How crazy can Glenn Beck get?
Since his ratings keep plummeting, and people just looking to sell stuff keep packing up their tents and leaving the bazaar of Greater Teabaggistan, and now even his relationship with one of his few remaining advertisers is coming under scrutiny, Beck seems to have gone into some freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness kind of whacko. Case in point . . . Purple Hearts are evil.
Yup. Purple Hearts.
Read on . . .
From his radio program today:
"We announced that we are going to start -- restart the badge of merit that George Washington gave his troops."
Talk radio hosts award medals now? Can drive-time DJ's hand out land grants?
"It's what the Purple Heart is based on, except the progressives -- what a surprise -- in 1933 introduced the Purple Heart.
The Purple Heart was based on the badge of merit by George Washington. It had nothing to do with being wounded in action. It had everything to do with doing something of honor and integrity, something to -- something that -- where you really put your neck out and you did something of real merit, not just getting shot -- not that that's --
But he was trying to build people that understood honor and merit and integrity and God."
Yes, it should be about really serving America. Not just getting shot or something. Jeez, anybody that hunts with Dick Cheney can do that.
I know a lot "professional" Republicans -- the politicians, the punditry -- are chickenhawks. I know a lot of them regard the military as little more than a useful tool for foreign policy/fantasy fulfillment . . . or a way for their friends make a buck (no matter the cost).
So deep down, I know a lot of them just don't give a warm bucket of goat piss about the actual men and women that serve.
But at least they had the goddam sense to pretend, in public.
This bloviating lunatic just demeaned one of the most respected medals the U.S. military can pin on your chest. Not just the fact that some political opponent earned one. The medal itself -- and the bloody sacrifice that earns one -- because it's not as cool as his make-believe fucking Gold Star for Right Thinking.
Even when the GOP mocked Kerry's Purple Hearts, they made it about him -- he was a big liberal that hated America and they heard he didn't really earn them anyway.
But this. . .
Can the GOP abide this? Has Goldfever finally crossed a line? Burned the last bridge that connected his land o' crazy with even the far right?
How many Republican voters know someone with a Purple Heart? Have a local hero in their town . . . in their family? Will they react to this? Will their party leadership?
It's too much. He's gone around the bend. After endlessly trying to portray himself as some kind of Moses, wandering in the wilderness, he's just gotten heatstroke and become the crazy old coot that lives in the desert.
There's partisan crazy, there's conspiracy crazy, and then there's just off-the-goddam-boards loony, and Glenn Beck has reached it. He's now just saying random, self-aggrandizing controversial things so someone will keep validating his existence by listening to him. It's not about ideology or politics -- if it ever was. It's just a desperate guy that can't bear to not be paid attention to -- and who's finally gone completely howl-at-the-moon nuts over it.