Posted on 03/23/2010 11:23:59 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Journalists love the marketplace of ideas until people start selling ideas they find objectionable. The liberal media somehow manages to shout about its right to speak freely while demanding others be silenced.
Glenn Beck is probably the most popular target for the left's demands for censorship. Cokie Roberts and her husband Steve picked up that ball and ran with it today in their joint syndicated column. They dubbed Beck "a traitor to the American values he professes so loudly to defend" and claimed he is "corrupting the very essence of democracy." And all this just by speaking.
Unsurprisingly, the immense damage Beck is doing to the American political process can only be demonstrated anecdotally:
Steve recently took part in a lunchtime panel sponsored by a local radio station. A beefy young man in the audience grabbed the microphone and challenged the speakers, in a sneering and confrontational tone, to name one good thing about President Obama's health-care proposal.
Steve's answer: People without insurance flood hospital emergency rooms and push up medical bills for everyone. So it would be in the "national interest" to expand insurance and hold down costs.
"The national interest?" retorted the questioner in an even louder voice. "That sounds like fascism!"
We have been in this business a long time. We welcome tough questions and certainly don't believe we have all the answers. But "fascism"? That's over the line -- way over the line -- for any sensible or civilized conversation.
We don't know what the beefy guy reads or to whom he listens, but we would bet he's a disciple of Glenn Beck. The popular author and broadcaster who has turned nonstop name-calling into an art form is a big fan of the "F-word."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
The weak and the stupid are so easily drawn to the sweet murmerings of Communism.
So let me get this straight. Roberts uses an ancedotal story about a beefy guy (I assume they put that beefy part in to insinuate that they were in physical danger) who characterizes their response as fascist. So they immediately leap to the conclusion that this guy is an avid Glen Beck watcher/listener and go on to castigate Beck. Nice mental gymnastics on that one.
I think the lame stream media wants to make Glen Beck out to be a modern day Father Coughlin. Oh wait, Father Coughlin liked the fascists. I guess that won’t work...
“We don’t know what the beefy guy reads or to whom he listens, but we would bet he’s a disciple of Glenn Beck.”
(Shaking my head in disbelieve.) What a complete idiot.
Here’s a thought, Cokie the Commie — tell us which of Beck’s facts are wrong, or shut up. How about elevate the level of discussion to the facts instead of baseless ad hominem attacks...the final retreat of faux intellectual.
Cokie is still trading on her dad’s reputation and that husband she has barely made it out of kindergarten.
While not a Glenn Beck fan, he has more going for him that .the whole Cokie tribe, including her hubby
Another limousine-liberal gated-community “reporter.”
Corrupting? What, is he Socrates?
How is it corrupting to ask questions, and to ask people to think?
Way to go Cokie, I almost forgot you were still around, say hi to Steve.
Remember the Rush Rooms?
We need the Beck Rooms for after work.
After work you go to your local eatery/bar and watch the Glen Beck en masse.
This is like the liberty tree.
This is like going to houses to listen to Ronald Reagan’s record regarding the slavery of socialized medicine.
We have to have the modern liberty trees where the majority speaks free of the tyrany of CNN, MSNBC, Dinosaur media, and even FNC staffers.
NEVER FORGET WE ARE THE MAJORITY.
Whining Little Bitch?
What is amazing is that those on the left don’t see how the sovereignity of the individual can be maintained while helping people. Instead they do use “fascist” ideas about national interest to support big government control where ever their whims take them. It is not only dangerous and costly but totally unecessary. The problem is they are lazy sobs who don’t want to do the hard work to garner help for people “in need” by simply asking for charity. Instead they support huge draconian bureacracy so they don’t have to deal with the obtaining the free consent of the individuals who they wish to draft the resources of to support their gov programs.
Somebody told me they hoped I get cancer and die today. It was some f’ing Canadian stalinist I got into it with on Facebook.
Her father was a senator.
She is a beltway brat.
They just can’t accept that a man in the audience could actually think for himself. I guess because they KNOW liberals can’t.
A respected T.V. analyst. What’s a “T.V. analyst” and who determines if he’s “respected”.
Cokie’s married? To a man?
Uh oh. More name calling. Guess I learned it from Beck.
The thing is, we can’t go to the Emergency Department(s) any more because we know they are overrun with illegals demanding free services. Anything less than chopping a limb off, I ain’t going because I know that sitting there for six hours will make me worse than I am treating it at home.
People will do well to learn to treat themselves, if they do not know already.
“Don’t worry about it. Those $19.95 brain surgeries will be able to see you through..:)”
Unless you’re too old to qualify. But, then you’ll receive some really touching end of life counseling and planning.
No Cokie, you are doing that. Cokie delivered a speech to a graduate banking school I attended in 1991 or 1992. What I heard in her speech made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and has made me distrust the media completely ever since.
She said (paraphrasing) that news had become so complicated that it had become necessary for the media to interpret the news for the public.
I heard it with my own ears long ago. The media certainly has taken this excuse, run with it and turned “news” reporting into a new art form of misrepresentation, deceit and thinly veiled ideological advocacy.
Hey Dorkie, we’re a Represented Republic, not a democracy.
Never more than now. I keep remembering the scene in Cabaret where Sally Bowles goes with someone to stand under the railroad bridge when the train goes by just so they can shout and scream at the top of their lungs.
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