Ever wonder how liberal lies against conservatives are constructed? The insatiably lazy Eric Wemple of the Washington Post constructs such a transparently false accusation about Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly it’s worth examining just for the fun of it.
The claim: Glenn Beck attempted to “thread the needle” when talking about Roland Martin and his anti-gay tweeting.
On the one hand: Neither Beck nor O’Reilly likes CNN analyst Martin, in part because of Martin’s politics and opinions…On the other hand: Neither Beck nor O’Reilly wants to align himself too closely with anti-homophobia. Such a stance might not go over well with the base, plus open these guys up to charges of political correctness…
Thus, the prescription: Mock Martin personally on the air — go all ad hominem. But make explicit your lack of regard for the condemnation of homophobia.
Okay, so the first accusation is that Glenn wanted to bash Roland Martin personally. I wouldn’t say that. He called Martin an idiot for what he does publically on CNN, which is a national television network. I don’t know if Martin is an idiot in his personal life. I wouldn’t rule it out, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Regardless, I won’t quibble with this part of the story, for the sake of getting to the Washington Post’s main point.
Essentially: Glenn said Martin shouldn’t be fired because he didn’t want to “align himself too closely with anti-homophobia”. To put it another way, Glenn won’t say homophobia is wrong because he’s a homophobe and/or his audience are homophobes.
This is a complete lie, the Washington Post knows it’s a lie, and luckily for us—it’s an easily provable lie.
How easily? Well, literally the very next sentence after we finished talking about the Roland Martin issue (and his bizarre obsession with ascots) Glenn said this:
GLENN: There's another one that GLAAD is I think rightfully taking on, and that is the Ellen DeGeneres nonsense that's happening with J. C. Penney.
PAT: I guess because she's a lesbian.
GLENN: Can I ask you how that affects you? How does that affect you?
PAT: I don’t get that one either.
GLENN: That doesn’t even, that doesn't make any sense…so now we’re going to ban people…listen to what that is, that’s big government fascism on the other side.
Glenn went on to call the campaign “dangerous”, Pat said that people “need to stop with all of this nonsense” and I said “Stop worrying about who other people hire.” That’s Glenn Beck (and associates), criticizing a conservative group for going after Ellen DeGeneres because she’s gay. The EXACT thing the Washington Post said Glenn would never do--and it happened exactly 62 seconds after they cut off the transcript. (O’Reilly took the same stance on the Ellen story.)
Then—while talking about how Ellen can defend herself, and that Martin is still an idiot, he discussed a vicious anti-gay beating in Atlanta:
GLENN: There's a really, really bad antigay story out there that is shocking in nature. And nobody seems to be carrying the water for this one. And I wonder-- because this one is real, true hatred.
So, within less than two minutes, you have Glenn taking the exact stand the Washington Post said he would never take, on two different issues. Not to mention that 17 seconds before the Post begins the transcript, Glenn was saying that Martin “clearly has issues” with gays based on quotes that had been released. Literally, the words Glenn speaks directly before the transcript is: “What is this? 1975? You want to talk about progress? You haven't made any progress. I don't know where you're coming from...” Does that sound like someone excusing homophobia?
To try and make this case to their readership, who they obviously regard as incredibly stupid, the Washington Post:
1) Edits out what Glenn said in the seconds before the quote they use, which would disprove their argument.
2) Stops their transcript one minute before Glenn does two more stories that also disprove their argument.
This is the state of the media today. Not to mention—think of the mental gymnastics in use here. This Post article takes the story of a liberal being homophobic, and cites evidence of a conservative criticizing him, to prove that conservatives are the ones who are homophobic.
So, why did we really not call for Roland Martin to be fired? Penn Jillette puts it best: More speech is better than less speech. I don’t want any of the pathological liars that make up MSNBC’s on-air staff fired either. Let them speak and show themselves for who they are.
