And They PAY Him For This?

Glenn Beck is losing it. I know, he probably lost it long ago, but his TV persona and public relations machine has a lot of people convinced that he makes sense, when he’s clearly a fruitcake riding the money coaster.

The latest nonsense out of his mouth is a great example of biting the hand that feeds you. He claims that religion, institutional religion, is really a front for Communism and Nazism.

Now, most of the right wing wackos that tune into Fox News do so because of the “fair and balanced” conservative, Christo-fascist mentality that permeates what they call news and commentary. Note the “Christo” in Christo-fascist. That means that most of the Fox News adherents are probably Christians, and those people are not going to take kindly to their Fox News hero turning around and claiming that one of the chief tenets of their religion means that they espouse National Socialism and/or Communism.

Those nice church-going folk pay his fuckin’ salary for Crissake! I can hear them now. “Fire his ass!” Or that’s what they should be saying as they storm the Murdoch Tower with their pitchforks and torches.

“Social Justice” is code for Nazism or Communism? What is he smoking? Beck used to have some credibility when he was over at CNN, but since he moved to FOX, it’s like he’s a formerly repressed Victorian prude let loose in a nudist camp, flinging off his clothes, embarrassing his friends and family. He’s letting everything hang out, including his innate bigotry and hatred for all things not Beck.

Let’s not forget that it’s a little difficult to lump National Socialism and Communism together, but I guess when you’re trying to paint liberals with a broad brush, a little intellectual and historical dishonesty is A-OK.

Roger Ebert has a good comment over on his blog.

What Beck has demonstrated, in a singularly inelegant way, is an increasing tendency of the extreme right to automatically describe its opponents in negative buzz words. You would think that if it’s possible to be a conservative it’s also possible to be a liberal. Not so. In the Beckian theology, a conservative is merely a conservative. Liberals are socialists, community organizers, Marxists, traitors, communists, haters, Nazis, elitists and, in general, liars. Conservatives, on the other hand, are moderates, patriots, reasonable, pro-American, and stand for family values.

With Ebert, I say:

I am proudly a liberal. I am also patriotic, reasonable, pro-American, and stand for family values.

Beck is beginning to make Ann Coulter, an incredibly vile polemicist who will say anything if it sells her books, look like Mother Teresa. And you know how much there is to admire about Mother Teresa. So Beck takes one aspect of religion that actually tends to work, that actually is motivated by human compassion, that actually isn’t concerned with life in the hereafter, but life in the right-here-and-now, and turns it into something ugly, contemptible, and taboo, and for what purpose? So as to paint liberals as Nazis and Communists?

I hope his church throws him out.

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Speaking of Social Justice, here’s a group of women speaking out against type, who seem to understand the term. Despite the fact that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee oppose the current version of the Senate Bill on national health care, 60 nuns from numerous orders have written the following letter:

We write to urge you to cast a life-affirming ‘yes’ vote when the Senate health care bill (H.R. 3590) comes to the floor of the House for a vote as early as this week.

Despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold long-standing conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.

You go girls!

It’s really despicable to see a major religious organization like the Catholic Church, a religion ostensibly founded on the ideals of social justice, putting a minor theological point (and what does reproductive health have to do with theology anyway?) ahead of the health and welfare of all Catholics, especially Catholic women. Say what you will about the costs of health care, but don’t oppose it on such skimpy and transparent theological grounds.

Unless, of course, you really want to see Jesus weep.

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