Instant Ignorant Dolts - Rick Stengel and Time Magazine

We haven't done much with Glenn Beck, here on The Garlic.

It's already satire, as soon as he opens his mouth, and we don't want to get into the daily "Look what Beck Said Now" circus.

His prodigious lunacy, long ago, granted him being grandfathered into The Garlic's "Ignorant Dolt" roster.



It would be one thing, like a major news periodical, say, Time Magazine, decided to look into the smegma that is Glen Beck, the lies, the racism, the fomenting of anarchy, and report on that, even acknowledging that the Flying Monkeys of the Right Wing Freak Show eat it up like happy soup.

But no.

Editor Rick Stengel has decided to do a puff, cheerleading, piece, that gives credibility to Beck's ranting lunacy by using the 'straw man" argument that the liberal left is just as bad.

Funny, I don't remember the Liberal Left foaming at the mouth that The Commander Guy wasn't a U.S. Citizen, or continually depicting him in offensive racial caricatures.

If someone has a tape of "The Cheeseburger That Sweats" (aka Rush Limbaugh - (H/T Barry Crimmins)), singing "Bush, The Hapless Honkey", get it posted asap.

Time's cover story this week, written by David Von Drehle, is "Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?"

You can go read it, and it take some time, as you will have to gather yourself up off the floor, having fallen down laughing so many times, you may end up with some bruises.

Or, you can read Greg Mitchell's deconstruction of it;

New TIME Cover on Glenn Beck Ignores Facts, and Worse

I have no quarrel with TIME magazine devoting a cover to Glenn Beck -- so long as the accompanying story sticks to hard facts and harsh truths. The issue coming tomorrow, online today, sadly fails to do so in an apparent effort to woo the rightwing with a ludicrously "balanced" treatment of equally dangerous and wacko "ranting" coming from left and right.

It starts right away with a first paragraph that claims that only "liberal sources" estimated the protest crowd in D.C. last weekend as about 70,000, while conservatives say up to a million or more. Actually, virtually all mainstream media sources, along with nonpartisan factchecking organizations such as PolitiFact, cite the lower number.

[snip]

There's a scattering of extreme Beck quotes lost in many paragraphs on the money deals. And groups like Media Matters are accused of "cherry picking" the bad ones. But then, they are just part of the "rant industry" on the left. There's a long, long graf quoting Beck on 9/11 and the Freedom Towers but no mention of his attack on the 9/11 widows. It notes his assault on the Obama "czars" and "he has some radical-sounding sound bites to back it up."

Ignorance and possible racism are never raised, despite polls showing that frightening numbers of conservatives believe that Obama was born in Kenya or may, in fact, be the "anti-Christ."

There's more that Mitchell has, and, also Glen Greenwald, taking Stengel, and Time, to task in his "Time Magazine: the liberal bias of facts"

It is also rather odd that Stengel would opt to puff up Beck in this weeks' 'Time', considering, just yesterday, Salon ran with an excellent expose on Beck - "Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life: Cleon Skousen was a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised. Then Beck discovered him."

Beck is idolizing, and preaching the word of, a man who both the Republican Conservatives AND the Mormons booted out, not wanting any part of him.

If you can't cut it with either of those two, man, you gotta be so far off-the-planet, the Hubbell Telescope couldn't find you.

Mitchell offers an Update in his post;

Just got the print edition. In editor's note, Richard Stengel actually writes, "One of our jobs as journalists is to be the referee, the honest broker who sorts through the accusations and says, This is fact, and this is fantasy." Then explains that's why they put Von Drehle on Beck.

I guess Stengel hasn't gotten around to reading the Salon piece, or anything much else on Beck, and just ran with "the fantasy" stuff.

Rick, how's about being that "honest broker" next week, and place on your cover The Garlic awarding you the Ignorant Dolt Crown and Sceptre.

You, Rick Stengel, are today's' Instant Ignorant Dolt.


Bonus Links

Jamison Foser: How Time magazine enables Glenn Beck's lies

John Cook: Leftist 'Terrorizer' of Children Is Now Glenn Beck's Official Portraitist

David Weigel: Time Magazine Disputes Time Magazine’s Reporting

Steve Krakauer: MSNBC Forced To Talk About Glenn Beck

Will Bunch: UPDATED: Where Glenn Beck gets his ideas

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who’s right." ... Joe Klein and Time (Stood Still) Magazine Follow-Up

Power comes from lying ... Lying big and getting the whole damn world to play along with you ... Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you get them by the balls

Senator Roark, from “Sin City - That Yellow Bastard”

Yes, we have to employ one of our favorite lying quotes again, only to begin to capture the conflagration raging over Joe Klein and Time Magazine's obtuse behavior in intentionally misrepresenting - lying - about the FISA Debate and pending legislation.

We weighed in on it yesterday with "Top Ten Cloves: Reasons Time Magazine Hasn't Corrected Joe Klein's Egregiously Error-Filled FISA Articles", but that wasn't even a thimble-full of scorn that is being flung around;

Jane Hamsher/Firedoglake: Shorter Time Magazine: Equal Time For GOP Propaganda

emptywheel/The Last Hurrah: Time Gives Up on the Truth

Crooks and Liars: Joe Klein: Accuracy??? We don’t need no stinkin’ accuracy!

Klein, along with editors Priscilla Painton, Josh Tyrangiel and Rick Stengel don't have their heads buried in the sand, their walking around with sandboxes encasing their alleged brains.

Here's Stengel, taking the helm, adding "the correction" to Klein's original smear piece;

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't.

This is after Klein himself offered "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who’s right."

Ohhh Boy! ...

While Glenn Greenwald has been all over this, as well as numerous other writers and bloggers, just in case the folks at Time Magazine are confused - by their own work and writing - U.S. Representative Rush Holt, writing on The Huffington Post, offers them "What's Really in the RESTORE Act", even though Editor Stengel and Klein appear completely disinterested in getting the facts straight.


We'll cue up Que Sera Sera, while you peruse Part II of the Joe Kleinpalooza


Glenn Greenwald: Everything that is rancid and corrupt with modern journalism: The Nutshell

Marty Lederman/Balkinization: All You Need to (Not) Know About the Proposed FISA Fix

Think Progress: Time’s false balancing act.

Kagro X/Daily Kos: More on the Time idiocy

Glenn Greenwald: Demand answers from Time magazine; (Updated below - Update II, Update III: "Response" from Rick Stengel Update IV, Update V)

Digby: Time After Time

Joe Klein and Rick Stengel seem to be taking the greatest of pleasure in burning the truth