Glenn Beck Denounces Springsteen's "Born In The USA" as Anti-American

Big Think

Twenty-six years after the release of Bruce Springsteen's hit song, "Born in The USA," conservative talk show host/performance artist Glenn Beck finally got around to listening to the lyrics.

Beck was shocked, shocked to discover that for all these years he'd been rocking out to a song about a bitter down-and-out Vietnam vet who has been kicked to the curb by the aforementioned USA.

Is Beck aware that conservative demigod Ronald Reagan used "Born in the USA" as a theme song for his reelection campaign? The cognitive dissonance is going to smart. Beck loves Reagan. "Because of Ronald Reagan, my grandfather, my father, I have hope for America," Beck told an audience at the conservative CPAC conference earlier this year.

Yesiree, The Gipper loved The Boss. Reagan thought Springsteen was a shining example of hope. According to Roadside America:

On the afternoon on September 19, 1984, President Ronald Reagan spoke before an enthusiastic crowd in downtown Hammonton, New Jersey. The speech was mostly political boilerplate, but it did contain one memorable passage. "America's future," Reagan said, "rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen."

People even vaguely familiar with the songs of Bruce Springsteen know that they rarely contain messages of hope for America's future. But Reagan was oblivious.

Beck correctly senses that Springsteen didn't reciprocate Reagan's admiration. The campaign didn't get Springsteen's permission to use "Born in the USA" as a theme song. When the artist found out, he put a stop to it.

In the same video clip, Beck urges his viewers to wake up and realize that Woody Guthrie's beloved anthem "This Land is Your Land" is unpatriotic, despite the fact that we all sang it at summer camp, and the lyrics make perfect sense (even to Beck). I am not making this up.

Glenn Beck: "Social Justice" is code for Nazism, Communism

This guy is dangerous, unhinged and dangerously unhinged.

Politics Daily

On his daily radio and television shows last week, Fox News personality Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that "social justice," the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a "code word" for communism and Nazism. Beck urged Christians to discuss the term with their priests and to leave their churches if leaders would not reconsider their emphasis on social justice.

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Later, Beck held up cards, one with a hammer and sickle and other with a swastika. "Communists are on the left, and the Nazis are on the right. That's what people say. But they both subscribe to one philosophy, and they flew one banner. . . . But on each banner, read the words, here in America: 'social justice.' They talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly, democracy."

Is this what passes for rational discourse?

Glenn Beck is a race-baiting ass who takes advantage of the limited mental skills and lack of objective rational skills of his audience.

Czar-gate more like Douchebag-gate

So Glenn Beck is citing all of the czars in Obama's government as a sign we've become socialist, or Nazi, or racist, or whatever he's pushing this week.

Czars ar epolitical and policy advisors in the White House that do not have to be confirmed by Congress. All recent presidents have had them. Energy czars. Drug policy czars. Environmental czars.

Except in the Bizarro World that Beck inhabits, facts don't matter. With Obama, it's different. It's taking away the America we used to know. It sounds like a pre-Communist Russian takeover. Mobilize the Red Dawn kids to save us. Except for Swayze, of course. RIP.

As Cenk Uyugr said on his show it's like the "gate" suffix added to a scandal. It's fun to say but there wasn't an actual "gate" involved in, say, "Travelgate."

From an Ezra Klein commenter:

The czar thing also bugged me because it's not an official title. Like if people would have called for the resignation of Tom Delay back in the day because a hammer can't be the Majority Leader. After all, hammers are inanimate objects and it's an affront to American values to have a lifeless tool at such a high office.