Flutterby™! : Turnabout is fair play 2009-09-12 18:45:47.159352+00

Turnabout is fair play

2009-09-12 18:45:47.159352+00 by Dan Lyke 10 comments

Snicker: Using Glenn Beck-like tactics back at him: Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?

This site exists to try and help examine the vicious rumour that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. We don't claim to know the truth -- only that the rumour floating around saying that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 should be discussed. So we're going to do our part to try and help get to the bottom of this.

Why won't Glenn Beck deny these allegations? We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 - in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?

#Comment Re: made: 2009-09-12 22:25:34.786449+00 by: ziffle [edit history]

Glenn Beck is performing a public service. We should all applaud him for his efforts.

Dan, you and all of us know this is bogus. Beck always goes on to present facts to support his accusations.

If I was Glenn Beck I would crank up my legal team and sue the pants off everyone, like you, who endeavor to besmirch his reputation un-factually. Now you may feel that technically you are right and you have written this so as to avoid actual liability. That is possible but if I was him I would make you spend every penny you will ever have to get yourself out of his way. (Not highly probable but if they got wind, it could happen and I would not want anything bad to happen so maybe removing the thread might make sense - you are certainly artfully skilled at making your point in many ways I have seen over the years, even when we might not agree :) )

Tribalism: Live by the sword, Die by the Sword. I hope you do not have to find out what that means.

Ziffle, this is exactly the sort of technique Glenn Beck uses on his opponents. I'm saddened that you've bought into his bullshit and jingoism, but it's important to call him out when he does it, and satire is often the most effective way to do that.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-09-12 23:19:04.072338+00 by: ziffle [edit history]

Dan, Beck backs up everything with facts. You are repeating what you know is untrue. When the facts don't work, I suppose satire is all thats left.

Ziffle, I've listened to clips of his show. In fact, I just went out to find a clip, this is the first one I found (which I stopped at), and in this clip he uses exactly this technique.

The man's a sociopath of the lowest order, and when I find myself agreeing with him on a political stance I find that I have to take a step back and make sure that I'm not buying into his utterly whacko overall world view.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-09-13 09:22:02.255144+00 by: andylyke [edit history]

#Comment Re: made: 2009-09-13 11:17:29.98292+00 by: ziffle [edit history]

I see Glen Beck's "public service", like the rest of his cohort, as nothing more than adrenal stimulation for epinephrine addicts. Anger and rage on tap for the susceptible.

Glenm Beck does provide a public service although not the one he intended. He serves as an example of the extreme so the rest of us can understand how broad the spectrum of "belief" is. I think it's healthy to have differing views but in the last couple decades I've grown tired of the extreme Christian right's dogma of everybody different from "us" is wrong/evil.

The most vexing thing for me is that I try understand people like Glenn Beck and be sympathetic to his beliefs. He professes love while sowing hate. He demands negative proof based on some wild assertion. Ziffel, I thought you were being sarcastic when I read your post but if you really believe his arguments as based on fact fact, I'm sorry. Glenn Beck is a logic fallacy engine.

Ziffle, to my Dad's point, an author we both admire once wrote an essay about not being interested in debating the larger polarizations any more, instead concentrating on intelligent agreement. At the time, and even now, I question some of the notion of writing off entire swaths of counter-arguments and points of view, but I've sought out even a little bit more Glenn Beck, and...

Well, frankly, I'm shocked. You've always prided yourself on a rational approach to examining reality, and Beck clearly isn't in search of rational. He uses (again and again) some of the most simplistic rhetorical tricks (see the above about repeating ludicrous hypotheticals until they stick), his guests would make Art Bell or George Noory blush (has he had the Stephen King shot John Lennon guy on yet?), he regularly mis-represents others opinions, especially by quoting out of context.

You used to talk about a book called Evidence that Demands a Verdict

by Josh McDowell

with the critique that it threw up a whole bunch of of disconnected items as fact, and then pretended that they somehow converged to support a thesis. This is is the technique of every single Glenn Beck

thing I've listened to.

If your appreciation of the guy is in assuming that he's some sort of Sacha Baron Cohen "let's goad the idiots into saying stupid things", then, great, that's not my kind of humor but I have no problem with it. But if you seriously take this psychopath's rantings as any sort of positive or serious, then you're putting yourself solidly over in that "not worth continuing to have the discussion" camp.

I think that those of you who live in Boulder and the Bay Area can't even begin to empathize with those of us who live in the fly-over states and have to deal with all the stereotypes of Midwesterners being backward, ill-educated rubes. Unfortunately, this reputation is compounded in the Toledo airport, where the monitors are all projecting Fox "news(!)" and the unfortunate traveler is bombarded with the braying of Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, et alia.

Fox and its "pundits" and its propaganda staff are simply embarrassing to any intelligent, moderately well educated citizen who's exposed to them.