Is Glenn Beck Playing Race Card While Being Coy? (Seattle P-I)

http://blog.seattlepi.com/williamhare/archives/219593.asp

Is Glenn Beck Playing Race Card While Being Coy?

Is Glenn Beck trying to play the race card for the benefit of his followers while being coy? Is it mere coincidence that Beck selected the Lincoln Memorial, the venue Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. chose for his 1963 "I have a dream" speech? The date of August 28 also happens to fall on the forty-seventh anniversary of that historic speech. Are these both coincidences, as Beck insists, or an insidious way to play to the more radical elements of the right wing fringes?...

Go back to 1980 for an example of another alleged coincidence. Ronald Reagan selected as the venue for launching his fall campaign against Jimmy Carter not one of the nation's major cities of a state with a large electoral vote total. Instead Reagan strategists had the former California governor launch his ultimately successful campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Why was this small southern town selected? In 1964 three young civil rights workers were slain in Philadelphia. All were in their twenties. One was an African American and the other two were Jewish. Once again we encounter the coincidental Republicans. This spot just happened to have been selected.

The historical Republican line of coincidences in the civil rights realm continued after two milestone pieces of legislation were passed... During his successful 1968 campaign and after assuming office, Richard Nixon and his advisers launched a Southern Strategy. This involved invoking the words "law and order" repetitiously. Following his election Nixon sent his official mouthpiece, Spiro Agnew, to southern states to mouth those famous words, after which "Dixie" would be played. Lee Atwater ultimately conceded that the term law and order, as liberals claimed at the time, constituted code words letting southern reactionaries who hated the Johnson civil rights measures know that they were on their side. As for the playing of "Dixie" we did not need Atwater to help us analyze that significance. It evoked the rupture of America with the Civil War. At the time Republicans claimed that the law and order invocation had nothing to do with race. Their perpetual invocation in the south was just one of many Republican coincidences.

Returning to the present, Glenn Beck loves to denounce the words "social justice" and tells his audiences that they have also been used by Communists and Nazis. Hence they represent evil code words and Americans need to carefully observe those who use them. Here is yet another presumed coincidence. Those were words that King invoked regularly. Sarah Palin will be one of the main speakers at Beck's rally. He promises that it will having nothing to do with politics, making the decidedly apolitical Palin a perfect choice. At the same time that Beck also proclaims that Martin Luther King was one of his heroes he has as his most notable guest at his rally someone who recently defended Laura Schlessinger's frequent invocation of the N-word during one of her programs...

There is nothing coy about Glenn Beck's racism.

Running from Asians, defending Dr. Laura, supporting anything anti-Mexican immigrant...at least she's an equal opportunity racist -- hating all other races equally.

:kick: