Here’s the article from Media Matters. If we don’t blame Ozzy and Metallica when heavy metal kids commit suicide, how can we blame Glen Beck/Fox News for what the crazy guy in the article tried to do?
I believe that popular culture can be the “tip of the iceberg” that pushes an unstable person over the edge. But, there is something else, deep in that person, that is the true cause.
That’s not a good comparison. Ozzy got blamed for some suicides based on the lyrics for a song that was anti-alcohol. Other metal bands were falsely accused of secretly hiding evil messages in their songs through backmasking, a technique that could allegedly deliver messages directly to the subconsious of impressionable kids who did not even know they were hearing something sinister. It was a total fiction invented by paranoids based on people convincing themselves they heard something when they played music backward. Glenn Beck does tell his audience that the country is in danger from socialists plots and the economy is going to collapse into chaos. That’s not something people are interpreting, it’s his message.
I think we pretty much agree about this: some people are volatile or sick, meaning that if they don’t get help they’re likely to do something bizarre or crazy. What happens is influenced by what they are exposed to. So perhaps this guy was very likely to do something crazy regardless, Glenn Beck’s views resonated with him, and he tried to start a revolution because he was watching a lot of Glenn Beck and other shows of that type.
Is that Glenn Beck’s fault? He’s never told anybody to kill anybody else. What I would say is that he’s an entertainer, and his version of entertainment is saying things that terrify a lot of people and playing to those emotions. He’s nowhere near putting a gun in anybody’s hands, but we’d all be better off if people did not handle these kinds of subjects in the inflammatory and crazy way he does. He’s toying with people, basically, and while most of them probably know the score, some of them don’t realize he’s just a guy saying crazy stuff because it gets him paid a lot of money. That’s the problem. It’s probably part of the human condition for some people to be that manipulative and thoughtless, and for others to be that gullible.
Glenn Beck is a jerk. He is a rabble rouser, sitting in his “fear room” and fearing unnnnnhhhhhh something.
BUT this perp was a nutcase who already had a felony on the books. If he didn’t have Beck to blame, he’d have someone else. Beck did not tell him to do it. " … He’s never told anybody to kill anybody else. … " He says a lot of nonsensical paranoid garbage, but he never said “go kill someone”. He’d be in jail for inciting violence if he did. At the very least, he’d have been taken off the air and fired by now. I have NO use for Beck, but it isn’t his fault that some ex felon space cadet was crazy.
To my totally unqualified reading, Williams sounds like an untreated schizophrenic. He says Beck and other broadcasters are trying to lead him to a certain conclusion without admitting what they mean, he’s big into conspiracy theories, he’s got the notebooks full of stuff, and we know what he wound up doing. Not that all schizophrenics wind up doing those things.
I’m not sure he’d be in jail, but he wouldn’t be drawing a paycheck from Fox. Ann Coulter once got fired for saying stuff like that, and it was only a week after September 11th. And speaking of her, the New York Times had a piece this week about how she is reinventing her act after having been displaced by people like Beck.
As much as I dislike Beck, I won’t hold him personally responsible for every loon that comes along.
Neither will I. On the other hand - and this doesn’t apply specifically to Beck - is this guy just taking Beck’s statements to their logical conclusions? If Beck believed half of what he said he’d probably do this kind of thing himself.
I dunno, even if there was some weird liberal conspiracy running the world, I don’t think shooting up the ACLU would be a very logical way to attack it. Presumably the Eldars of Progressivism, or whomever is supposed to be running things from the shadows, don’t sit around the ACLU lobby all day.
“According to a police investigation, Williams opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers”
Well yeah, the CHP has always been a hotbed of subversive conspiratorial … stuff. Gotta deal with those pesky police and their constant plots to overthrow the country and do all that lawless … stuff 
There was an interesting article on NPR this weekend about Glenn Beck and his repeated use of the phrase “the Constitution is hanging by a thread.” Supposedly this has a lot of Mormon symbolism, especially for certain subgroups of the LDS.
Sometimes it gets so strange, I wonder if maybe instead of LDS maybe there’s a bit of LSD? 
Really? Why? “Hanging by a thread” is a pretty common idiom, and I’m not aware of it having any particular meaning for Mormons that it doesn’t have for everybody else.
As much as the creators of glenbeckisevil.org would be responsible for the assassination of their target. Which is to say, not at all.
To assume this guy would’ve done “something bizarre or crazy” even without the prompting of Glenn Beck is dangerous speculation.
When people act out in response to right-wing propaganda, why is the immediate response so often “Oh, he was just a felon,” or “Oh, he was just a nut,” or “Oh, he would’ve probably acted out anyway?”
Bullshit. The words Beck uses are meant to incite violence, but with enough plausible deniablity for him and the rest of the right wing to duck any consequences. People on the left and in the middle need to stop writing off right-wing “revolutionaries” as “nuts,” “felons,” and “likely to act out regardless.”
This Williams guy did exactly the thing Beck deep-down wants people to do: act out against the left/government/ACLU/etc. Will we only take this threat seriously after we have another OKC bombing? Or Waco?
Well I was driving home from a football game, and was a little mad, and didn’t hear the whole article but from what I remember there is an LDS group that places great weight on certain prophecies about there being a time when Mormons will be looked to to rise up and save the Constitution, and the “hanging by a thread” terminology is used frequently. I wish I knew more, and was kind of hoping someone with more knowledge on this would help me out.
Googling “LDS constitution hanging by a thread” I came across this:
Not a lot of knowledge here, either, but here’s the article from NPR:
Googling, the theory is apparently that Glenn is referencing the White Horse Prophecy. Its kind of hard to tell from the quote in the wikipedia article if thats really what he’s doing, or if he’s just using the same common idiom that was used in the prophecy by coincidence. The exact quote ("“we are at the point or we are very near the point where our Constitution is hanging by a thread.”) does make it kinda sound like he’s referencing something that he takes for granted will happen at some point if not now, then in the future which strenghtens the case that he’s thinking of the prophecy when he uses the phrase, but its hardly obvious either way.
It’s not even a “logical conclusion” thing since for all intents and purposes the “take our country back” crew are expected to do just that (or at least make substantial progress toward it) in three weeks’ time so why go into meltdown mode now (However, if by 2013 they’re using “Second Amendment Remedies” because the Golden Age is not being restored quick enough…).
And no, Beck does not want to cause an actual armed insurrection, among other things because as I just said, what happens TO Beck & Co. if 2013 rolls along with the nuts completely unleashed and not only there’s no restoration but all those gold investments he shilled turn out to be losers? He just wants us to be afraid that there MAY be an armed insurrection… unless we are sensible and “voluntarily” abandon the evil liberal policies.
If anything Beck will claim this guy gives him more arguments 'cause he can then say it’s our evil socialistic policies what’s driving people loony. After all, … “the things he exposed blew my mind”? What, am I Col. Kurtz? will ask Beck. No, don’t follow me, follow God… or some crap like that.
Here is the NPR story. I haven’t taken the time to listen so maybe my opinion will change.
Dana Milbank has been arguing that Glenn Beck is purposely sending out coded messages to Mormon followers.
I don’t buy the conspiracy theory and go with the theory and think Glenn Beck like almost everyone else uses terminology he himself is familiar with. Because he’s obviously read some LDS theology it isn’t really surprising he uses phrases that can be found there.
I agree, the propagandists of the Right love this sort of thing. They whip their followers up into a frenzy, then when some of them actually act on what is being said they act mock-horrified. It’s a form of terrorism; they are trying to terrorize people they disapprove of with the threat of assault or murder, while at the same type the leaders maintain plausible deniability so they aren’t the ones who go to prison. And it works; for example, abortion gets harder and harder to get thanks to the omnipresent threat of violence and murder from “pro-life” thugs and assassins. Thugs and assassins who are just acting on what the anti-choice leaders are saying, and who get a great deal of approval from the movement despite official condemnation from the leadership, condemnation which is obviously just crocodile tears.