Has Our Honor Been Restored Yet?

I simply didn't have the stamina to watch that bizarre Glenn Beck civil rights pantomime over the weekend. I've been out of it for a week, and I'm still under the influence of narcotics (see post below) and my prescription label says, "do not drive, operate heavy machinery, or watch Beck rallies." I'm sure some of you must have seen parts of it though?

So I ask you, did he cry? Did he tell us how much he loves his country? Did the Mormon shock-jock call for some kind of vague Christian revival? Was it self-indulgent? Was it pitiful?

I heard about the geese flying in a v-formation over the reflecting pool. I'm concluding from the many awe-struck replies on this YouTube video that most of Beck's fans flunked science, so let me share the secret: that's the way migrating geese fly! Shh!

And here's another little factoid: interpreting the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds is a pagan practice called augury. I think Beck's crowd reached a new level of confused religiosity.

Anyway, if there was a god who busies himself organizing geese, then those birds would have shat on Beck's head.

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This whole self-anointed messiah act is exhausting. I try not to react to every idiot comment coming from Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, etc., but liberals cannot ignore these people into irrelevance. They preach to the choir and their choir is devout.

A recent article by Matt Taibbi articulated the dangers of ignoring the media hate-fest:

In fact if you follow Fox News and the Limbaugh/Hannity afternoon radio crew, this summer’s blowout has almost seemed like an intentional echo of the notorious Radio Rwanda broadcasts “warning” Hutus that they were about to be attacked and killed by conspiring Tutsis, broadcasts that led to massacres of Tutsis by Hutus acting in “self-defense.” A sample of some of the stuff we’ve seen and heard on the air this year:

• On July 12, Glenn Beck implied that the Obama government was going to aid the New Black Panther Party in starting a race war, with the ultimate aim of killing white babies. "They want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are going to poke, and poke, and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it." He also said that "we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, 'Kill all white babies.'"
• CNN contributor and Redstate.com writer Erick Erickson, on the Panther mess: "Republican candidates nationwide should seize on this issue. The Democrats are giving a pass to radicals who advocate killing white kids in the name of racial justice and who try to block voters from the polls."
• On July 6, the Washington Times columnist J. Christian Adams wrote an editorial insisting that "top [Obama] appointees have allowed and even encouraged race-based enforcement as either tacit or open policy," marking one of what would become many assertions by commentators that the Obama administration was no longer interested in protecting the rights of white people. "The Bush Civil Rights Division was willing to protect all Americans from racial discrimination,” Adams wrote. “During the Obama years, the Holder years, only some Americans will be protected."
• July 12: Rush Limbaugh says Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder “protect and represent” the New Black Panther party.
• July 28: Rush says Supreme Court decision on 1070 strips Arizonans of their rights to defend themselves against an “invasion”: "I guess the judge is saying it's not in the public interest for Arizona to try to defend itself from an invasion. I don't know how you look at this with any sort of common sense and come to the ruling this woman came to.” That same day, Rush says this: "Muslim terrorists are going to have a field day in Arizona. You cannot ask them where they're from. You cannot even act like we know where they're from. You cannot ask them for their papers. We can ask you for yours. Not them."
• July 29: The Washington Times asks “Should Arizona Secede?” and says the Supreme Court "is unilaterally disarming the people of Arizona in the face of a dangerous enemy” with the aim of creating a “socialist superstate.” The paper writes: "The choice is becoming starkly apparent: devolution or dissolution."
• July 29, Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy continues the Radio Rwanda theme, saying, "If the feds won't protect the people and Governor Brewer can't protect her citizens, what are the people of Arizona supposed to do?"

Taibbi concludes that conservatives really don't want a race war, but driving frustrated/broke white suburbanites into a race-hatred frenzy happens to be good business.

So -- though I'm still unsure what "restoring honor" means -- I'm guessing the restoration is not complete... because then Beck's gig would be up.