Glenn Beck finally listens to
‘Born in the USA’ — and freaks
By Jason Linkins / March 12, 2010
You wouldn’t think this was possible, but Glenn Beck had apparently never actually sat down and listened to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA,” never heard the lyrics, never formed a familiarity with the song’s storied history in American politics, until this week, I guess? Anyway, now that he’s heard that the song isn’t some glorious tongue-bath to American exceptionalism, he’s denouncing it on the radio. Per Lindsay Beyerstein:
Twenty-six years after the release of Bruce Springsteen’s hit song, “Born in The USA,” conservative talk show host/performance artist Glenn Beck finally got around to listening to the lyrics.
Beck was shocked, shocked to discover that for all these years he’d been rocking out to a song about a bitter down-and-out Vietnam vet who has been kicked to the curb by the aforementioned USA.
Via Spencer Ackerman , here’s what Beck had to say about it:
BECK: You get filled with patriotic pride, and then you find out that Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ is anti-American. ‘Born down in a dead man’s town/ the first kick I took is when I hit the ground/ you end up like a dog that’s been beat too much/ so you spend half your life just covering up…’ [He reads the entire lyrics in an incredulous tone of voice; manages to mispronounce ‘Khe Sanh’]
Hmm. Yeah! [crosstalk] … It’s time for us to wake up out of our dream state. Out of the propaganda… This is the thing that people who come from the Soviet bloc or Cuba, they’re all saying, ‘How do you guys not hear this? How are you not seeing this?’ Well, because we don’t ever expect it.
All of this gives me the opportunity to bring up one thing that’s always puzzled me about Beck: his love of the band Muse. Beck follows Muse on Twitter , and he took the stage at CPAC to the tune of their recent hit, “Uprising.” Here’s the video, you can hear the song pretty clearly:
Don’t get me wrong, Muse is awesome. But what’s weird about Beck’s embrace of Muse is that their lead singer, Matthew Bellamy, is a 9/11 “Truther.”
From Spin Magazine, August, 2009:
“When I was younger, my mother communicated with ghosts,” says Bellamy as the limo snakes its way to Manhattan’s South Street Seaport and the posed and dissected cadavers that constitute the “Bodies” exhibit. “She and my dad would invite friends over to use a Ouija board and talk with spirits. I was allowed to watch. I imagine my interest in the unknown started then.”
That curiosity about what lies beyond has never gone away, and it has taken a particularly sinister turn. “I’ve always been quite interested in conspiracy theory, and I still am,” says the slight Bellamy, dressed for the macabre occasion in a light-blue striped button-down shirt, black slacks, and black loafers, his brown hair styled in the irregular thatch favored by Brit rockers since 1965. “But I’ve learned to be careful in talking about this stuff. People take my curiosity as evidence of belief. I think as I get older, I’ll become more and more interested in pursuing verifiable lines of thinking rather than blurting out my opinions.”
Until then:
On 9/11: “There is evidence that suggests the powers that be knew of the attacks beforehand and let them happen. There’s a video on YouTube called Loose Change that explains it.”
I hate to take Bellamy’s “curiosity as evidence of belief,” but he’s been
talking up 9/11 as an “inside job” for a long time.
Music is just music. But Beck very recently torched Texas gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina for espousing these same “Truther” beliefs, so it’s sort of funny to see him making allowances for Muse, while assailing The Boss for being un-American for that time he thought we should take better care of our veterans.
Source / Huffington Post
Yes, well, Mr.Beck and all his cheap little flag pin patriots are going to be hard pressed to watch any movies or enjoy any music if they intend to create an Inquisition for progressives and leftists like Springsteen.
That is the sort of thing it takes a war to impose on people.
Beck’s salary for lying through his carefully maintained pearly white Elitist Teeth (while wearing “working class” clothes) exceeds that of the 15 top paid members of the American Military combined. But he’s not paid to think. If he were, minimum wage would be overpaying him.
Maybe somebody ought to tell him that Johnny Cash was opposed to the VietNam War too.
Or put some dope in his coffee and tell him that if you play “The Ballad of the Green Berets” backward it gives you the secret for destroying liberalism forever (but if you play it forward you hear some truly satanic shit that burns holes in your brain)
He’ll be up for three days trying to figure out how to play a CD backward.
But what’s more troublesome than Beck as the really uneducated people who listen to him and actually believe him. Never underestimate the power of Large Groups of Stupid People. His masters at Fox figured out a way to get all the dumbasses in any American city together in one place at one time. (And then after the game they’ll have the Tea Party.)
Besides, Beck passes the Fox Test for loyalty… he’s a draft dodger who supports sending other people to war.
I’m not opposed to people refusing to go to war, the more the better.
What gets me is the ChickenHawks.
I pray to God that America never elects a couple of them to the offices of president and vice presi… oh…
Never mind.
Looking at it with fresh bleary eyes, that headline… you know that “freaks” can be a noun as well as a verb…
Beck ONLY listens to freaks…
Wait until he finds out that Francis Bellamy, the Unitarian Liberal preacher who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, was alternately Treasurer and Vice President of a Christian Socialist party.
Or that Woody Guthrie was a card-carrying Communist, “This Land is My Land” is a Communist anthem of the recently dispossessed, and when he finds out Lucille Ball, well, there was more “Red” about her than just her hair… I bet he won’t be Lovin’ Lucy quite as much.
But that’s the way witch-hunting works, you get all wrapped up in outing everybody who you even think there might be a hint of a sneaking suspicion that the person doesn’t fully stand with your very narrow world view.
Mr Beck, if you have one of your handlers read this to you, wake up, dude. Come out of the bunker, look around and learn about People. You know the ones, you claim to represent the Working people, well, you’re including ME in your claim, and I never authorized you to represent me. That’s what Labor Unions are for. You know, where we represent ourselves? Because somebody hired by the Corporations to “represent” us isn’t going to represent anybody but the corporations. And they feel that paying and treating “their” workers fairly isn’t a profitable option (even though it is) and will do anything they can to keep “their” workers docile.
Like having an actor dress up like a Working Man and spin wild tales of Boogy-men like, well, anybody who DOES stand for workers rights.
Oh, and lay off the Recreational Psycho – Pharmaceuticals, dude.
I love this blog. Whenever I srart to feel down about all the work we still have to do and all the challenges the tea party movement faces, I just come here and read some articles. Then I realize that despite all the strident rhetoric and the name calling, your mostly impotent.
Tea Partys are changing the national dialogue and political reality. You guys cant seem to get much done and tend to get steam rolled on issues that you care about (Afghanistan, Nukes, Alternative Energy, Universal Health Care, Wall Street Reforms, Card Check, Corporate Bailouts, Global Warming, etc.)
I guess our large group of stewpihd people will just have to continue to change America, while you guys entertain yourselves with mean spirited rhetoric and insults.
Well, never think DHS will be on point. Just don’t read him because he NEVER speaks to the point…he just dishes out his latest irrelevant insult.
Mr. Beck is really going to blow a gasket when he discovers what George Gershwin, Rogers and Hammerstein, damn near every actor of any talent in Hollywood, including Eroll Flynn, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, etc. etc. thought and DID. How many times was Katherine Hepburn accused of being a pinko? And she was, they all were.
I’d love to see Beck’s head explode.
‘yer flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore….Jesus don’t like killin’ NO MATTER what the reasons for…..
Signed, somebody who has spent half my life just coverin’ up.
The incidious, hate-mongering radio that Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh are leading is getting rather frightening. Rush’s response to the health care bill: “We need to defeat these bastards,” said Rush Limbaugh. “We need to wipe them out. Defeat the Democrats, every one of them that voted for this bill…”. This kind of hate will incite some poor idiots to take this a step further.
We need to call or write our congressmen and ask them to have the courage to condemn the ridiculous statements of right ring radical radio talk show hosts.. and do it now before it’s too late!!
Rush and Beck speak the truth.
Extremist to the DHS said…
Rush and Beck speak the truth.
Ya Think??? No, you don’t! If you did, you’d know the alcoholic is still seeing “Pink Elephants”.. and Limburger has never met a Twinkie he didn’t like nor a “Truth” he did..
On tonight’s Beck BS show (3-25-10, 1am-2am Central time slot), he is ranting and raving about all the “Weathermen” that are Pres. Obama’s advisers, as well as SDS of the ’60’s being a “violent, terrorist group” bent on overthrowing the “god loving, republican minded, “Leave It To Beaver/Father Knows Best” family unit and how SDS “failed, fell apart”, etc.. (I was there, Beck wasn’t, and I remember a rather different outcome!!)
This guy Beck has his head so far up his ass that his eyes are brown!!
To put this in simple words that “DHS” can understand:
Beck is an ignorant racist!
Compri?
I love it when folks here go on a rant and then i see its from “anonymous”. How brave of you to hide while you throw bombs.
Your ranting and name calling, while typical of progressives, still didnt offer any hint of proving your passionate arguments. I am beginning to get a picture of the angry mob mentality that must be present when you all get together for an anarchist smores roast.
I thought this was a group of folks that could defend their positions (at least to the extent that progressive positions are defensible)?