Glenn Beck: Progressives Are Like Slave Owners

I hate to write about Glenn Beck. You see, I usually prefer to pretend I live in a sane, sensible world where people like Glenn Beck are pitied and indulged, as opposed to aired on television. However, I just couldn't pass up to over-the-top comedic value in the latest phlegm nugget of wisdom he coughed up: progressives are like slave owners because they both want people to be dependent on them.

I shouldn't need to point out that Beck's theory follows the same thread of logic as assuming that a gun and a dishwasher can be used interchangeably because they are both things you load. Slave owners, historically and today, don't want people to be dependent on them. They want people to make them buckets and buckets of money. And slave owners don't ask people to make them buckets of money -- they force them to do it. Progressives don't want people to be dependent on them either. They want a healthy economy where people have the resources they need to be self-sufficient. Saying that progressives are like slave-owners is like saying pizza is like cuddling or the Black Sea is like Pride and Prejudice.

Beck's searing, if nonsensical, criticism of progressives stems from a story about several thousand people in Detroit who stood in line to receive stimulus checks which turned out to be rumor. Beck mocks them for their false hope in this recession, and then calls the progressives who would support them "slave owners." Most of the people who stood in those lines were African-American, and some of them descended from actual slaves. For many them, the legacy of slavery still affects their everyday life. So please, Beck, don't pull worthless analogies out of your butt and fling them, like a monkey with excess poo, over the airwaves. You're insulting people for whom the reality of slavery as a past and present phenomenon is real and painful. And you're surprising no one by continuing to be a dogmatic, myopic, jerk.

Oh, and be careful when you load your dishwasher tonight. You wouldn't want to get two such different things confused again.