Beck has emerged as the cable TV's Rush Limbaugh. He's now the focus of a giant demonization campaign on the left. And the reason is because few can combine performance art, emotional sincerity, and devastating political commentary as well. And he's dangerous. First Van Jones defeated. Then Yosi Sergant at the NEA. The socialist-left rightly fears who's next. The radical infilitration and ties of corruption go to the highest levels of the White House, so it's no wonder why the long knives are out.
Beck's essay version is here, "Remember Why We Were Attacked on Sept. 11."
A diametrical response to Beck is here, in James Poniewozik's, "Don't Tell Me What 9/12 Means, Glenn Beck." (Via Memeorandum.) Poniewozik alleged that Beck, since March, has been using September 11 as his own "personal political platform." But that attack on Beck is entirely ridiculous. Poniewozik's attack is just as partisan, since he's not also taking issue with leftists currently exploiting the tragedy for political gain. Just Thursday night Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell argued that Americans should get on board ObamaCare because September 11 is "similarly facing down our country" and it's a time to be "supporting our president regardless of ideology." The Obama administration's 9/11 commemorations, where key White House officials fanned out around the country to push the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, are just a partisan, yet diabolically ahistorical in their efforts to flush the genuine meaning of 9/11 down the memory hole. We know that this administration has long been at work to desecrate the memeory of the fallen. And when President Obama yesterday declared September 11 a "tragedy," he did a "gross disservice to both the victims of 9/11 and those who have sacrificed everything in the effort to make sure a similar “tragedy” doesn’t happen again."
So thank you Glenn Beck. Bring on the rants - good, decent freedom-loving Americans love 'em. We'll pull together once more, and we won't forget that terrorists and rogue regimes around the world are intent on America's destruction. And we vow, "Never Again"!
8 comments:
That dougpowers post on why 9-11 should not be called a "tragedy" is pretty silly--in English, we use "tragedy" in many situations, whether in describing a natural disaster like a hurricane or a terrorist disaster like a bomb.
Seriously, try this thought experiment out: God forbid, a student of yours dies, a really good student, one you've been friendly with, whose family lives in the area. So, you go to the funeral and you go to the parents. Couldn't you say "It was a tragedy that he/she died so young." Now, you could say "tragedy" if the student died of swine flu or of a shooting or of anything. "Tragedy" as a word does not indicate the cause of the tragic events--it merely marks those events as tragic.
(As one of the commenters on that site noted, Bush called 9-11 a "tragedy" also--where was Doug Powers's outrage then.)
As for Beck vs. Poniewozik, Poniewozik's point (which you might has missed since you tried to tie him to Lacewell) is that 9/11 caused many people to have many different reactions, whereas Beck only talks about how great it felt to be American on 9/12.
For another dissent from Beck, here's Alex Pareene of Gawker:
"On 9/12, people in New York (and DC) did not feel as "great" as Glenn Beck. They just felt like shit. They felt scared and confused and depressed. Many of them were drunk. And only an idiot or an actual terrorist would want to always feel like it was 9/12/01."
(http://gawker.com/5357371/)
Ben JB: You're officially a troll, and a know-nothing as well. You're free to comment, but I totally ignore you as demonically deranged ...
I know that you ignore me, Donald, and I know that we have different interpretations of that--I think you can't argue, you think I'm not worth arguing with. This is something that we'll have to agree to disagree over, and let your readers come to their own conclusions.
Also, I'm sure I've said this before, but there is own area where we don't disagree, which is your experience as a college teacher, which is an issue I'm very interested. I may not say nice things on those posts all the time, but I do enjoy them.
Nice try but a well thought out attack on the financial center of the US is not a tragedy, it's an act of war and was treated as such by President Bush.
A tragedy implies a random act of nature or violence. There was nothing random about 9/11.
Seriously
Vegas Art Guy,
I don't think you read Doug Powers's blog: he's complaining because Obama called 9/11 a "tragedy," which is the same word that Bush used. Powers's argument is that "tragedy" implies that it was a natural disaster, which is wrong. According to Merriam-Webster (definition 2), a "tragedy" is "a disastrous event: calamity: misfortune"--there's nothing in the definition that talks about the cause of the event. Something could be both a "tragedy" and "an act of war," as those are not mutually exclusive terms.
Capisce?
Simply pointing to a definition in the dictionary does not prove your point.
While the attacks are certainly tragic, it was not a tragedy. It was a deliberate act. What gets people on the right side of the fence riled up is the fact that many on the left paint the attacks as a tragedy, like it was a random act. It's the context in which the word gets used that makes people so mad because it allows people on the left to lesson what happened on 9/11.
Hi Vegas,
I think I understand your point: it's not so much the use of the word "tragedy" that bothers you--after all Bush used the word "tragedy" too. What bothers you is everything else around the treatment of 9-11--you feel that there's a concerted effort to diminish the political aspect.
Is that a fair recapitulation of your argument?
I'm not actually arguing against that point--I don't think you're right, but I'm not arguing with that point here. Here, I was arguing with Doug Powers's point which precisely rested on the use of the word "tragedy." He--and you, to some extent--don't seem to understand that "tragedy" doesn't imply anything about causation: an accident can be tragic, but so can a deliberate event.
Since we're arguing about a definition of a word, than it is precisely important to point to a definition. But I take your point here, too: sometimes dictionary definitions don't capture some nuance.
So, I'll ask you the same thought-experiment I asked Donald here: let's say, God forbid, a student of yours dies, a really good student, one you've been friendly with, whose family lives in the area. So, you go to the funeral and you go to the parents. Couldn't you say "It was a tragedy that he/she died so young"? Does it matter whether the student died because of an accident or because of a deliberate activity? Doesn't "tragedy" equally describe either a deliberate act or an accidental issue? This is at the root of my argument with Doug Powers's point (that Obama lessens the impact of 9-11 by calling it a "tragedy"), since "tragedy" doesn't imply anything about cause.
(Now, again, I'm not arguing with your larger point, which is that the left lessens the impact of 9-11 through context or what-not. I'm not even defending a political position here--I'm just defending the English language (which I teach). "Tragedy" can be used to describe something deliberate, as well as something random--an act of nature or an act of war.)
Post a Comment