Glenn Beck incites death threats against 78 year old professor

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   Mighty Momposted 13 years ago

   So much for toning down the rhetoric. Not just Beck, but Beck's boss at Fox News are refusing to call off the dogs on this one.
   How a 1966 article about welfare reform could POSSIBLY be considered the cause of America's current economic collapse is beyond me. Then again, everything Beck says is beyond me.
   
   
   This story is all over the news. I chose New York Magazine's coverage since Frances Fox Piven is a professor at CUNY.
   
   Glenn Beck Fans Send Death Threats to Elderly College Professor
   1/22/11 at 4:30 
   Glenn Beck has made repeated mention lately of Frances Fox Piven, a 78-year-old liberal academic and CUNY professor. In Beck's view, Piven's a veritable enemy of the Constitution who's responsible for a plan to intentionally "sabotage" the American economic system. Piven, pictured, actually authored The Nation story that led Beck to this conclusion 45 years ago. It's called “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty,” and proposes "that if people overwhelmed the welfare rolls, the system could force reform and give rise to changes like a guaranteed income." Somehow, Beck links what he termed "the Cloward-Piven Strategy" to Obama’s statement during the 2008 presidential campaign that “we are days away from transforming America.” Beck also accused Piven of "inciting violence" in The Nation this month by writing that unemployed people should be staging protests. Anonymous visitors to Beck's website have now called for this lady's death, and some, she said, have even contacted her directly.
   
   The Center for Constitutional Rights is demanding that Beck stop his "false accusations" about the senior citizen, as he's "putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response." Joel Cheatwood, a senior vice-president at Fox News, however, said Beck had quoted her accurately and had never threatened her.
   
   Beck continues to rant and rave about this lady. "Under the cover of darkness, [Piven and other liberals] want you not to listen to me," he said in a recent broadcast. "Because if you start to listen to me, you're never going to willingly give up your freedom."
   
   Piven, meanwhile, is playing the whole thing totally cool: “I don’t want to give anybody the satisfaction of thinking they’ve got me trembling," she told the Times. In a separate interview last year, she said, of Beck vilifying her: "It's an old technique of right-wing ideologues: Finding a scapegoat. Somebody, preferably, who isn't a farmer, right? An intellectual. And attributing things that go wrong in American society to somebody who's foreign or dark-skinned or an intellectual." In any case, so many more people will now have heard of the 1966 Nation article “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.”

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      Stump Parrishposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      You beat me to it. This is the same rhetoric that they have been claiming doesn't incite violence in tea baggers. They would know the truth if one of their supporters missed and shot them with it.
      
      http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/201 … nder-fire/

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      Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      It's ironic that anyone can tie the collapse of recent events, especially a foolish article.
      
      America has been screwed since it's inception, but that's another story altogether.

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   Mighty Momposted 13 years ago

   The death threats are disturbing. However, her comments within the article you posted, Stump, get to the meat of the problem.
   She is one sharp lady. And thus a huge threat!
   
   "She refused to fixate on Glenn Beck, turning her analysis instead on Rupert Murdoch and the moneyed interests behind media outlets such as Fox News. Piven explained:
   
   I think that we haven’t given enough attention to and enough importance to what is really a very dominant propaganda network that has developed in this country. It is painful. There are different components to it. You can trace its beginnings in some of the Republican strategy—strategists of the late 1960s, who were trying to win over the working class by playing on the cultural divisions in the United States.It’s hard for people to understand what’s going on in a complicated society. Democracy requires that people have some understanding of what’s going on, of what their own interests are, who their enemies are. But it’s a very complicated society. And moneyed propagandists have taken advantage of that to create a demonology in which it is the left, the Democratic left, that is the source of many of our troubles.
   
   And this is the most frightening development, rather than the kind of nutty death threats that you read a couple of. It’s a very alarming development, because it raises the question of whether a democracy can survive and reemerge with any kind of health in the face of these enormous propaganda capacities. And in that sense, it is Murdoch, not Beck, who is the more important target."
   
   BINGO!

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   Mighty Momposted 13 years ago

   What!??? The greatest nation on the planet? The greatest nation in history? The one and only America the Exceptional?
   Founded on the most sacrosanct Constitution?
   We've been screwed since our inception!!!???
   
   Cags, you are gonna get your head handed to you with remarks like that. But not by me, of course . Good to see you back in the forums, btw. MM

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      Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you for your kind words Mighty Mom. I'm glad to be back. And, you know what, you could be right about having my head handed to me. However, I would like to point out that if my head is in my hands, then what concern of it is of mine?

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   Mighty Momposted 13 years ago

   Good point! I never thought about it in quite that way.
   I suppose the only concern at that point would be that you don't drop it !!

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      Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Okay, that was funny, up to a point. It wouldn't be a concern about dropping it, if it wasn't a concern that it was in my hands to begin with.

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   Mighty Momposted 13 years ago

   *Doh!*
   
   Of course! You could care less. Because you are head less!

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      Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      
      
      The funny part of it Mighty Mom, even being headless, I probably would still be more intelligent than most politicians.

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      Ron Montgomeryposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      No head?  You been sleeping with my wife? 

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         Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Don't be upset Ron, we don't talk about you, if that helps.

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   Mighty Momposted 13 years ago

   That goes without saying, sir.
   Even headless, you would be more intelligent than just about anybody I know.
   Except Bill Clinton, cuz he's REALLY smart.
   (although not much on personal morals and common sense, alas)

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      Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      *bows and kneels to Mighty Mom, as a humbled action*
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      *then proceeds to fall on floor laughing his a$$ off

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         Mighty Momposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Oh jeez!
         First it's your head, now your A$$.
         You're falling apart right in front of my very eyes (which are still attached to my head, which is still attached to my neck -- and I'm still nowhere near as smart as you )

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            Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            

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   Cagsilposted 13 years ago

   Okay, now the fun is over with, can we get back to the topic.
   
   
   
   
   Glenn Beck incites death threats against 78 year old professor. If it is the case, then he should be strung up by his testicles and make to sing the American anthem upside down.
   
   Problem solved. He isn't likely to do it again.

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      Stump Parrishposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Cag, cant get to his testicles, he wears magic underwear, remember?

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         Cagsilposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Okay Stump, then I'm off in search of a very large CAT that can confiscate his tongue.

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