Friendly Fire

Things are going pretty damn well for conservatives, aren't they? We've basically stopped Obamacare dead in its tracks, cap and trade almost certainly won't pass, Michelle Malkin & Mark Levin are selling a lot of books, Fox News's ratings have never been higher, etc. Yes, I think it's time to show a little mercy to the Democrats and progressive Republicans. Time to take our foot off the gas and move on to more important things like ripping apart Glenn Beck , right? Wrong. The analogy was made that some of us in the VRWC are already dancing in the end zone, but I don't think that's accurate. I think a better analogy is that some of us are Leon Lett and Don Bebee is right behind us, ready to knock the ball out of our hands.

Look, I personally think Glenn Beck is a little off. His "Inconvenient Book" ranges from interesting to pretty strange, like when he waxes poetic about McGriddles and Coke Zero. But you know what? I skip the strange parts. Yeah, I do. Isn't that revolutionary? Instead I focus on things like the outrageous quotes from muslim and environmental leaders and some fascinating factoids like which 10 U.S. cities have the most poverty and which political party has been running them the longest during their decline.

Regardless of what you think of Beck, he virtually exposed Van Jones by himself and got him fired while enduring smears and boycotts in the process. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting there, Glenn. Now let's have people who are supposed to be on the same side as you talk about how nuts you are when really they're shitting their pants because you called Obama a racist and they so don't want to go there. So the left can call people like Jeremiah Wright a silly old uncle, but we need to flee in terror and disown Glenn Beck at the drop of a hat, right? Even worse, we are supposed to see Beck's comments as the equivalent of Wright's? Count me out of that self-defeating nonsense.

Whatever Beck's faults are, his fearlessness at issuing challenges to elitist know-it-alls at every turn is not one of them. In fact, we need more of it. "Oh you can't say Obama's a racist! You can't say it!" Okay, then why not? What makes it so ludicrous? Obama is the one that willingly attended that church for two decades and is on record several times speaking glowingly about his "spiritual mentor". A spiritual mentor who just happens to be an evil (yes, evil) virus that twists the Gospel, using it to instil hatred and envy in his congregation while taking their money to retire in an opulent mansion in an almost all-white community (in other words, the embodiment of most accusations the left repeatedly makes about religious leaders).

At first glance it seems to me that the onus would be on Obama to dig his way out of an impossibly deep hole. Instead we hand him a ladder and give him a pass by letting him say that he never listened to any of "those" sermons for twenty years and Wright somehow in the span of a month or two turned into a really bad dude...even though the sermons in question were several years old. Fighting through all of that stuff will be hard, though. There must be something easier we can do rather than have to confront the whole racism thing.

It turns out there is. We can refuse to even discuss the possibility that Obama might be a racist, leave unanswered the question of "What type of person would willingly attend such a church for so long?" and try to destroy Glenn Beck, rationalizing it every step of the way. He's not just a Mormon, he's a kooky Mormon, he's a "recovered" alcoholic (air quotes for the unspoken, unfounded suggestion that mmmmaaaaaybe he's saucing a little before every show). The best part of this is that we can show the liberals how perfectly reasonable we are, which is always our goal, right? The more we demonstrate our hatred for Beck, the more we reveal our reasonableness. When the liberals realize we are perfectly reasonable, they will all suddenly forget their progressive beliefs and will become conservatives overnight because we don't like Glenn Beck anymore. We'll do that even if the liberals' goal in all this is to discredit Beck and whitewash all of Van Jones's dirty laundry so that any time someone complains about Jones, or any other czar, the punk card will be, "Hey, you're not like Glenn Beck, are you?" Make sense?

We don't have to agree with every damn thing that every single one of us does or says. So Beck thinks McCain would have been worse than Obama. We might not agree and we might not understand the purpose of the 45 minute Katie Couric interview, but why spend time and energy arguing about something that can't be proved or disproved at a time when Obama unveils some new affront to our country every day. If you think it was a stupid comment to make in the first place, then doesn't talking about the comment itself at length just compound the stupidity? There's nothing wrong with disagreeing and pointing out faults, but there is something wrong with making it your number one priority and obsessing over it during a time when there are much, much bigger fish to fry.

As much as progressives want to erase the concept of good and evil, there actually are good guys and bad guys out there. For the moment, Beck is one of the good guys, imperfect though he may be. It's entirely possible that may change one day, as it could for any of us, but if it does there is no need to tear our clothes and apologize for him at great length to try and appease the liberals who don't know anything more of Beck other than clips from the Daily Show anyway. If that day comes, if Beck goes too far off the reservation, then he will do himself in because people won't watch his show or buy his books anymore. The only commentary from us needed will be, "That's a shame. He did some good things. Now back to a more pertinent issue." We don't need essays and columns and documentaries assuring our opposition of how much we are not like Glenn Beck while the country burns around us.

The simplest analogy I can make is that the Army and Marines do not get along well and are fierce rivals. However, they both have the same ultimate goal and you won't see one shelling the other to try and score points with the Taliban.

Finally, a note to any self-righteous, perfectly reasonable, moderate commentators out there. Once they've finished with Beck and the others they're coming for you, because you will suddenly be "the fringe", and that's what this is really all about. Beck is in the crosshairs at the moment, but he's not the first and he won't be the last. It's the beginning, not the end. It never ends.