My Uncommon Sense

If Glenn Beck is a racist…

By Chris Grewe

I’m sure by now most of you have heard about the attempt to starve The Glenn Beck Program off the air by getting its advertisers to pull their ads from Fox News Channel in a boycott due to his comments regarding the President’s thoughts and actions towards white people in the last few weeks, specifically, calling the President a “deep-seated racist” and so on and so forth.

My only question to these people: where were you in April when MSNBC and the like went on a teabagging escapade against Tea Partyers, calling them every name in the book, including “racist rednecks” (thank you Janeane Garafalo), and using a slang term for a sexual act as an overused description that’s now flooded the left wing echo-chamber and is now in use as common term for those of us on the right who decide to protest?

Where were you?

Where was MSNBC’s boycott? Where was Geico pulling their gecko advertisements from Countdown (the program on which the “teabagger” comment started if memory serves, or at least, it’s one of the more famous examples of it)? When did that happen?

Where was the faux outrage then?

That’s exactly what this is: faux outrage. If they truly cared about their country, they would turn off MSNBC every time they call someone a “teabagger”. They really should be saying “wow, I really don’t agree with these people, but I respect their right to protest under the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly.” If they truly cared, they would stop listening to every pundit, left or right, who brings the questions of Obama’s policies down to race, and they would look at a man and call him what he is or isn’t rather than just deferring to the color of a man’s skin.

It’s the sad state of race relations and racial politics in general in this country that allows shenanigans like this to continue, on both sides of the political spectrum, and it’s about time we put an end to it. Political pundits on both sides of the aisle use race as a bludgeoning tool to get people to vote for a candidate based purely on the color of the skin of the voter or their ethnic origin. It is complete and utter crap.

I am sick of the media treating my fellow Americans and me, regardless of color, as a voting bloc. Not all white people have the same ideals. In fact, I have more in common thought-process wise with Ken Blackwell than I do Ted Strickland. That’s why I voted for him in 2006 for governor of the great state of Ohio.

I have more in common in terms of my issue preferences with Senator John McCain than President Barack Obama, and that’s why I voted for John McCain in 2008 for President.

One more digression before I get back to my overarching point. Last year, on the campus of The Ohio State University, in theory, a place of many diverse opinions amongst faculty and students, my friends and I with the McCain campaign witnessed a truly disgusting event. We had (among others) a yard sign with us that stated very plainly “Another Democrat for McCain,” because in part, we had some former Democrats working with us during the campaign because they agreed more with Senator McCain than then-Senator Obama. A young white man working for one of the lefty groups (and clearly, not representing the opinions of said group) walked up to our sign, shook it with his hand, and stated very loudly and very clearly to the five of us standing there “Whoever owns this sign is a racist,” and walked away.

I talked to one of the folks with the campaign he was working for (which was not the Obama campaign for the record), and she agreed with me that what was said was a) inaccurate and b) completely out of line, and her group did not condone such behavior or agree with the sentiments of the statement.

So what does this all have to do with Glenn Beck? A great deal. He spoke his mind, something this country has been renowned the world around for allowing, and the court of public opinion is trying him based on the facts of the case as presented.

The problem is the full facts of the case are not being presented, as the media has time and time again separated the statements of Reverend Jeremiah Wright from the time President Obama attended his church in Chicago from the President’s views, disavowing any potential crossover between them.

When you attend the church of a man who very loudly screams “GOD D*** AMERICA!!!” from the pulpit more than once for twenty plus years, and do not walk out immediately after the very first time it is said, never to return again, it very much calls into question your views on the subject. That should be a valid topic for public discussion in a political candidate or officeholder.

When you nominate a woman to the United States Supreme Court who ruled against a fair test based solely on some backwards notion that just because only one minority firefighter (who joined the suit not knowing the results of the test) passed the test, it must have been unfair, it definitely calls into question your views on race in this country.

So are we any closer to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of an America where men are judged solely on the content of their character and not by the color of their skin?

Whether or not Beck was right, and whether or not MSNBC continues to air clips of protestors being called teabaggers and racist rednecks just for exercising their First Amendment rights, I’d argue very stoutly that no, we are not closer.

And until every debate stops being about race, and starts being about policy and substance again, with legitimate questions raised, asked, and answered by candidates regardless of how uncomfortable it may make us, we’re not going to get much closer than this nonsense from both sides. We need to take this country to a place where the only colors that matter are red, white, and blue, and beyond that, who cares? We’re all Americans here.