Objectify This

If there was a takeaway message from Sarah Palin’s abominable performances on 60 Minutes with Katie Couric, it seems to have been: do not answer her questions.

In the clip after the jump, Glenn Beck refuses to explain what he means by ‘white culture,’ if what he’s talking about is spelled that way and not White Culture or White Kkkulture. I mean, what’s so secret that you can’t talk about it on national TV? I have some guesses: racism or smug racism.

In his sidling around the question, Beck bluffs: “George Bush says, uh, my grandmother, was a typical African-American, that had, uh, that had, uh, her views bred into her. . .”

It’s all there, in the word “bred,” as he leans across the camera and makes eye contact with Couric beyond it. We do not breed citizens; we breed animals or slaves. George Bush did not have a black grandmother; Obama had a black grandmother. It seems that Beck is stating that slavery has such a profound effect on the African-American people that it devalues their grandmothers’ viewpoints to this day. And thus devalues Obama? Here we ignore the facts, as ideologues so often do.

Obviously, Beck is  the person devaluing grandmothers. Obama’s black, Kenyan grandmother was never a slave, and thus was not “bred” to anybody. This would be meaningless, contentless airtime if Glenn Beck weren’t one of the point people for scary, psuedo-revolutionary jargon from the right wing, which has lead, among other things, to Newsmax’s John L. Perry’s crazy encouragement of a U.S. military coup against Obama on Tuesday.

The column, by John L. Perry, was immediately redacted — not necessarily because Newsmax disagrees with Perry, but because it is an act of sedition to incite armed conflict against the government, and thus punishable by law.

Notice that the Newsmax statement to Mediamatters only discusses their respect for democracy and the Constitution, rather than for the President who their piece directly attacked. Also, Mediamatters kept a copy of the original column, so check it out.

Hat tip to punkassblog for the Beck footage.