Former ABC “This Week” co-host, now panelist on the program, Cokie Roberts does not pull any punches in the syndicated column she pens with her husband Steve.
She writes about a recent panel discussion that Steve was participating in during which “a beefy guy” stood up and claimed health reform was akin to fascism. Roberts writes, “We don’t know what the beefy guy reads or to whom he listens, but we would bet he’s a disciple of Glenn Beck.”
She then goes off on Beck’s “incendiary language” and his corruption of “the very essence of democracy.”
In response, a Fox News spokesperson asked, “Isn’t Cokie best known for lying to her viewers?” (referring to this.)
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We defended Fox News when the White House attacked the network in 2009, partly because it employs many fine journalists, including several of Steve’s former students. But news folks at Fox are right to be worried. At some point, Beck’s fanaticism taints them all.
“They’re right on the cusp of losing their image as a news organization,” says Andrew Tyndall, a respected television analyst.
We are not denying Beck or anyone else their First Amendment rights. He can say anything he wants. But advertisers don’t have to support his brand of hate mongering, and audiences don’t have to take Fox News seriously if one of its top names has become a “circus clown.”
Actually, Beck is worse than a clown. He’s more like a terrorist who believes he has discovered the One True Faith, and condemns everyone else as a heretic. And that makes him something else as well — a traitor to the American values he professes so loudly to defend.