Glenn opened this morning radio’s program with an emotional monologue that touched on his own family’s dark history and why he is no longer willing to sit idly and comply.
Last week, the Wonderful World of Stu aired a segment about the inflated sexual assault statistics pushed by the White House. In the clip, Stu makes it clear that sexual assault – no matter the statistic – is unacceptable, but he also asserted that overstating the number of sexual assaults belittles those who have been assaulted. You can watch the segment HERE.
Left wing outlets like Media Matters, Salon, Slate, and Jezebel to name a few have jumped on Stu’s segment, which appeared the Wonderful World of Stu and a portion of which aired on the Glenn Beck Program. The articles on these sites claim Stu – and Glenn by extension – are “mocking” sexual assault and harassment in a “horrifying rape sketch.”
Over the years, Glenn has learned it often best to ignore such outrage, but this morning he was inspired by the dozens of stories he has covered recently in which individuals stood up for what was right even when it wasn’t the politically correct position to take. Glenn publicly stood by Stu and his report and proceeded to share his family’s painful history with abuse and sexual assault.
Below is an edited transcript of the monologue:
GLENN: I want to start with something rather personal. I was going to blow something off because the usual suspects are rallying around this bit that Stu did on the TV show… The producers of that segment are women, and it's about rape and how horrible, horrible the new stats are about rape in America. It's all a lie. They are now trying to tell the American people that rape in America [on college campuses], by American men is three times the rate of the Rwandan genocide – three times the rate of rape than was happening during the
Rwandan genocide. It's an outrage. They do it by doctoring the questions in this poll.
STU: Yeah, they asked a bunch of questions in there – things like: If you were to pressure someone to have sex by telling them lies – so you say, ‘Hey, I'm actually a basketball player.’ If you do something like that, it's rape. If you make promises about the future that you know are untrue --
PAT: If you say, ‘I love you. I will love you forever.’ Also, if you ask more than once?
STU: Yes. Repeatedly asking, persistence.
PAT: So you could say, ‘Please?’ ‘No.’
GLENN: This is how they are defining it. This is a war on men and on women.
STU: And the goal here – the reason why I thought it was important to take this stat on – you are talking about turning every college-age male into Genghis Khan. You can't lie.
GLENN: I just wanted to say that everybody needs to watch this particular episode, and we'll post it at GlennBeck.com. Watch the full thing, not what the media is trying to smear with. That's totally fine because I stand by it. I stand by it. I double down on it.
And here's why: Rape is not a laughing matter, nor is it a matter that you lie about. You don't cheapen the real horror of rape.
I've told you now for about 10 years, there were things going on in my life I would talk to you about when the time is right, and it is damn near right. I will share a little bit of something that my family and I have gone through over the course of our lifetime, generationally, because I've had enough, quite frankly. I have had enough. I'm tired of being accused of standing with abusers and rapists. I'm tired of being called a monster. I'm just tired of the lies. I'm tired of the lies of abusers. I have had my fill of it.
My family has experienced rape first-hand – multiple times, over multiple generations. I have worked hard in my personal life to stop the effects of this over the last 10 years. It has changed my life. It has changed the lives of my sisters.
You know that my father died two months ago. My father was my greatest teacher, and for many years, he was my best friend. But my father, for me, did not two years ago. My father died about six years ago.
My father had a very bad dad. My father was abused by my grandfather, and my father ran away from home. And when he ran away from home, he ran to Los Angeles and he stayed at the YMCA, where he was repeatedly raped.
When he was young, he was stealing golf balls at a country club in Seattle. My father didn't know anything at all about golf, but he knew he could sell the golf balls, and so he was hiding in the woods with his friends and they would steal the golf balls, turn them in, sell them for money. And he was caught. He was caught by a man who said, ‘Really? You're going to have to work this off. You're going to caddy for me for the rest of this summer.’ That's the story that I had always been told by my father. What I found out recently was that man also repeatedly raped my father.
My father found himself going to try to find God, and he went to a church. He believed in this preacher. Instead of putting his faith in God, he put his faith in a man. And things didn't work out well.
When my father passed away, my aunt had come to visit me. We're now beginning to explore the ramifications of abuse generationally in families. My family is a shipwreck. I'm figuring out now why I believe – or have always felt as if – I was a bad dad because I have the sickness of self-doubt. I have been passed generationally the sickness, the effects – even if they are removed directly from you – you still feel the effects of what happened. And abuse was happening in my family. I told my father 10 years ago that it would stop because it was now being passed to the grandchildren. He said it would. I said, ‘It will, Dad? Because if it doesn't, I will end it.’
It was physical abuse, but it was not sexual abuse at that time. My father never abused any of us sexually that I know of, but my family has felt the ramifications of his abuse and has felt the sexual abuse by others in our family.
Don't you ever preach to me about what I can say and cannot say about rape. Don't you ever try to be an authority to me on the effects of rape. Don't you ever try to tell me what victims should or should not feel, as I have tried to piece my family back together and to give my sisters the love that they deserve and have never had.
My family and I are standing because of the grace of God, and because we have each other, and we have the truth. And if you have the truth and the courage to pursue the truth, time will heal everything. The good news is that I, and now millions of others, are finally facing the truth, no matter where your fear or the lies are buried, and it goes far beyond sexual abuse. There are millions now willing to speak, even if it means losing everything.
I have been saying this for a while, that courage is contagious. And last night, when I saw what was being said about Stu's segment on my program, I started to [think] I'm not going to say anything about it. But I have been inspired by those who are now standing in PTA meetings and have stood to speak their mind but violated a stupid two-minute rule and went to jail for the first time in their lives. I have been inspired for the teachers who are beginning to stand, and the TV show hosts and the football players and the peaceful group of individuals, many of whom are radically different than I am – financially, ethnically, politically, sexually – but they are all standing now, peacefully and calmly. But mark my words: Fully submitted to the truth.
I will not comply. You do not own my thoughts. A few things are very clear to me, and no amount of speech giving or bumper stickers or EPA, NSA, IRS threats will ever change the facts that are true.
These are just a few of them: My child's fingers are not, nor will they ever be a gun. Those who survived the Holocaust did not do so because of white privilege. A Hollywood blacklist is exactly the same horror show, whether the names on that list are communists or conservatives. 2 plus 2 equals 4. Always has, always will. I don't give a flying crap how you got there, as long as you got there, to 4. Global warming is not the same as global cooling or global climate change, which is different than global climate crisis and none of them have to do with the shootings in Chicago or the idea of regulating the very vapor that we as humans breathe out, that we all learn trees breathe in to grow. That is just as ridiculous as your straight face plan to now regulate cow farts.
I'm sorry, but I respectfully, lovingly, yet full-throated declare that is nonsense. I also declare the self-evident truth that racism is not about having high expectations. Racism is not about standards. And rape certainly is not about someone asking for sex too many times and then being sad when you turn them down.
If you had the facts on how brutal rape is, it shows how awful your peer-reviewed study questions really are. Let's contrast and compare, shall we, America? Who is hurting women? Who is standing up for women? Who is defending them and who is using them, merely for political power?
Have you no shame? How many gay friends do we all have that are now embarrassed by the people who have use third reel fight for freedom to come out of the shadows and love who they want, just to bash, control, and destroy everything in its wake for power now?
I have quite a few gay friends, and, without exception, they all say the same thing. They are now embarrassed and horrified at what the power left has turned the real cause of each of us being treated with respect and judged for our character into a thinly veiled mechanism of threat and retribution for anybody who dares agree on everything in this ever-expanding agenda. We have begun to destroy those who were at their side the whole time, who have the audacity to say, ‘Maybe, maybe things have gone too far.’
After a break, Glenn continued:
Those from all walks of life, color, sexual orientation and political ideology that wish to force others to think and behave the way they deem is the right way will always use every tool of their trade. Look at what they are now defining as rape. They are saying that threatening to hurt, threatening to smear, threatening to make afraid, lying to get their way, or pretending to be hurt or sad if you don't get your way. All of those things, they are now saying is rape. But look at those who are doing all of these things to our society. Look at the way they are behaving. Are they not behaving as their own self-defined rapists?
Make no mistake, they are not rapists, at least on this program. We will define rape and racist as it is commonly understood. A rapist and a fascist, while both monsters, are different. Even though fascists have throughout history used rape as a tool to gain hold over a person or a public, rape still holds a unique position in society. Yes, both rapists and fascists, left and right, both want to force someone to do as they wish, or they will humiliate, threaten, violate, beat, kill or destroy. Similar tactics, because as all intellectual and intellectually honest people will admit, rape is not about sex. It is about power over another person, their choices, their body and their life.
Those currently in power in government, education, banking, even global business, should understand: your time of lies and deceit and corruption are over. Even if the world takes this current crop of bums and throws them out, I want you to know the other side is going to use the same exact levers and tactics again.
But here's the good news. I really, truly believe, at least 10% of the people on this planet are wide awake now, from China to Colorado, and that is more than enough to defeat anyone who wears a red tie or a blue tie or any kind of military uniform. There are enough of us now, willing to stand just as they did in Tiananmen Square. Stand against oppression in any form, and that number is growing.
Martin Luther King said 300 years ago enough is enough, and he's right. Rape, racism, oppression of any kind isn't a color. It's not a class. It's not a gender problem. It is a human problem. It didn't start in America. It started with Cain and Abel and has been repeating itself for thousands of years. Contrary to what our public school teachers are now forced to teach to stave the wrath of the labor union, slave owners don't have to at live in plantation houses. Chains don't have to be physical, and those who use power to silence others don't have to be white. They just have to see others as the means and themselves as the ends.
Just as Moses and a handful of these on the lowest rung on the ladder of political power did in Egypt and Lincoln did in America and Bonhoeffer did in Germany, Gandhi in India, Lech Walesa in Poland, we will stand - no matter the personal cost - we'll stand with intellectual honesty, stand peacefully, we will stand as decent and caring, a mass majority of all walks of life, voting records and lifestyle choices. And we refuse to leave the lunch counter because we actually do believe in something.
We actually do believe that we can all be different and yet we can all live side-by-side, we can all be friends, we can disagree on all kinds of thing, but we can still work together and play together and be responsible enough as humans to defend each other's right to be different. We don't need a political action committee to stoke the flames of book burning, witch hunts or mob rule. We don't need the political action committees to tell us about blacklists. All we need is each other and the truth.
Our black present, neighbors and families did not get beaten, go to jail and many die to win the right as a black man to have full citizenship, only now to be told to shut up and sit down at the back of the bus, because you're not black enough. Only now to be told sit down, shut up, sit in the back of the bus, because you're Christian or atheist or gay or straight, liberal or conservative. We're humans first. We will continue to shout the truth from the rooftops. I am a man, and I demand to be treated as such.
Adam Corolla said this week, it's not a crazy right wing idea. It's just the right idea. Raising your kids to be responsible and loving is a parent's job. Working hard and being able to pursue your dreams and keep your gain, helping those who can't make it and not because of mind-set or attitude. That's their problem, but because of physical or mental disadvantages, helping those people, refusing to look away when you hear the cries for help, and standing up at the school yard for any bully, no matter where they're found, or no matter what label the victim seems to be wearing. It is our job, not as Americans, but as members of the human family.
We stand with our sisters and our mothers and our daughters, because we love them, but we also stand with our fathers and our brothers and our sons, who also have been raped as well, those who have been destroyed by the cruel and calculated accusation of rape or racist, like those who smeared the cops over Tawana Brawley or the Duke lacrosse team. We will not cower and we will not conform.
This isn't about white privilege or black power. This is about power to the people, where it rightfully belongs. It is about our duty and our honor as fellow human beings to comfort those who mourn, to heal the sick, to care about the poor and the poor in spirit, to hold those who are afraid, to stand with the meek, the humble, the real victims of rape and racism and classism or any other kind of ism. Unlike the so-called civil rights leaders who have shamed themselves decades ago. We are not preachers, we are not politicians an we are not community organizers. We are just people, and we like it that way.
We don't want, we don't need, we don't desire any recognition for this. We don't want any power from it. We certainly don't want money, retribution or vengeance, because that makes us into the monster we're all trying to stop. We really even don't want to win. We don't want to win, because logic teaches us that for us to win, it requires someone else to lose. I don't need to win. I only search for reconciliation. Reconciliation to the truth, because we know the truth will set us free.
I have two dads, one who is far from perfect, and one who is, and the one who is perfect asked me to love the people that hate, not to excuse their actions and not to love them in a condescending way, but a real way.
The people who are perpetrating these lies are in pain. To stay alive, they have to control others, because their lives are completely out of control, and they are afraid that they are going to be found out.
It's reconciliation, loving one's enemies does not mean condoning their actions. It actually means exactly the opposite. True love means you have to speak the truth. You're wrong. This is a problem. You have done things that deserve punishment, but take my hand. I offer it to you as a sign of peace. Walk with me, talk with me. You do have to pay a price for your actions, but I, too, am a sinner. I, too, am struggling just to keep my head above water, so I will walk with you, I will hold your hand, in hopes that you will have the peace inside of me, and I will feel your pain, but if you deny my hand, that's okay. I can't force you to do anything, but make a choice.
Love and forgiveness or hate and destruction. We have to stop this madness, put down our labels, put down our desire to control, put down your desire to manipulate.
The answers are easy. Look for the divine. There's power, peace, love, forgiveness and a chance to start all over again. Let us humble ourselves to be even worthy to see the truth again.
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