Thanks For Clearing That Up
[We interrupt Stinque’s ongoing coverage of collegiate Sport (at halftime, which is a natural interruption point, so there) for a story about Glenn Beck being Glenn Beck. Apologies in advance. Sport thread appears below.]
So Glenn Beck made a pledge today to denounce extremism “from the Left, the Right or middle.” [Note, of course, that two-thirds of that set is NOT HIM.] Included in the pledge is this specific plea:
I denounce violent threats and calls for the destruction of our system – regardless of their underlying ideology – whether they come from the Hutaree Militia or Frances Fox Piven.
Well, isn’t that a refreshing thought from a guy — wait. Rewind that last little bit there:
or Frances Fox Piven.
Dude. I haven’t heard about Frances Fox Piven until today. What puts her in the same discussion as a violent militia group? Or anyone more radicalized than, say, Garrison Keillor? Follow me for all the horrid details, post-jump.
A little digging shows that Dr. Piven was one of the driving forces behind that tool of socialism known as… Motor Voter. That, and a few decades of advocacy on behalf of the poor (to the possible mobilization of the poor as a political force, leading to a guaranteed national income and [UH-OH] redistribution of wealth) has earned Dr. Piven a bunch of bad press from the right. This includes a sting-video orchestrated, ACORN-Pimp Style, by Andrew Breitbart… and a place on Glenn Beck’s blackboard of DOOM:
Beck first mentioned the so-called “Cloward-Piven Strategy” in March 2009, three months after he began his nightly Fox News show, and 32 times since. On September 18 [2009], he used his trademark chalkboard to connect Cloward and Piven to Woodrow Wilson, Che Guevara, Bill Ayers, ACORN, the SEIU, the Apollo Alliance, the Tides Foundation, George Soros, Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, and Obama — some of the right’s favorite villains. Beck, like his right-wing colleagues, view Cloward and Piven as dangerous radicals masquerading as reformers. Earlier this month, Beck claimed that SDS, the 1960s radical student group, believed the road to change was “Let’s blow things up,” but Cloward and Piven counseled, “No, no, no, let’s try to just collapse the system.”
So: the Hutaree Militia (allegedly plotting a mass attack on cops before they were hooked up by the feds) and Dr. Piven are in the same league according to Beck. The rhetoric may change from day to day, and week to week. But stupid is forever.
[Note well: my knowledge of Dr. Piven is about one hour old. If I’ve missed something, like Dr. Piven raising a guerrilla army between lectures at the 92nd Street Y, please advise.]
My head hurts, CB. I can’t deal with the Beck insanity. I think I need to go back to The Sport thread and pour myself another drink.
@SanFranLefty: You have to. I mean it — the way he dresses himself in the zeitgeist of “let’s all be friendly and civil” while, at the same time, taking a swipe at imagined threats from the left, is just special.
To a rich guy who wants everything of everything, a lady who wants to help people is a violent criminal. SHE’S STEALING HIS EARNING POTENTIAL!!!
My god.
Seriously, Bekc is a fucking moron.
So an armed paramilitary organization with crazy fantasies of bringing down the Federal Government (backers of the Antichrist) through violent confrontation is equivalent to a leftist academic who’s evil plan consisted of encouraging everyone who was eligible for welfare benefits to sign up for them?
Only in Glann Back’s fanatasy world.
Every country has a lunatic, bug-eyed, right-wing fringe. Ours just happens to control the government and the media.
@Serolf Divad: Well said, but her evil plan wasn’t even to get people to sign up for welfare benefits. It was to get people to sign up TO VOTE.
(Isn’t that what “Motor Voter” was about? Not welfare, but getting people to check the box that says “Yes I want to register to vote” when they’re at the DMV getting their driver’s license?)
My undergrad sociology class was based almost entirely on two books, Regulating the Poor, by Fox-Piven and Cloward, and The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Goffman. I wrote my term paper on why Marx’s predicted proletarian revolt was both closer to happening, during the depression, than our history books admit, and how it was prevented by Roosevelt’s invention of what I will call the European social democracy system of capitalism tempered by socialism. I guess I am right there with Che, Woodrow, and the Weather Underground.
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