After a week of beating the drums of outrage, Glen Beck has drawn first blood, rejoicing over his first political kill with the resignation of White House environmental adviser Van Jones who made controversial statements about conservatives and 9/11.
The right wing, sweltering under the heat of a failed presidency, a brutal election, and staring down the abyss of political irrelevance has found a new raison d'etre in political outrage, especially over a black president.
It gets them the biggest headlines and the most attention from a corporate media that is no longer profiting from good journalism, amid the explosion of alternative media. It allows them to dominate the national conversation. It is a weapon for clouding over and drowning out the president’s agenda and it stirs up civil disobedience and political unrest. It does not matter if their latest recriminations are based on manufactured lies or truth, as long as they are outrageous.
They are enemies of the state. They want nothing more than to obliterate Barack Obama, politically and personally and they feed on the darkest and ugliest aspects of the American psyche: the philosophy of white supremacy and the retention of white entitlement.
Against that backdrop, Obama's Green Czar was the perfect candidate for concocting some political indignance. Glenn Beck, one of the foulest faces in our media landscape - a man who thrives on transmitting the basest, vilest, most racially charged opinions, is deeply offended at being called an asshole.
The right wing has stood by egging on protesters who show up at presidential town halls with guns on their hips quoting from 'libertarians' who believe that the 'tree of liberty should be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.' They looked away while Senator Chuck Grassley accused the administration of orchestrating death panels to euthanize the elderly. They said nothing when folks were calling for Barack Obama's death during the election. Rush Limbaugh regularly attacks the president to the accompaniment of the song Barack the Magic Negro. Sean Hannity has accused Obama of being a terrorist. Their defense is 'freedom of speech.'
They are free to shout down a handicapped girl in a town hall forum for asking questions about healthcare reform, because their right to be heard trumps hers. When did the right to free speech become one to be exercised at the expense of everyone else? Guess what folks, assholes is too kind a word to describe them. They are parasitic gutter dwellers.