MoveOn.org, the progressive political advocacy group formed in response to the impeachment of President Clinton, has a new video satirizing Glenn Beck.

The funniest part of it is that- well, without giving the surprise away, it’s different for everyone. Using Facebook Connect, it crafts a different Becktastic experience for every viewer. If you’d like to view your version of the video, go to beck.cnnbcvideo.com and authorize it to link up to your Facebook account.

The video is very cleverly done- don’t forget to check out the sidebar to see all the “related links” in Glenn Beck’s latest crusade. While it is certainly funny, it also makes a good point about the dangers posed by this kind of alarmist “journalism.” Beck’s devoted viewers will often buy into his theories and are moved by his sob-fests. Under the guise of objectivity, Beck has presented many similar, crazy theories in the past about people and things he wishes to malign.

What did you think of the effort? Hilarious satire or vicious socialist plot against Glenn Beck?

“I’m not saying this is a plot by Hitler to steal Glenn Beck from all of us internal organ by internal organ by internal organ and then reprogram him to use as a weapon. But isn’t it fascinating that I’m the only one with the courage to ask these questions?”

(Note: Clip is long, but hilarious.)

Glenn Beck added a new mix to his radio show this morning when he suffered an unexpected attack of appendicitis.

According to reports, Beck left the show complaining that he was not feeling well., and was rushed to a nearby hospital where he had his appendix removed. Spokesman for Beck joked that “before going under Glenn asked the doctor to draw out the surgery procedure on a blackboard.”

Later reports suggest that Glenn Beck’s Appendicitis surgery went well and he is expected to make a full recovery. Andrew Napolitano is guest hosting Beck’s Fox News in his absence.

The Fox News announcement in the video as follows:

There is no harder thing than to have Glenn Beck outlive your child…

Victim In Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck

Satire and meme’s are an integral part of the Web. While satire has a long and rich history long before electrons started passing information among the InterTubes meme’s have been a much more recent happening but no the less funny or important. While many of the meme’s we see being spawned almost daily are harmless and give us a good chuckle when we run across them before they run out of steam there are others that take on a ling life of their own.

Of these the satire blog set up by an originally anonymous blogger to take a more than fair shot at Glen Beck has a suddenly become fodder for a case before the domain dispute center at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva.

The domain in question is glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com and since failing to get U.S. courts to take down the site due to their common “moron in a hurry” test Beck has decided that despite his dislike for world organizations this is a matter that can only be settled by the WIPO.

Since this has progressed to this point the previous anonymous blogger has revealed his identity and hired a lawyer to deal with the issue. Now to be fair one has to understand where and why the domain came into place which the now revealed blogger, Isaac Eiland-Hall, explained to Ars Technica

Eiland-Hall had discovered a Fark thread in which commenters picked up on a Gilbert Gottfried routine about Bob Saget raping and murdering a teenaged girl (it’s, er, a bit funnier in context than it sounds [NSFW]). They adapted it for Beck to highlight what they perceived as his habit of forcing people to explain away completely baseless charges—as when Beck interviewed Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) and opened with this gem: "And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy. But that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way."

How better to give Beck a taste of his own medicine than by wondering publicly why he has never addressed the rumor that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? No one’s saying that Beck really did it… but if he has nothing to hide, why won’t he deny the tale?

Eiland-Hall’s lawyer, Marc Randazza, is quick to point out when it comes to the WIPO and domain disputes. The process is generally used to prevent cybersquatters  from sitting on trademarked names and generally applies only when there is commercial intent and the real possibility of consumer confusion. It is safe to say that Eiland-Hall’s site is neither commercial in any way and neither does it cause any brand confusion with Glen Beck.

Good luck with that Glenn and as Randazza says in his response to the WIPO

"We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent’s website wondering ‘where did all the race baiting content go?’ We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent’s website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent’s website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck’s very rhetorical style."

Guess it sucks when you have your own medicine shoved back in your face eh Beck.

Part of the reason Glenn Beck resonates so much with the right is his heartfelt sincerity.

A heartfelt sincerity brought on by rage at the direction his country is taken… and a liberal application of Vicks’ Vapo-Rub under his eyes. A one-off for a photo shoot? Perhaps, but Beck is caught on camera saying this:

I think it’s getting used to it… my eyes are getting used to it.

Glenn Beck, you have to start rehearsing.

Remember the Oligarchy fail from a few weeks ago? Beck seems to be amping up his campaign to win the title of “craziest pundit who doesn’t rehearse” with a bizarre live stunt wherein he shows everyone what happens when you pretend to throw a frog into boiling water. Beck shouts a bit about how President Obama is creating shocking huge policy changes that will cause Americans to hop out of the metaphorical boiling water, based on the belief that a frog will hop out of boiling water when thrown in, but not object and just be happily boiled if cold water is heated after the frog is added.

Beck says:

Barack Obama has galvanized the country, because of the sheer size of the bills he’s proposed, and the number of the bills, the urgency that he’s placing on the bills. He’s forced us to think and get involved! We have, not like John McCain, been boiled slowly- we have been tossed quickly into boiling water, and don’t forget what happens, what happens when you throw them in! When you throw them in, frogs into boiling water!

Then he dramatically throws… nothing. And then, not surprisingly, nothing happens. Sheepishly, Beck walks closer the the camera and says:

Okay … forget the frog. I swear I thought they jumped right out. But they don’t. Forget about the Republicans, because most of them are fake. Forget about the Democrats, because most of them are fake. And forget about the frog, because it was fake!

The most viewed version of the stunt on YouTube edits out the last line about the frog being fake. But it appears that this was a stunt in which no frogs were harmed. Collective intellect of the American public? Thanks to folks like Glenn Beck, not so lucky.

The failed frog stunt, below:

In every business there is the concept of ‘the loss leader’. The idea is that you offer a product at such a low cost that people who wouldn’t normally come through the door come in to buy that product. At the same time there is the hope that they will end up buying something else at a regular price.

Here at The Inquisitr my writing about technology could be considered to be that ‘loss leader’. While it typically attracts a smaller demographic than say the people who read about Michael Jackson or the latest disaster it is hoped that while the reader is on the site they will end up reading other posts thereby increasing the pageviews. When it comes to television news – especially with cable news – these loss leaders, while they may cause some problems, are important because they bring in a demographic that might otherwise go elsewhere.

With the recent drive to hit FOX News in the wallet by trying to get advertisers to drop their support of the Glenn Beck show we are seeing Beck become more of a loss leader for the network. For all the outrage that his demagoguery might cause the network looks at the demographics of the audience he does pull in and how much of that traffic then converts to watchers of other shows on their network – news or otherwise. I am sure that there is a break point where the influx of viewers for his firebrand rhetoric will not balance out the loss of advertising dollars. At that point I am pretty sure that Beck would be shown the door – but don’t count on that happening for some time.

When it comes to FOX competitor CNN they realize that as repulsive as it might be to have that same kind of viewership associated with the CNN brand they are also a business which means they have to make money. Making that money means that they have to find some way to appeal to the “Glenn Beck” and “Rush Limbaugh” crowd.

This is where Lou Dobbs comes in because while he might be a little tamer than a Beck or Limbaugh he still appeals to the same mentality of viewership that the other two do. The problem is that right now CNN is facing the same pressure as FOX News is in that there are organizations out there putting pressure on advertisers to drop running ads on the Dobbs show.

Where Beck is becoming a loss leader moneywise for FOX News so is Lou Dobbs for CNN. From CNN’s point of view Dobbs is almost a necessity because he does draw in a growing demographic that would go elsewhere. As Jason Linkins noted in a post at Huffington Post

CNN is facing pressure on a number of fronts to drop Lou Dobbs from their roster of on-air talent, a move that would force millions of Americans seeking out news about the conspiracy to spread leprosy throughout America via illegal Mexican immigrants to turn instead to the guy who lives under the bridge by the old tire factory.

Sure CNN might be walking a fine line with the more loyal CNN viewers but as long as Dobbs keeps bringing in a demographic that would normally go to one of their competitors, especially FOX News, I think we can be assured that Dobb’s job is pretty safe. Yes he might be told every once in a while to tone down his particular type of rhetoric but as long as there is the potential of his viewers sticking around to watch other CNN shows then his value as a loss leader is worth the cost of possibly losing advertisers of his show.

If there is a venereal disease that could infect television news it would have to be called the “Glenn Beck Disease” for no other reason than Glenn Beck being the most irritating brain frying “pretend” newsperson there is on television today. Limbaugh on his best day can’t even cause one to dribble and drool as much as Beck does in the first five minutes he is on the air.

News organizations are having a hard enough time trying to remain relevant without having to constantly battle against the illusion that Beck put forward that what he does is news. Not only does Beck do everything he can to inflame situations to his own benefit but he doesn’t care if what comes out of his mouth is true or not.

A good example of this is his recent pumping of the ACORN story and how one woman was caught on tape saying that she had murdered her abusive husband. Regardless of the ethics of how the ACORN videotapes were obtained Beck used the story to raise the ire against the other news networks and the government by asking why nobody was asking any questions about this.

Well it turns out that about a few minutes work by some real reporters in San Bernardino found out the story was totally false – which Glenn Beck could have done just as well but that wouldn’t have provided the gasoline he was looking for.

The thing that is really disgusting about this is that his employer Fox News doesn’t care whether what he says on television is true or not because in their words “does not host a ‘news’ show”. So while they wrap the presentation of the Glenn Beck with the appearance of being a news show it is in fact not even close. What they have done is provide Beck with a platform through which he can spew his own brand of “news” and commentary without having to behave as a proper journalistic news service.

In effect they are saying that who cares if what we say (as a news service) is true or not as long as we can keep riling up the masses through vitriolic commentary. Beck, Fox News, and everyone in the news business that tries to mimic them are driving any trust we might have into the ground.

While no one can seem to agree on the number of attendees teabagging on Saturday’s march on Washington- officials estimate about 70,000 people attended, while Michelle Malkin claims 1.5/2 million people showed up- one thing’s for sure.

There was at least one dissenting protester, with a sign. And balls.

[Via Digg]

I don’t normally talk much about politics even though I spend a fair amount of time watching the American political scene. Much of that scene lately has been either direct attacks by Glenn Beck against the president by calling him a racist or to incite the latest campaign against the president’s choice to head a green jobs initiative – Van Jones.

Now I don’t proclaim to know much about Van Jones but in the current climate of news organization partisanship it is highly unlikely that any truth about the man could be found at this point. It has all boiled down to a case of they said – he said from which finding any truth is next to impossible.

What is interesting to watch is how this news organization driven partisanship is being used increasingly to create even bigger dividing lines between the American people. It seems that in the current environment people like Glenn Beck have become less the journalists they laughably claim to be and more the lightening rod for a movement that seems bent on splitting the country even further apart.

Sure organizations like FOX News can hide behind the “he’s a commentator and therefore given the freedom to express his opinions” but that doesn’t change the fact that while <cough>news</cough> organizations like FOX are getting rich from this kind of so-called commentary they are also contributing to the split of the country.

With people like Beck at the helm of carefully worded incendiary comments that are spread around the world one has to wonder if people like Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy would ever have achieved all the great things that they did. After all they weren’t perfect people either and I am sure that people like Beck and the public pulpit provided by companies like FOX would have done everything they could have to tear those men down – just as they are try with Obama, and have done with Van Jones.

Rather than hide behind white hoods and a hangman’s noose people like Beck use the power of words to incite a society filled with fear to ignore their commonsense and become nothing more than attack dogs. In the process people like Beck make a shame and mockery of our news. They can couch those words all they like in terms of just being commentary in order to protect the companies that employee them with big paychecks; but in the end they are making a joke of the news and of the people who follow them like blind little sheep.

I have a question, now… what happened to the C?

Crooks and Liars has an interesting video of Glenn Beck jumping on the right-wing “dems are Nazis” bandwagons.

Beck does a good job of talking out of both sides of his mouth for the duration of the video- he even starts out saying that there is “so much anger and hatred in this country right now,” conveniently forgetting that he’s spurred a frick-ton of it with his nightly fearmongering. He launches into a speech about how no one is saying Eugenics are coming to this country, before spending the next few minutes crying about how OMG, Eugenics are coming to this country!! Eleventy!

Beck draws parallels between economic collapse in Nazi Germany and modern-day America and posits that we will no longer be able to pay for healthcare for everyone, and we will begin to make “tough decisions.” What is so bothersome about this rhetoric is that those who spout it continually completely ignore the fact that the much feared “death panels” already exist in this country. And they’re scarier now, when they operate for profit and behind the bottom-line focused facades of corporations, executing last minute deadly decisions and moving the goalposts in such a way that access to care is not a right and something that can be yanked from beneath the feet of anyone suffering a life-threatening condition when it is determined to be “pre-existing” or “experimental.” Or in other words, “too expensive.”

Anyone who doubts “death panels” exist today need look no further than the case of Nataline Sarkisyan, a teenager who fell victim to insurance company games when they had all the time in the world and she did not. Nataline succumbed to a form of recurrent leukemia while she waited for Cigna to decide her fate- UCLA’s hospitals declined two available livers while waiting for Cigna to approve treatment.

Video below of a tearful Glenn Beck and his Nazi posters.

Glenn Beck has been censured even by the far, far right Fox News channel.

Beck sparked some outrage when on Fox and Friends, by going off on a bit of a crazy rant about how President Obama is basically a racist with a hatred for- I’m not making this up- “white culture.”

I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying… he has a problem.

Fox News’ wunderkid Glenn Beck appeared on The View today and without any great surprise managed to get the mostly liberal hosts fired up.

The highlight (or lowlight) of Beck’s appearance came in a dispute about a train trip. Beck claimed on radio recently that he had been pushed aside by Amtrak employees catering for Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg, which both claim isn’t true. But there’s disagreeing, and then there’s disagreeing with Whoopi, who called Beck a “lying sack of dog mess.”

I’m no Beck fan, but seriously, an argument about a train trip? Surely there was more important things they could have discussed with Beck. Here’s the Glen Beck on The View video.

Glenn Beck enjoys a rant and rave, but little did he know that he had the power to make people pass out.

David Buckner, professor of organizational leadership at Columbia University, scored a first for Fox News as he passed out live on Glenn Beck’s show Monday afternoon.

“You all right?” Beck asked Buckner in the middle of a discussion on government investments.

“I’m passing out,” Buckner told Beck…twice.

“Want to sit down?” Beck asked, grabbing Buckner’s hand as he went crashing to the floor. Beck though knew what to do, saying “We’ll be back in just a second.”

Here’s David Buckner passing out on the Glenn Beck Show:

The hottest new host on Fox News this year Glenn Beck has launched The 912 Project, a site dedicated to sharing core principles and values that Americans are said to live by.

The site, which is currently offline as we write this post, defines essential American qualities such as believing in god, being opposed to income tax, being pro marriage (as long as your straight) and many other gems.

It’s more of the same that we’ve seen from the hard right recently, this whole socialism is bad, our money is being stolen for us, Barack is a Communist etc etc. While some of those points might be true, what they continue to overlook is that Bush created the mess the country is in today, and Bush was the one that run up the foreign debt and started the bailouts. But no, it’s only bad now a new, black guy takes over the mess.

In the show launching the The 912 Project, Beck interviewed Chuck Norris, who earlier this week said that thousands of militia were preparing for a military takeover of the United States. If that doesn’t say batshit crazy, I’m not sure what else can.

Here’s the list the 912 Project are based on

The 12 Values:

* Honesty
* Reverence
* Hope
* Thrift
* Humility
* Charity
* Sincerity
* Moderation
* Hard Work
* Courage
* Personal Responsibility
* Gratitude

The Nine Principles

* 1. America is good.
* 2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
* 3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
* 4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
* 5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
* 6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
* 7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
* 8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
* 9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.