David Sirota: The Beck Bank Bailout: Glenn Beck Championed the Wall Street Bailout He Now Criticizes

[OhioChick]

Mon Sep 21, 2009 at 15:38

I wrote a newspaper column this week noting the rank hypocrisy in political and media circles when it comes to their supposed concerns about the deficit. I noted that Tea Party protesters are among the biggest hypocrites - and chief among them is political terrorist Glenn Beck, because, as you'll see, the truth is the bailout is the Beck Bank Bailout.

As Frank Rich notes, Beck has been promoting himself not only as a racist culture warrior, but as an economic populist who rails on government giveaways to Wall Street. In that sense, he's sort of trying to be a neo-Buchananite...except, there's just one problem with his economic argument: Glenn Beck championed the Wall Street bailout he claims to be leading the fight against. In fact, when progressives were fighting tooth and nail against the bailout (and taking significant criticism for doing so) Beck was promoting it, offering criticism only for it not being bigger:

"I think the bailout is the right thing do. The "REAL STORY" is the $700 billion that you're hearing about now is not only, I believe, necessary, it is also not nearly enough, and all of the weasels in Washington know it." - Glenn Beck, CNN, 9/22/08

That's right - this is the Beck Bank Bailout. So the next time you hear Glenn Beck railing on government spending and corporate giveaways and the failure to crack down on Wall Street largesse, remember - Glenn Beck is railing on the very largesse that Glenn Beck intensely promoted and supported on the national Glenn Beck television show.

(huge h/t to Jenkins Ear and ThinkProgress)

NOTE: Beck sometimes calls the stimulus bill a "bailout" - but let's be clear: As you can see from the transcript, he's referring not to the stimulus bill, but to the TARP bailout that he now rails on.

UPDATE: Time magazine, and its reporter David Von Drehle, just published a cover story puff piece on Beck. The fact that the magazine devoted substantial resources to such a piece - and didn't bother to even mention this central hypocrisy of Beck - is not only an absolute embarrassment, it shows exactly why journalism is in a severe crisis.

http://www.openleft.com/diary/15196/glenn-beck-championed-the-wall-street-bailout-he-now-criticizes

[JohnWxy]

1. recommended. Beck only about a year and half ago was critisizing our health care system too,

when he got what he said was poor health care at that time. John Stewart featured this on one of his recent shows.

[ihavenobias]

3. That was great.

Typical Republican, he only cares when it hurts him personally.

[BluDemocratGirl]

4. Typical Republican? Nah. Make that "closet Blue Dog Dem"! LOL

Beck is full of shit to the core.

[ihavenobias]

5. FOS is right.

I can't argue with that. He's also the most obnoxious talk show host on the planet. His dopey facial expressions and gestures drive me nuts.

[ihavenobias]

2. Wait, it gets even better when Beck's quote is compared to this...

"I am so mad about this proposed federal bailout of Wall Street, I can't see straight. Do you understand what they're going to do? They are about to steal ONE TRILLION dollars from us and just hand it over to the guys on Wall Street who screwed everything up. They are going to take all of their bad loans and dump it on us. We're going to have pay for their mistakes!"

Cenk Uygur, Huffington Post, 9/19/2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/this-federal-bailout-prop_b_127837.html