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GLENN: What does the front page of Drudge say right now?
PAT: It says Beck has a dream, rally set, rally set, Sharpton looms.
GLENN: You know it's never good when you get a phone call and somebody says, better check the front page headline of Drudge, above the fold. And it has your name in it. You know, it's never a good thing, but this one actually I think kind of is. It is a relatively fair, and I say relatively because it's, you know, we understand it's the Washington Post. It's relatively fair story on me, I think. I read it last night about 1:00 a.m. and then there's another one on NPR that I think is worth pointing out. So let's just explore here on what exactly the Drudge Report is showing America on what's being written.
STU: Yeah, you can, actually if you go to the Drudge Report right now, you can see a picture, which, there's not too many pictures out there of the event as of yet. You can see the sign and everything else, everything's set up.
GLENN: You know, may I ‑‑ saying that there's not very many pictures, et cetera, et cetera, let me show you this. This is coming from the NPR article: Stoking ‑‑ let's see. His words, his credentials for hosting a rally on the anniversary and location of one of the most memorable civil rights events are shoddy at exist, nonexistent at worst. Stoking even more suspicions is how secretive Beck is being. Little is known about the event except that there will be speeches by Beck and Palin, and attendees are prohibited from bringing signs. The fear, of course, is that it will turn into a pit of hatred.
STU: (Laughing). Really? A pit of hatred? Wow.
GLENN: A pit of hatred.
PAT: Is that like the pit of despair from Princess Bride? It's the pit of despair. Anyway ‑‑
STU: (Laughing).
GLENN: Yeah, a pit of hatred. But there may be a glimmer of hope, writes NPR. On May 28th Beck devoted more than a half hour of his Fox program to celebrating the overlooked historical contributions of forgotten African‑American heroes. Yes, more than a half hour. We've dedicated three hours to that. That's not ‑‑ those are three total hours. That's not cobbling things together. We've probably done ‑‑ I bet we've done seven hours in the last year.
STU: Yeah, not to mention additional material on Insider Extreme that you've done on the same topic.
GLENN: Yeah. With the assistance of David Barton, a Christian historian, and Lucas Morel, political professor and author of Lincoln's Sacred Effort: Defining Religion's Role, blah, blah‑blah, Beck highlighted the accomplishments of black men like Prince Whipple and James Armistead, former slaves who fought alongside general Lafayette and General Washington in the American Revolution. I'm so tired of people saying that it was just white people who founded America, said Beck to a small mixed audience. The audience is always the same size. We have 50 chairs in the studio.
STU: (Laughing).
PAT: It's not like that day you just made sure there were going to be like ten.
GLENN: Yeah, there wasn't a lot of people that would show up. There's only 50 chairs. No, why are we intentionally leaving peoples out? If one could get past the host and the co‑host's final points, liberals try to keep black founders out of history books in order to better play the victim card ‑‑ no, no, no. Not so the African‑American plays the victory card ‑‑ victim card. So those who want power can play the victim card. The segment was actually quite touching and certainly not what we've come to expect from a Glenn Beck show.
May I just ask a question? Why not? Why don't you expect that?
STU: You're doing founders Friday. Every Friday you've been doing these things looking back at history in this way.
GLENN: Yes. Try this one. A month and a half later when Shirley Sherrod was fired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture after video footage edited her out to make her look like racist and it hit the Internet, Beck broke form yet again. While the White House, USDA and NAACP backpedalled, egg on their faces from their condemnations of Sherrod, Beck complained the NAACP didn't watch the whole video? This woman deserves her job back. Chalk it up to Beck looking for an easy shot at the NAACP.
No, no, no, here's an idea. Why don't we chalk it up to being honorable? Why don't we chalk it up to actually having character? Judge a man by the content of his character. Why don't we chalk it up to doing the right thing, not just trying to take out anybody for any reason because they're an enemy.
STU: Yeah, this isn't you breaking form. This is them not knowing as much about your form as they think they do. And that's a big difference. They just think they have you defined so perfectly, every time they ‑‑
GLENN: They have no idea. Have you noticed that no one is writing about honor? No one is writing a story about the lack of honor in this country? No one is writing any story, no one's writing any story about God. I guarantee you the only stories that will come out after what is happening will be taking the message apart about God. No one will say, well, you know what? Well, that actually kind of made sense. Wow, that ‑‑ you know, look at what ‑‑ maybe we should look into what's happened to our churches, what's happened to our God, what's happened to our faith, who's pitting everybody against each other in faith. Nobody will do that. Nobody will do that. They cannot get their arms around the fact that this is just about honor and God. They can't do it. It's got to be something else.
The story that's on the front page of the Drudge Report talks about how the Republicans are running. They're running from me.
STU: Well, yeah. I mean, at the very least they are being agnostic about the event, and that's fine. I mean, it's not a Republican/Democrat event.
GLENN: I love this that somehow or another ‑‑ did you get the impression that they were saying the Republicans are just lying about not knowing or ‑‑ because they don't know. Nobody knows.
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: Nobody knows ‑‑ my own staff doesn't know. You know what I'm worried about? I'm worried about somebody ‑‑ everybody has been briefed on their part on what they do and what the parameters are, everybody on stage, but nobody knows the whole picture. So I'm afraid that somebody could get on and say something that is out of whack. I was thinking last night, I've got to have a meeting before we go on stage with everybody to make sure they really, truly understand. Now, I'm being told that everybody does, but I haven't talked to anybody personally who's on stage, and nobody knows the whole picture. So now, why would all of a sudden the Republicans know?
STU: Because you have a phone call every morning with all Republicans and they tell you what to say. You forgot about that.
GLENN: No, that's George Stephanopoulos, the people at ABC and the people in the media with the Obama administration.
STU: Well, yeah, but this is ‑‑ this is typical of what's going on is they are trying to define this event by typical sort of political measures, where they are now trying to ‑‑ Washington Post story which is linked to the front page of Drudge now is talking about how this rally will be a measure of the tea party strength. And while ‑‑ you know, look. Our listeners or a lot of people who are involved in the tea party, understandable. But it's not ‑‑ this is not what this event is about.
GLENN: This isn't a tea party rally.
PAT: Yeah, they also say that it will ‑‑ one of the unanswered questions is whether it will help or hurt Republicans in November.
GLENN: I don't really care.
PAT: Nobody's even talking about that. We're not talking about that.
GLENN: Look who keeps trying to make this a partisan event.
STU: It's not us.
PAT: The press.
GLENN: Yeah.
PAT: The media.
GLENN: They keep trying to make this a partisan event. I got news for you. If you are coming and you are like, I'm in the GOP and I can't wait because this is gonna really be great for the election, you're going to be sadly disappointed. You're going to be unbelievably disappointed because it isn't about the elections in November, has nothing to do with it. In fact, the whole point of this is unless we restore honor, the elections are meaningless! It doesn't matter! You can change them all from Ds to all Rs and then back again, and we've been doing this for a long time, R, D, R, D, R, D, it makes no difference. We have to change ourselves and then the political landscape will change from that. What do you want to be? What is your dream? What is your dream? Where do you go from here? We're at the end of the road of living it the way we have. So now what is our choice? They've got to make it about politics.
And it kills me. This is going to show the strength of the tea party? How exactly?