Brody's Scribbles... A Tale Of Two Burns? Former Fox Pundit & Namesake President of Media Watch Group Agree on One Topic: Glenn Beck

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Feb 5 | As I write this Op-Ed/Column/Rant the snowfall that the metropolitan DC area has been expecting is gently falling. Of course the meteorologists have raised the alarm that this is going to be another blizzard, so as I am an Ontario raised boy, I figure that by our standards at home in Canada, its just gonna be a dusting eh? Ah, but I digress!

Oh and speaking of blizzards, well metaphorically now, daily I receive updates & updates from several of the watchdog groups here in the District that keep an eye on us journalists. Especially those elements of the fourth estate that tend to stay pegged to the far right side of the fair & balanced meter.  Well, I should say to be 'fair' that these groups keep an eye on the 'media' in general which takes in all forms minus say, the paparazzi. 

Recently there's been a blizzard of commentary over the actions of one particular individual who honestly takes things and goes places that most persons find questionable and often in poor taste. Today's update from Media Matters President Eric Burns highlighted that fact:

Yesterday on his nationally syndicated radio show, Glenn Beck unleashed the latest in what has become a long series of racially charged comments about President Obama. Purporting to explain why Obama chose to start using the name Barack instead of Barry, Beck said:

"He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America -- you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Is -- really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion."

Then Mr. Burns pointed out that contrary to Beck's wild assertions about the President's motivations for using Barack, in an interview with Newsweek, President Obama himself said: 

It was not some assertion of my African roots ... not a racial assertion. It was much more of an assertion that I was coming of age. An assertion of being comfortable with the fact that I was different and that I didn't need to try to fit in in a certain way.

Sounds reasonable I guess. Mr. Burns also said that Beck is using his prominent platform to unfurl racially charged rhetoric. To name just a few examples, Beck infamously stated that he thought Obama was a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." He has called Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor a "racist" on at least three occasions, and suggested the selection process that led to her nomination was, "Hey, Hispanic chick lady! You're empathetic ... you're in!" Beck has portrayed Democratic efforts to enact health care reform as "reparations." 

Of course the Media Matters boss isn't the only person out to send the message that this type of  rhetoric is poisoning our political process and preventing us from coming together to solve the problems that face us.

I found this rather interesting article by former Fox News pundit & analyst Eric Burns. (Yeah, two of 'em eh? Go figure.) Writing in the Huffington Post nearly two months ago, Mr. Burns had this to say on the topic of Glenn Beck: 

I am not the Eric Burns who heads Media Matters, the liberal watchdog group. I am the Eric Burns who used to host Fox News Watch on the right-wing partial-news-but-mostly-opinion network. In the past year and a half, since departing from Ailes and friends, I have been much more silent about media matters than my namesake.

I speak out now because it is the time of year when one is supposed to count blessings. I have several. Among them is that I do not have to face the ethical problem of sharing an employer with Glenn Beck.

Actually, Beck is a problem of taste as well as ethics. He laughs and cries; he pouts and giggles; he makes funny faces and grins like a cartoon character; he makes earnest faces yet insists he is a clown; he cavorts like a victim of St. Vitus's Dance. His means of communicating are, in other words, so wide-ranging as to suggest derangement as much as versatility.

He is Huey Long without the political office.

He is Father Coughlin without the dour expression.

He is John Birch without the Society.

He is an embarrassment to all true conservatives, men and women who believe sincerely, thoughtfully and sensibly that the role of government in American life should be limited.

Of course, Beck does not call himself a conservative; he is, rather, a libertarian, which may be defined as a conservative-squared, a person who wants the feds to collect no money in taxes, spend no money on programs, but make available all services that the libertarian deems necessary for his own convenience and safety.

It is remarkable that Beck has attracted the amount of attention he has. Remarkable because, every night, Fox's Sean Hannity and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann stage a duel of one-sidedness in political commentary that would have been the talk, and the shame, of a more civil era.

Remarkable because, every night, Fox's Bill O'Reilly stages an exhibition of contentiousness, mean-spiritedness and self-aggrandizement that would similarly have affronted civil viewers of the past.

Remarkable because, every night, CNN's Campbell Brown stages an exhibition of a different kind, one of honorable pugnacity, an exhibition that would have stimulated viewers of the past but instead makes her a part of her network's continuing decline in prime-time ratings.

Yet Glenn Beck surpasses them all. He is the talk of the talkers. It is he who causes commentators to comment, fans to swoom, foes to fulminate. And it is he who has motivated me to burrow up from my literary researches to opine on journalism one more time.

I ask myself what I would have done if I worked at Fox now. Would I have quit, as the estimable Jane Hall did? Once a panelist on my program, Hall departed for other reasons as well, but Beck was a particular source of embarrassment to her, even though they never shared a studio, perhaps never even met.

I think . . . I think the answer to my question does not do me proud. I think, more concerned about income than principle, I would have continued to work at Fox, but spent my spare time searching avidly for other employment. I think I would not have been as admirable as Jane Hall. I think I would not have reacted to Beck with the probity I like to think I possess.

But, in my defense, I would never have gone out in public without wearing those funny black eyeglasses with no glass, bushy eyebrows and a fake nose.

Now, I need to say that I agree with both of these gentlemen 100%. Truthfully, Beck is the proverbial pimple on the posterior of the American media for some of the outrageous and inflammatory things that fly seemingly unbidden out of his mouth. There's apparently a disconnect between his brain and mouth and oh can you say 'Think BEFORE you speak?!'  In Beck's case. apparently not.