I Have a Nightmare

Noted schizophrenic egocentric paranoiac prima donna Glenn Beck has parlayed his success at Fox News into a lucrative reality TV special, which is what his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial this coming Saturday actually is. The rally, Beck explains, is meant to bring honor and dignity back to the civil rights movement and "reclaim" Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream. What? Reclaim it from what? From whom? And when did the civil rights movement ever lose its honor? When King spoke out against the war in Vietnam? When George McGovern was nominated for President? When Al Sharpton appointed himself as a family advisor to too many victims of racism at one time and couldn't manage his overloaded schedule?

Beck's interpretation of civil rights is a scary libertarianism in which people live for and care about themselves rather than for each other. Now, if I were asked to define civil rights, I couldn't recite the Webster's definition verbatim, but I know that grievances on Beck's agenda are not part of civil rights. Civil rights are essentially the rights to be a part of the community; the selfish individualism Beck espouses has nothing to do with that.

Guns, incidentally, are a part of Beck's agenda. Beck apparently plans to make Second Amendment rights a focal point of his rally, a point of fact underscored by the appearance of Sarah Palin and her known use of firearms metaphors. What do you expect from the woman who brought you aerial animal shooting? And by the way, isn't it in bad taste to talk about guns when talking about "reclaiming" the dream of a man who was shot to death?

Beck and Palin were both four years old (they were born a day apart in February 1964 - coincidence or supernatural phenomenon?) when Dr. King was assassinated, so they have no direct memory of the civil rights movement in its salad days. Which would be fine if they hadn't fallen asleep in high school history class back in the eighties when they were being taught about it.

If there's any good news about Beck's rally (and I'm stretching it here), it's that most residents of Washington, D.C., the majority of whom are black, won't be affected by it because organizers have distributed a map of the District showing in red the part where it's considered "unsafe" for these macho suburban white guys to travel through (i.e., most of it). Still, what's left (shown in blue) is the most recognizable and more tourist-friendly area of the District, and Beck is guaranteed a good deal of TV coverage by TV news outlets other than his own Fox News. Meanwhile, Al Sharpton is holding a counter-rally at a Washington high school at which Ed Schultz will appear. A high school? Bad PR mistake. I'm sure a lot of Americans, even in this age of ignorance, can still find the Lincoln Memorial on a Washington, D.C. map. But how many of them can find Dunbar High School?

Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial, by the way, is taking place forty-seven years to the day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on the same spot at the civil rights march on Washington. Because August 28 is a Saturday this year, Beck can count on a large gathering for his own rally. But would he be getting many participants, or so much attention from the media, if he were still holding the rally on the civil rights march anniversary and August 28 fell on a Wednesday this year, as it did when the march on Washington took place in 1963? Doubtful. Beck's fans wouldn't take a Wednesday off to attend a rally when they have jobs to hold onto in a recession.

And we all know what Beck and his fans think of the long-term unemployed.