Liberal critics were dead wrong in condemning Glenn Beck for holding a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Nobody owns that place or that date.
The real problem with Beck is not where and when he speaks. It’s what he says. And while he insists that he is not a politician, his choice of location clearly reveals his profoundly political purpose. That purpose is not just to disagree with President Obama but also to discredit him, not just to defeat him but also to demonize him.
Listen carefully to Beck and his pals on right-wing radio, such as Rush Limbaugh, and their message is unmistakable. Obama is not “one of us.” He’s “the other.” He’s “un-American.”
But that sentiment itself is deeply un-American. The great genius of this country is that it welcomes all colors, creeds and nationalities. Unlike the British, say, or the French, we don’t have one image or archetype that defines our identity. Barack Hussein Obama is as American as Glenn Lee Beck, but Beck cannot seem to accept that and neither can his followers who crowded the Mall last weekend.
One marcher, Kristine Sullivan, told Salon’s Mark Benjamin that she was “here to take back America. I want it back. I want our country back.” Back from whom, exactly? The implication was obvious: the others, the outsiders, the foreigners, the people with dark skin and funny names and strange religions. And if you think Beck, Limbaugh, et al., are not stirring up these fears and phobias, then you’re not paying attention.
Limbaugh now refers to the president as “Imam Hussein Obama” and recently called him “the best anti-American president the country’s ever had.” He endorses the “birther” movement and insists that Obama “has failed to prove” that he’s a natural-born citizen.
In the days before his march, Beck said that Obama’s “belief structure” stressed “collectivism, not individual salvation,” and added, “I don’t know what that is, other than it’s not Muslim, it’s not Christian. It’s a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it.” For good measure, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Beck asserted that Obama was a follower of “liberation theology,” and added, “It’s Marxism disguised as religion.”
Beck and Limbaugh have built a fire under a boiling stewpot of resentment, and they’re tossing in every incendiary innuendo they can put their hands on. Their critique might be incoherent but their mission could not be clearer: to brand Obama as a devil, not just a Democrat. He’s not just misguided; he’s a Marxist, a heretic, an apostate.
And who are the true believers? The real Americans? Why the good white Christians who showed up at Beck’s rally, of course. “America today begins to turn back to God,” he assured his followers, “For too long, this country has wandered in darkness.”
This drumbeat of denunciation — this deliberate distortion of the president’s background and beliefs — is having an effect. The Pew Research Center found that 18 percent of Americans now think Obama is a Muslim, up from 11 percent at the start of his presidency, and only 34 percent can correctly identify him as a Christian.
The correlation of religious views with political views is stunning. Sixty-seven percent of those who say Obama is Muslim disapprove of his presidency; 62 percent of those who call him a Christian like his performance.
Obama always knew this was possible, that he was vulnerable to attack as an alien “other.” In an interview with “NBC Nightly News,” he noted, “We dealt with it when we were first running for the presidency. There were those who said I couldn’t win … because I had a funny name and people would be unfamiliar with it.”
But he did win, in large part because he successfully defined himself with a message that said, “I am just like you.” He did that in many ways, telling stories about his kids, his wife, his mother and his struggle. As he told NBC, he was able to convince voters to say to themselves, this fellow is “somebody who cares about me and cares about my family.”
Somehow, that connection has been lost. For a growing number of Americans, Obama’s narrative no longer defines who he is. And the haters have filled the vacuum with their falsehoods and fabrications. If Obama wants to win re-election, and have a successful presidency, he has to take back his story, his faith and his very identity.








American Cartoonists
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