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Fighting fire with fire; Or how Glenn Beck didn't rape and murder a girl in 1990
werehippy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
If you follow politics at all the name Glenn Beck more likely than not sends you into a towering rage at this point. He's the latest addition to the Fox News stable and by far the craziest and/or sleaziest. Some highlights include capitalizing on 9/11 after attacking the 9/11 families, openly and bizarrely weeping because "he loves his country so much and he's so scared for it", and literally acting out "Obama pouring gasoline on the average American" for god knows whatever he was riled up about at the moment.
His main claim to fame, beside being the biggest scumbag in mainstream media, is his perfecting the "when did you stop beating your wife" style of reporting to an art form. Couched in the phrasing "some people are saying" without ever explicitly embracing the allegations or discussing their legitimacy he has advanced pretty much every insane right wing conspiracy theory for the last year or so into the mainstream. The FEMA death camps, the birther nonsense, Obama's secret army of brown shirts; all these have been slide into legitimate discussion using this formulation. It's an especially weaselly wording that lets him back off any particular allegation when confronted while continuing to advance every insane idea under the sun in the guise of discussion of what other people are talking about. There's been a certain amount of hand wringing over the degrading of discourse in the US and the fact it's almost impossible to disprove a myth or outright lie once it's gotten into people's heads (the more you argue against it the more people who already believe the lie believe it even more).
In what is either another step towards the complete destruction of intelligent discussion in American politics or one of the most beautifully poetic rebuttal of stupidity I've ever seen, someone from Fark with the help of the other aggregator sites started the Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 website. The sites makes it clear that it's a parody site and that it's attacking this kind of slimy insinuation without any evidence that has been creeping up more and more in the Fox News era and has reached it's crescendo recently, making sure to always be presented along the lines of "Some people say Glenn Back has X and he has yet to deny it".
I'm honestly a bit torn on this. It does strike me as one of those near perfect examples of showing how stupid something is by applying it to an even more ridiculous situation. I'm hard pressed to think of any other way you could show just how slimy the idea is in a soundbite. But by that same token, sinking to the level of something that disgusts you to prove how disgusting it is can be morally dubious at best. Olbermann featured the meme on his worst person's list once it started picking up steam, which is a not unreasonable thing to do. Glenn Beck has also recently filed suit for trademark violation, an idea that is both going to almost certainly accomplish nothing and generates a huge amount of schadenfreude as you sit back and watch Beck cycle through the various useless stages of fighting the underhanded attack style he perfected.
Is this a modern case of fighting fire with fire, or are we just looking at a real case of the Left can be just as bad as the Right?
Glorious update I don't want to get lost in the thread:
His main claim to fame, beside being the biggest scumbag in mainstream media, is his perfecting the "when did you stop beating your wife" style of reporting to an art form. Couched in the phrasing "some people are saying" without ever explicitly embracing the allegations or discussing their legitimacy he has advanced pretty much every insane right wing conspiracy theory for the last year or so into the mainstream. The FEMA death camps, the birther nonsense, Obama's secret army of brown shirts; all these have been slide into legitimate discussion using this formulation. It's an especially weaselly wording that lets him back off any particular allegation when confronted while continuing to advance every insane idea under the sun in the guise of discussion of what other people are talking about. There's been a certain amount of hand wringing over the degrading of discourse in the US and the fact it's almost impossible to disprove a myth or outright lie once it's gotten into people's heads (the more you argue against it the more people who already believe the lie believe it even more).
In what is either another step towards the complete destruction of intelligent discussion in American politics or one of the most beautifully poetic rebuttal of stupidity I've ever seen, someone from Fark with the help of the other aggregator sites started the Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 website. The sites makes it clear that it's a parody site and that it's attacking this kind of slimy insinuation without any evidence that has been creeping up more and more in the Fox News era and has reached it's crescendo recently, making sure to always be presented along the lines of "Some people say Glenn Back has X and he has yet to deny it".
I'm honestly a bit torn on this. It does strike me as one of those near perfect examples of showing how stupid something is by applying it to an even more ridiculous situation. I'm hard pressed to think of any other way you could show just how slimy the idea is in a soundbite. But by that same token, sinking to the level of something that disgusts you to prove how disgusting it is can be morally dubious at best. Olbermann featured the meme on his worst person's list once it started picking up steam, which is a not unreasonable thing to do. Glenn Beck has also recently filed suit for trademark violation, an idea that is both going to almost certainly accomplish nothing and generates a huge amount of schadenfreude as you sit back and watch Beck cycle through the various useless stages of fighting the underhanded attack style he perfected.
Is this a modern case of fighting fire with fire, or are we just looking at a real case of the Left can be just as bad as the Right?
Glorious update I don't want to get lost in the thread:
This isn't exactly the same thing, but it's very much in the same vein of trolling the trolls. Seriously, don't go to the site, just check urban dictionary to get the general idea if you don't get the reference, crack up, and print hi res or grey scale copies for the next tea party rally.
werehippy on
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Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The very best thing
1) Scream at the top of his lungs on air
2) Cry on air, likely before or after #1
3) Call the site creators fascists
4) Call the site creators socialists
5) Blame Obama for the site
Not necessarily in that order.
Has he addressed this on air yet?
He hasn't yet, probably because there's no subtle way to bring up "and by the way, whatever you've heard I totally didn't rape and murder a chick way back when". I think the first time he's publicly acknowledged its existence was when he filed suit. Which was a really stupid idea, but I can't say I'm going to complain.
Well he hasn't provided proof that he didn't murder and rape a young girl in 1990. If he's innocent you have to wonder why he hasn't yet provided this proof.
They should be safe, because it's clearly marked as parody and even if Fox and/or Beck tried to dogpile them for defamation the ACLU or EFF should be willing to pick up the tab for a strong defense on the basis of free speech protection.
This is the bestest thing.
It's really not that hard and the fact Beck is resisting answering these basic questions really makes you wonder.
After reading the site for more than five seconds it becomes very obvious that it is a parody, and while a sufficiently nasty one, not without obvious signs that it's a joke
'totally legit police report'
'bill paxton's son's evidence'
i don't think this is sinking to the level of beck at all, because it doesn't ever pretend to be serious
i'm sure there are people who are going to read this and not get that but you have to be pretty dumb or not even read the site to begin with (the far more likely option)
Yeah, I think the fact Glenn Beck is suing just hit the top of reddit, digg, and so on and the site is getting crushed. It's sporadically up, you just have to get lucky between bouts of the server dieing.
Use a Cavuto. You know, the punctuation that turns an attack into a completely innocuous question.
Is Glenn Beck the owner of the worlds large child pornography stash?
Glenn Beck has done a great deal to damage intelligent discourse in this country and the bullshit he spews tiptoes the line of inciting violence. If he has his own moronic tactics turned against him, I can't work up much sympathy.
when salv and I agree about something it can't possibly be wrong
As a moderate, I somewhat enjoyed (by enjoyed, I meant half watching his show whilst muted with subtitles on a screen at work) his stuff, WAY before he got elevated to the position he's in now (did anyone see the show where he debunked a woman who claimed she was descended from Jesus himself? That one was awesome).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck
Ask and ye shall receive.
Yeah, that won't stay.
It depends what you mean by accomplish, though it is open to debate which is why I threw together a thread.
Will it make Glenn Beck be a better person or prove he's actually a bad person? Not at all.
Will it potentially take away some of his thunder, illustrate why spurious accusations are sleazy and poor journalism, and/or provide some sort of check against the rampant asshattery of modern day pundits? Possibly.
Not good enough. I want to see someone actually ask on air if Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990. Preferably with an pundit there to do the "he won't deny it" routine.
Then I realized that he does that pretty much every day anyway, so oh well. I mean hell, he's already doing that crazy thing where he stares all bugeyed at the camera while it zooms in sideways, or whatever. He doesn't have a lot of pride to lose.
November? The report states that this happened in March. Did Glenn Beck possibly rape and murder ANOTHER young girl in 1990?
The sheer possibility that this might actually do anything useful is almost heady.
This week on the Daily Show....
It didn't.
Really though I like this meme. It's very clearly a joke, as long as people stick with the correct phrasing ("He has yet to deny that he raped and murdered a girl in 1990. Why won't he answer these questions? What is he hiding?").
It's incredibly clear that it's just satire, so there's no real harm done. However, it should bring to light the fact that he uses these same stupid tactics to spread rumors about our president. So yeah, I'm fine with it. I don't think it's "sinking to his level" because it is obviously a joke, it's just pointing out the shitty tactics he uses.
Has Glenn Beck killed and will he kill again? Our experts break it down for you at 11 o'clock.
At least until the same problems with traditional media find their way to 4chan.