An Open Letter to Glenn Beck on Why He Hates Academics So Darn Much

This is a not-so-peaceful entry, but one that I felt compelled to write after hearing Glenn Beck last week talk about the need for the American people to “steel” themselves against the evils of what he calls “reeducation camps:” colleges and universities, and the people who work there. According to Monsieur Beck, higher education is chockablock full of radical communists who want nothing more than to brainwash the youth of America into Mao-quoting automatons.


Funny—in all my time on college campuses, I’ve yet to see a course devoted to the study of communism. Not that such a course might not exist somewhere, but I’ve never seen it in any college catalog. On the other hand, every college or university I’ve been to has had an entire school or department of business and also economics, two whole academic fields devoted to advocating for the free market system. But I digress.

After hearing Beck, I felt like I needed to vent a bit. Maybe it’s because I’ve been around academics my whole life. Maybe it’s because I just got done putting together my application for tenure, a process that involved a lot of reflection on what it is that I do for a living and why I’ve chosen to do it. And maybe it’s because this weekend marked the 11th anniversary of my Dad’s passing, a man who embodied what being an intellectual could and should be.

Whatever the reason, I felt the need to respond in the form of an open letter to Mr. Beck, which takes the form of a Keith Olbermann-esque “Special Comment.”

The Rhetorical Violence of Beck et al.

There's a short but illuminating article at Media Matters for America on the prevalence of violent imagery and metaphor by those appearing on Fox. You can find it here: http://mediamatters.org/research/201002040060

The problem with the comments cited in the article are not that they are passionate or political.  It's not even that some of them are downright hateful.  It's that they play with the imagery of violence.  "Figures of speech" are not mere ornaments or funny little doo-dads we add to our speech; they are ways we frame our understanding of the world.  Cognitive linguistics suggests that metaphors in fact structure the actual neural pathways in our brain. 

That is, words mean things.  Not in the sense that they have timeless, unchanging definitions.  They don't.  But they have consequences.  They have implications.  They do things to us when we speak and hear them.

Should such rhetoric be censored?  Of course not.  But they should be censured--condemned as unworthy of consideration by thoughtful people and out of bounds of civil talk. 

Angels and Big Boys

Before you read any further, you owe it to yourself to take a look at this:




Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I know, for I thought it, too . . . once.




You’re thinking that Glenn Beck is batsh*t crazy.


Sure, at first blush it looks bad. The Beckster seems to fancy himself some sort of Robert Langdon a la The DaVinci Code, finding the oh-so-subtle-yet-indubitable symbols of communism in front of our eyes, going on a bizarre rant about hammer and sickles and workers and Rockefeller, all without making a single coherent point.


Yes, one might think that Beck is not only embarrassing himself, but his network, conservatives, and perhaps all of humanity with his inane prattle.


You might think that the only possible explanation for this tour-de-force of stupidity is that Beck, a confessed alcoholic, is back on the juice.


Oh, but you’d be wrong.


For, now that my eyes have been opened by Beck, I too see the connections. Glen has played Morphus to my naïve Neo, and I’ve swallowed the red pill. In more ways than one.


I give you a fabled piece of what I once, in my innocence, would have called “American” sculpture: Big Boy.

 Innocent? Whimsical? Cute?


Oh, you poor, ignorant bastard.


Thanks to Beck, I now see Bob’s Big Boy for what it is: communist propaganda.




You doubt me? I give you Big Boy’s ideological daddy--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Ah, I can here you even now. Mere happenstance you say. A quirk of sculptural synchronicity. I wish . . .

Take a look. See the pattern. Statue after statue. Lenin after Lenin. From Moscow to Budapest, Lenin’s pose is the same. The left hand clenched and cocked, as if to strike against an evil capitalist. The right hand raised in triumph.


What could be more clear?


A Big Boy burger? I’ll just say nyet, comrade!


Do you need more? You’ve got it.


Take a look at BB’s wardrobe--the checkerboard overalls.


Sure, one could note the color: red. Or the fact that overalls bespeak the proletariat, rising up in righteous revolution against their oppressors.


But a trained monkey could note those obvious connections between BB and nefarious political ideologies. Inspired by Beck, I have dug deeper, and I have looked into the abyss.


Do you know who else, Besides Mark’s Big Boy, uses the red checkerboard as a symbol?


Croatia!

Hmmmmmm…..what to make of this? Gosh, I wonder. What country was Croatia once a part of? Oh, oh yeah: Yugoslavia! And what was the form of government did Yugoslavia have?


Communism!


But that’s not even the end of it. Where else do we find that “innocent” red checkerboard?


Ralston Purina.

William Danforth, the founder of Purina, chose the red checkerboard as his company’s logo, but that’s not all. He also developed it into a symbol of a whole new-agey world view, representing the balance among the mental, physical, social, and religious. I know this because it’s on Wikipedia, so it must be true. Look it up yourself!


So the red checkerboard represents a pagan worldview—an unholy, un-Christian spiritual view linked via numerology to the number four—four winds, four humors, four elements, four corners of the world. The bastards! They made it so obvious we didn’t even notice it!


And now Ralston Purina is owned by a Swiss company. Gee, what do we know about the Swiss? Snazzy pocket knives. Sure. Yodeling. Check. But think . . . think, dammit!


Yes, now you have it: neutrality! Even in World War II! The Swiss wouldn’t even take a stand against Adolf Hitler, and now they own a company that is both leading our youth into the cold embrace of communism, but owns a huge percentage of the pet food market.


Oh God . . . . oh my sweet Lord . . . .the last piece has fallen in place.


Alpo . . . Kit-n-Kiboodle . . . Big Boy Burgers . . . .






THEY’RE PEOPLE! THEY’RE MADE OF PEOPLE!!


Peace.