Glenn Beck at CPAC 2010. Photo: Gage Skidmore CC
Thank you Karl Frisch – who doesn’t want to annoy Glenn Beck without actually devoting too much time to doing so? He writes in Media Matters:
Want to annoy Fox News’ Glenn Beck in five minutes or less while simultaneously making sure your community gets its fair share of federal money? Fill out and return the 2010 U.S. Census questionnaire when it arrives in your mailbox.
Few other issues seem to whip media conservatives into a frenzy of misinformation and half-baked conspiracy theories like the decennial count of Americans.
You see, for the world of “conservative journalism,” the census is a manifestation of everything they fear. Put yourself in their shoes: Obama’s administration is hell-bent on imposing a socialist-fascist-communist-totalitarian-Marxist police state, and now he’s sending us all mail! Even worse, Obama’s thugs may show up at your door to get a more accurate count.
Why wait for the third installment of the Twilight franchise when you’ve got these scary bloodsuckers wanting to … gulp … count you?
To hear Beck tell it, the Census is just part of the “modern day slave state.” Hardly surprising for a man who has called President Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people” and claimed Obama’s policies in general are driven by little more than “reparations” and a desire to “settle old racial scores.”
For government-haters like Beck, attacks such as these are as calculated as they are mean-spirited. Why would he want his audience to think highly of the once-a-decade count if it has a direct result in determining just how federal money for schools, hospitals, job training centers, senior centers, emergency services and a host of public works projects are allocated? He doesn’t believe the federal
government should be involved in these programs in the first place…
[continues in Media Matters]
