Like so many people, I was stunned at about 8:53pm or so last night with the sudden departure of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC.
This morning I woke up and took a look at the NY Times web page and I saw this:
More after the jump
Well, we all know the story about Keith by now, but look at that headline underneath.
While the sanity (if a bit bombastic at times) of Keith Olbermann gets the boot; the truly lunatic insanity of Glenn Beck not only stays on the air, but has his corporate masters' blessings to so verbally savage a 78 year old professor for something she wrote 45 years ago, that she is receiving all sorts of threats.
Accusing Frances Fox Piven of a plan to "intentionally collapse our economic system," the article says:
Her name has become a kind of shorthand for "enemy" on Mr. Beck’s Fox News Channel program, which is watched by more than 2 million people, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze. This week, Mr. Beck suggested on television that she was an enemy of the Constitution. Frances Fox Piven, a City University of New York professor, has been a primary character in Mr. Beck’s warnings about a progressive take-down of America. Ms. Piven, Mr. Beck says, is responsible for a plan to "intentionally collapse our economic system."
Her name has become a kind of shorthand for "enemy" on Mr. Beck’s Fox News Channel program, which is watched by more than 2 million people, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze. This week, Mr. Beck suggested on television that she was an enemy of the Constitution.
So how is this almost-octogenarian going to destroy the United States?
Well, back in 1966,
...she wrote an article with her husband, Richard Cloward, in 1966. The article, "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty," proposed that if people overwhelmed the welfare rolls, fiscal and political stress on the system could force reform and give rise to changes like a guaranteed income. By drawing attention to the topic, the proposal "had a big impact" even though it was not enacted, Ms. Piven said. "A lot of people got the money that they desperately needed to survive," she said.
Beck in his usual brain-addled way has made it clear to his similarly moronic audience that this woman is responsible for the entire welfare system that is going to destroy the country. You know, because everyone on welfare is cheating the system and a minority.
The result of Beck's ranting have been threats against Prof. Piven. Of course comments on web sites have threatened violent action against her, but she has also received them directly into her email. One such comment on The Blaze read:
"Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas ready and I’ll give My life to take Our freedom back." (The spelling and capitalizing have not been changed.)
The Center for Constitutional Rights has contacted Fox News and demanded that they stop Beck from further attacks on Ms. Piven. Fox News' answer?
In short, "Fuck You."
The Center said in a letter to Fox, "Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response,"
Fox News disagrees. Joel Cheatwood, a senior vice president, said Friday that Mr. Beck would not be ordered to stop talking about Ms. Piven on television. He said Mr. Beck had quoted her accurately and had never threatened her.
" ‘The Glenn Beck Program,’ probably above and beyond any on television, has denounced violence repeatedly," Mr. Cheatwood said.
Oh please. We've heard this story so many times before. Beck denounces violence (with a photo of him with a handgun). Beck never says "go kill," but he knows there is a part of his audience that isn't just stupid, but also truly deranged...like the one with 5000 "roundas."
I give a lot of credit to Ms. Piven to putting up with this. Personally, I'd drop a multi-billion dollar lawsuit in Murdoch's diseased lap.
When the British surrendered at Yorktown, their band played a children's song, The World Turned Upside Down. Nothing has changed.
An Ivy League educated journalist who has shined the light of truth on so many issues is forced off the air because his employers didn't like his style and views. At the same time, a near high school dropout with a past filled with drugs and alcohol, is allowed to continue spinning lies, bigotry, racism, and oh so carefully push violent action against anyone he disagrees with.
If karma really is a bitch, then Murdoch, Ailes, Beck, and the rest of the clowns should wake up with hungry, rabid squirrels in their beds.