi royal family.

W Bush and his entire family are a monstrous criminal syndicate, owned by the Saudi arabs, who have destroyed this country and the world.

@FlyingChainSaw: True dat and word and whatever else the kids say these days. Although I thought that some of the ‘spirited out of the country’ had been debunked. What I didn’t know of was the House of Saud’s stake in Nooz Corpse, or how much further down his throat Dreck had stuck his gangrened foot.

ADD: @Prommie: jinx and “d’oh!” Snopes is one of the new whipping boys of the fundie right, “liberal bias” and all that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “debunking” of the Saudi-spiriting was a well-placed Bush Inc. snow job, but also my head is beginning to hurt from the conspiracy inside of an enigma inside of a conspiracy.

/adjusts tinfoil/

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