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Glenn Beck Loses Dispute Over Parody Domain

CuteSteveJobs writes "Glenn Beck fought the law and the law won. Parody website DidGlennBeckRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com attacked Beck using the same straw man arguments Beck himself is famous for: 'We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 — in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder ... Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?' Beck didn't see the humour and tried to have the site shut down. He sued the creator on the grounds the site 'violated his name as a trademark.' But in a sudden outbreak of common sense, WIPO rejected Beck's complaint finding the site 'can be said to be making a political statement,' which is a 'legitimate non-commercial use' of Beck's name. But after winning, the owner voluntarily handed Beck the domain anyway. Still, it's comforting to know that satire — the only weapon politicians and talking heads fear — is still safely in the hands of the public where it belongs."

42 of 1,172 comments (clear)

  1. icing on the cake: by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Insightful

    tell beck why the results of his arrogance is now something he has in common with barbra streisand. he'll love the comparison

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:icing on the cake: by WED+Fan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just because this is Glenn Beck, and there is almost a syndrome about the Beck/Limbaugh/Fox hatred going on right, doesn't take away from the vile level to which some people stoop to personally destroy someone.

      If this was: www.didmichelleobamagangbangacollegefootballteamandgetpregnant.org people would be furious with the decision that it was legal.

      Maybe I'm wrong, but I do look for a certain level of intellectual honest on /. After all, this isn't the Huffington Post.

      --
      Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
    2. Re:icing on the cake: by spun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If I was a public figure, yes. It's part of the price of fame, and of free speech. You like free speech, right?

      I find it particularly appropriate that this happened to Glen Beck, who uses the same tactics of making people refute completely bogus accusations.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    3. Re:icing on the cake: by nomadic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Irrelevant. The question isn't whether it provokes outrage, it's whether it was legal. Glenn Beck and his fans are all perfectly entitled to be enraged, but Beck shouldn't try to abuse the system in order to shut the website down.

    4. Re:icing on the cake: by jipn4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Being entitled to being enraged is obviously not a legal question but a moral one. Did Glenn Beck have a moral entitlement to being enraged? I don't think so, given his history. That's the point of that domain, after all.

    5. Re:icing on the cake: by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem isn't that Beck and Limbaugh are conservative. It is that they are intellectually dishonest. William F. Buckley was conservative as hell, but you had to admire his intellect, education and ability to present a cogent argument. Beck is a buffoon who uses every logical fallacy in the book. As soon as Limbaugh says, "I don't just make this stuff up;" you know he's just making it up.

      --
      Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
    6. Re:icing on the cake: by Garrett+Fox · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He's a sign of how much of an ideological split we have in this country, that we have certain people flinging accusations of treason against those who question our new overlord. (Or who ask crazy questions like "Where in the Constitution do the feds get the power to...?") The same people also have a tendency to be rude to the point of vileness. I've seen this twice personally with people I'd respected.

      --
      Revive the Constitution.
    7. Re:icing on the cake: by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This sort of satire has a rather long history, and has long been protected (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell ).

      Beck is an infantile baby. Don't want this sort of attention, get a job as an accountant or burger slinger. Otherwise, shut up and take it.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    8. Re:icing on the cake: by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No offense, and I know Glenn Beck fans. I like Glenn Beck fans. I've watched Fox. I really don't believe that conservatism is the politics of stupid. I -- you know, I think it's being hijacked.

      With that being said, you are a Glenn Beck fan. You are saying, "That's a broad brush" And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not a drooling idiot

      And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being a drooling idiot, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    9. Re:icing on the cake: by tayhimself · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah I wish this country made a sharp turn away from federalism. Then the "red states" in the middle could wallow in their economic mediocrity while the blue states would be able to power ahead and have money to provide necessary government services.

    10. Re:icing on the cake: by Omestes · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is there such a thing as "too" educated? I don't see how this is possible.

      But then again I find people slandering other people over being "intellectuals" to be rather silly. i'd rather be an intellectual than its opposite, ignorant. There also is a huge amount of irony in this, the people who are slandering other people for being "educated" are doing so for almost wholly political reasons. The politicians on the left are "intellectuals", but they ignore the fact that the "home grown" politicians are the right have roughly the same level of education.

      G.W. Bush, for example, was a Yale grad, with roughly the same level of education as the evil intellectial Clinton (either of them). Obama actually has LESS time in the crusty halls of Ivy League academe as G.W. Bush.

      I never see how being an ignorant yokel could be a point of pride. Its like America aspires to be back in highschool, where picking on nerds, just because they like books more than football, was a great passtime.

      Ignorance and stupidity is not a positive character trait.

      --
      A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
    11. Re:icing on the cake: by nschubach · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or set up a flag@whitehouse.gov email that your constituents can use to report anyone speaking ill of you or your policies for "further education"...

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    12. Re:icing on the cake: by dclydew · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think you're confusing causation and correlation. Being educated has nothing to do with being a Cosmic Schmuck.

      The search for certitude - like the pretense of moral righteousness - appears to me as a medieval habit that should have vanished long ago. None of us knows enough to be certain about anything, usually, and none of us are nearly as 'moral' as we feel obliged to pretend we are in order to be acceptable to 'Decent' Society.

      If we are not totally stupid and blindly selfish on all possible occasions, we are about as bright and ethical as anyone in history has ever been. The greatest batters in the history of baseball all had batting averages well below 0.500, which means they missed more than half the time they swung. Medieval morality and theology have left us with the hypocritical habit of pretending batting averages close to 0.999 in both knowledge and ethics. (The Absolutists go around talking and acting as if their averages were actually 1.000 or sheer perfection.) On average, I think I score under Babe Ruth and I suspect you do, too.

      There thus appears to be a great deal of conceit and self - deception in the habitual poses of intellectual certitude and ethical perfection among the educated classes. It would appear more in keeping with honesty, I think, to recognize, as analogous to Murphy's Law, the unscientific but useful generalization I call the Cosmic Schmuck Principle.

      The Cosmic Schmuck Principle holds that if you don't wake up, once a month at least, and realize that you have been acting like a Cosmic Schmuck again then you will probably go on acting like a cosmic schmuck forever; but if you do, occasionally, recognize your Cosmic Schmuckiness, then you might begin to become a little less Schmucky that the general human average at this primitive stage of terrestrial evolution.

      Page 22 - 23
      Natural Law
      or Don't Put A Rubber On Your Willy PDF
      by Robert Anton Wilson

      --
      Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
    13. Re:icing on the cake: by dclydew · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So you're upset by Healthcare, but you weren't worried when the government got permission to do wiretaps without a FISA order?

      You're angered by bank bailouts, but not by citizens being held without trial, or US entities breaching treaties and conventions that we signed as a nation (like the Convention Against Torture)?

      You are more concerned about TAXES then protesters being put in 'Free Speech Zones" that amounted to little more than cages?

      Jefferson would make his hand strong and pimp slap you for invoking his name with that sort of logic.

      --
      Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
    14. Re:icing on the cake: by IICV · · Score: 4, Insightful
      The best part of it is that when Glenn Beck's lawyers originally filed a complaint with the WIPO, the site's lawyer responded hilariously:

      Beck's skin is too thin to take the criticism, so he wants the site down. Beck is represented by a learned and respected legal team. Accordingly, it is beyond doubt that his counsel advised him that under the First Amendment to the United States' Constitution, no action in a U.S. Court would be successful. Accordingly, Beck is attempting to use this transnational body to circumvent and subvert the Respondent's constitutional rights.

      It's funny really - Beck is all for the Constitution, except when it's inconvenient for him. Then he appeals to those same transnational bodies he rails against on his show to get around it.

    15. Re:icing on the cake: by sten+ben · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Example, please? People say outrageous things, and then use "out of context" like a magic wand, without ever explaining what the context is.

      Well, the first clip in parent's parent's comment is actually a pretty good example (mind you, I'm not from the US, so I might be wearing different spectacles). While he does provide some context in that he shows a big part of the speech, he neither seems to understand or acknowledge the context. He either wilfully ignores, or is ignorant of, what she is actually saying just to paint her, and Mr Obama, as communists.

      1: He is not listening to what she is saying. She actually says that Mao and Mother Theresa are her favourites for making the point she's making: "...but the two people I turn to most, to basically deliver a simple point..."

      2: It is actually quite interesting that they stop subtitling the video at the point where she starts explaining that your freedom is yours. That you can do what you want and don't have to follow dogma or preconception. That is the context that he is ignoring. I'd actually say that using Mao as well as Mother Theresa as an example is pretty smart. It shows that with freedom to take your own path comes great responsibility, take a wrong turn and forget the consequences of your actions and you may fall to "evil".

      3: Another quite essential part that he is missing is that normal people do not need to agree 100% with their "favourite philosophers", it is quite all right to pick and choose in most cases. And the point he makes about Mein Kampff in the end only reinforces that perspective (as well as making me shout "Godwin!" to further invalidate him.

  2. Precident-setting? by Sockatume · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Handing back the domain after the decision strikes me as a way of setting a precident protecting such usage of a public figure's name, while gracefully ending the joke when it's done what it's supposed to. Well done.

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    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  3. This was a parody of the Glenn Beck Style by spun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Glenn makes personal attacks of this very nature, so it is entirely appropriate that this was done to Beck. After all, if he didn't rape and murder a young girl, why doesn't he just prove it? Should be as easy as proving you were born in this country.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  4. "Beck didn't see the humour" by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because there is none. Quit confounding parody and satire with humour. Both are often very unfunny (which is not to say they should not be protected: they should).

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  5. Why bother? by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why do you bother? You are right but why make the effort?
    I swear that the people on Slashdot have pushed the art of bias to new extremes.
    To answer your question. No I am not furious that the decision was legal. And no I wouldn't be upset if the other URL was found legal.
    I an and would be furious that both exists and I am a little ticked that Slashdot puts it on the front page and NOT under politics which I have set to not show up on my front page of Slashdot.
    Yes it is good that it is legal it is bad that idiots create such crap and that other sites then give them free PR.
    BTW if you hate Glen Beck you do know this will only help him with his faithful don't you?
    Just so everybody can see the results of this action and understand just how STUPID it is I will explain it to you.
    Some Beck hater posts this website.
    People that HATE Beck will think it is funny.
    People that Love Beck will hate those that think it is funny,
    Beck takes them to court and doesn't get the site taken down.
    The people that HATE Beck still think it is funny.
    The people that LOVE Beck will see it as proof that the courts are biased and hate them. They will become more politically active and work harder for consertives to get elected.

    The result is this is preaching to the base and will do nothing but amuse one base and rally the other.
    End result more polarization which is exactly what WE DON"T NEED.
    For people like me that don't love or hate Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, President Obama, or NPR.
    We get anoyed that we have to see this stupidity.

    Of course why did I bother to make this effort since it will be unread or I will be modded down as a troll.
    PS. I bet Health Care will not pass. Both parties are expert at the art of active inactivity.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    1. Re:Why bother? by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have never seen anyone refute what Glenn Beck is actually saying.

      That's the his entire M.O., is it not? First, Beck accuses you of beating your wife (or some similar calumny). Then he tries to get you to deny it. If you rise to the bait and do deny it, he now has video of you denying it, and can use that video to imply that whether you beat your wife or not is a legitimate question. If you refuse to dignify him with a response, he can go ahead and claim that because you refused to deny it, there must be something to the accusation. Either way, he wins.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    2. Re:Why bother? by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I herebey refute what Glenn Beck says.

      Glenn Beck has said: It's just that almost everyone who does believe in global warming is a socialist."

      Fact, the majority of american scientists -- over 90%, believe in Global warming. These are not socialist. Most are Democrats, but no, you don't get the right to tell other people what they believe. Deomcrats are liberals not socialists. We have the right to decide our own political affilialtion, you can't tell me I'm a socialist, anymore than I can tell you that you are a member of the NeoNazi party.

      More importantly, not all scientists are Democrats. Yes, 55% say they are Democrats, but 6% say they are Republicans. (2% say they are independent). The independent ones also believe in Global warming.

      (P.S. Republicans should be ashamed that so few scientists are Republicans. Yeah, I know the hole 'ivory tower' explanation, but frankly that might be enough to explain 20% or even 15%, but 6% indicates a serious problem).

      The main problem with Glenn Beck is not the content, but the delivery.

      That is I respect a man that says "I believe Obama is not an American Citizen" a lot more than I respect an asswipe that says "Isn't it interesting that Obama has not publicly denied being a Kenyan." The first man is simple ignorant, the second knows he is wrong, but wants to try an attack his opponent using dirty tricks based on a lie he refuses to stand up and state. The first man is a brave idiot, the second one is an intelligent coward trying to hide. I am proud to call the first a friend, but I would throw the second out of my house.

      Glenn Beck is a shmuck, not because of what he believes, but of how he presents it.

      --
      excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    3. Re:Why bother? by kthejoker · · Score: 4, Insightful
  6. Re:For everyone who is going WTF who is Glenn Beck by canajin56 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nobody is saying he's a rapist and a murderer, they're just pointing out that he's never denied.it. He attacked an Arab-American senator, saying that they've never gone on record stating they aren't a terrorist, and never really presented any solid proof they aren't working for Al Quaida, so basically the website is operating under the assumption that if he can give it, he can take it.

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    ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
  7. Re:handing back the domain FAIL by BeansBaxter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What? Someone modded you INSIGHTFUL? Ok its slashdot but still. Glenn Beck is evil? He must be destroyed? I think your post highlights an absolute fear of free speech. And for that you are modded insightful. Yes I'm in the wrong forum when talking about freedom and yes slashdot users have a bias which ruins its credibility. I don't fault the poster as much as the modders. Just a joke. Oh and on topic glad that freedoms were up-held and I love Beck's stuff. He cracks me up and makes me think.

  8. Re:its fair turn around by schnikies79 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Two wrongs don't make a right. Be the better person and refrain from it.

    Using the same tactics makes you an asshat just like the other guy.

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    Gone!
  9. Re:Sick of the Double Standard by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would imagine most of the comments I just read were by those who have never even seen or listened to Beck's show.Calling the accusation of fictional rape of a young girl parody is ridiculous.

    I have listened to Beck and I also consider his approach to calling anything or anyone who proposes a government run this or that as communist and socialist (and the "fact" that the left has a "hidden" agenda to turn the US into a communist state) is also ridiculous and extremely distasteful

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    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  10. Re:Has the real question been answered? by DavidTC · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Glenn Beck almost certainly did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990. However, with people raising the issue, he should step forward and deny that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. I mean, the man has a TV show, a very public forum to state that he didn't raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. He could open tomorrow by saying that he didn't rape and murder a young girl in 1990.

    Instead he's now suing people who say he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990! I don't think this allegation is true for a second, but seriously, people, that doesn't look good.

    In case you honestly don't get the joke, this is one of the many ways that Glenn Beck operates. He will explicitly state rumors, over and over, to assert he doesn't believe in them, but the Democrat involved, usually Obama, should deny them. So someone figured out, hey, he should have a rumor of his own to deny.

    --
    If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
  11. Re:For everyone who is going WTF who is Glenn Beck by Comatose51 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "He is very conservative"

    I'm a liberal but I think it's an insult to conservatives to call him that (seriously, there are intellectual, reasonable conservatives). He's just crazy. The best way to describe him is to call him a very successful television troll. I don't think he really has a position. He just want to get people riled up and attract as much attention to himself as possible.

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    EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
  12. Re:its fair turn around by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But as far as the actual NEWS goes, Fox NEWS was by fair the most "fair and balanced" of any network...

    But the organization as a whole works as one machine. What Fox NEWS is very good at is reporting the rumors started by the Fox "commentators* - "...some people say..." - and those *commentators* are very good at talking about that *news* - "...it's been reported...". Rinse and repeat.

    There should be no misconception that the entire Fox News organization is a propaganda machine for Rupert Murdoch and the Republican party. They are "fair and balanced" only up to the point that it conflicts with these two entities. To paint a broad stroke, anyone who cannot see that is deluded.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  13. Re:Sick of the Double Standard by Tanks*Guns · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "Calling the accusation of fictional rape of a young girl parody is ridiculous. Stooping to that level means you are simply trying to assassinate a person's character. But when it's done against a conservative, it's called parody"

    You, my dear sir or madam, missed the point entirely, of course he didn't rape and kill anyone, it would certainly hit his ratings so he wouldn't do that, what the domain "parodied" was the style favored by Mr. Glenn "I do more research ..." Beck: make a statement about a target, imply its validity and ask why the target does not defend that accusation, because if he doesn't defend that accusation, then it must be true.

    That *is* character assassination and he was called on it, quite publicly.

    Remember, “if it weights more than a duck, it must be a witch"

  14. Good Example, But Not Necessarily How You Meant... by Petersko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Quoting the article you linked to:

    "You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths, Okay? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definitions define how good you are internally. You fight your war. You let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path."

    I watched the video of her delivering the speech, and it's perfectly plausible that her explanation is true. "...two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Zedong and Mother Theresa" has all the hallmarks of a poorly delivered joke. She may, in fact, have heard that quote and backstory from Lee Atwater as she claimed.

    So Beck, in his usual form, runs right out and connects her to all of Mao's atrocities, instead of to the quote she offered. He implies, AS YOU DO HERE, that she's a student of his work, and that she agrees with all of his choices. In no way can that be supported from anything else she's said, and it certainly can't be concluded on the basis of even this one isolated quote.

    Beck does not back up most of his stuff. He implies. He solicits emotional response instead of enlightenment. He draws casual lines and tosses them aay without backing them up. He hammers his points, and you suck it up like his greedy little lap dog.

    Wait a second... he's Michael Moore! Should have seen it before.

  15. Exactly by Weaselmancer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And I'd also add: Don't be such a pussy - anything you dish out you should fully be able to take. I'd love to hear an explanation on why it's fair when you do it and unfair when it's done to you.

    And on top of that: If you love 'Murica as much as you say you do, then you should at least learn how she works. We're actually pretty proud of the First Amendment. Too bad you're not.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
    1. Re:Exactly by nomadic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As for the 1st Amendment, who is it that has been trying to muscle Fox out of the networks, claiming they "aren't really a news organization"?

      Nobody's been trying to "muscle" Fox out of the networks. Is the White House trying to shut them down? Send the army into the studio?

    2. Re:Exactly by dclydew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It doesn't strike me as that odd... I have never seen a "major news organization" that has been as blatantly partisan and as blatantly biased as Fox News.

      --
      Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
    3. Re:Exactly by BakaHoushi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The reason I, personally, have a problem with Beck is exactly what is portrayed by this website.

      He never SAYS that "The Government is doing *Insert Evil Act Here*." He just implies it. A lot. With no facts at all. Then he cries, and claims he's scared, all attempting to make people think he cares about them.

      Then he compares some government program to what Hitler would do. Then maybe he talks about how the government COULD, not that they are, but so easily COULD put something in the swine flu vaccine.

      It's scare politics. It's all it really is. Sure, he throws out the occasional "well, I'm speaking of the Republicans, too, don't want to make this political," but by far it's obvious where his loyalties lie. So obvious even SNL mocks him for it. Which is saying something.

      And yes, Olbermann can be bad. But that's one guy on one channel. And he does tend to have some factual basis for his opinions. And I don't see his stuff leaking into the rest of the MSNBC newscasting.

    4. Re:Exactly by BakaHoushi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      George W Bush, MSNBC.

      Hardly the first time.

    5. Re:Exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      but you do have to admit that this is pretty much the first time a president or administration or party in power has overtly dismissed an entire news network, and actually spoken ill specifically of them.

      No, I don't have to admit that - the Bush administration did the same thing with CNN, for simple reporting of the news.

      They problem with Fox is that they are organizing political rallies, which makes them not a news organization, by definition - it makes them a political organization.

      as bad as it got for Nixon, or Clinton, they didn't single out a news network that was reporting badly about them, verbally attack them, and cut off access from them like the current administration has to Fox.

      The difference is that Fox is a political organization, not a news one. If they want to be treated like a news network, they should cease organizing political protests. They're free to give their opinion, but the second they start paying to host and organize political movements, they cease being an impartial observer.

    6. Re:Exactly by moeinvt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "You honestly don't see those as being about as partisan towards the left side of things"

      I see ALL of the "mainstream" media as a giant propaganda machine designed to perpetuate the status quo and serve wealthy special interests. Both of the "major" political parties are really on the same "side", except on a few divisive and emotional (but largely unimportant) issues. The mission of the MSM is to create and maintain the illusion of genuine political opposition. Their primary tool for doing this is to constrain the political dialogue in this country to a narrow spectrum of "acceptable" viewpoints, and then twist every issue into a narrow minded black and white paradigm where there are "two sides". Real investigative journalism no longer exists in the confines of the mainstream press.

      We would all do well to completely ignore the MSM propaganda. Long live the bloggers and the independent media.

  16. glenn beck is a smear merchant by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    his goal is to get attention, whether positive or negative. in fact, getting negative attention from his ideological opponents is probably more dear to him than getting positive attention from his admirers

    you have to understand the man and the nature of his business: he's a professional troll. his goal is to create and generate emotional responses, whether positive or negative, its all the same to him. this is his business, and he's good at it. proof being, sites that mock and satire him: its proof of success

    in fact, i'd bet he actually doesn't mind the site, it doesn't really bother him personally, but he shrewdly calculated that feigning outrage as a reaction would win him more response. i mean look at this giant shitstorm generated on slashdot over this ego-pumping pointlessness. we're all talking about glenn beck. beck, beck, beck, blah blah blah: he wins, he has our attention, he's the subject of our speech and occupies our thought. that's his goal

    the man is a professional demagogue. this is what he does, and he does it well: he generates heat, pointless emotion, mindless easy outrage in service of a cause. of course, its all lies and smears, but what does that matter? truth is not the issue, influence is. and in politics the truth means something, but influence means even more

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  17. Re:Sick of the Double Standard by Grym · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not exactly unreasonable to call a program for the government to have the means to produce a thing (good or service) a socialist program.

    That's entirely unreasonable. Socialism != Government-run. You don't think the U.S. military is socialist do you? Policemen and Firefighters aren't socialist are they?

    The real problem is that too many Americans have no idea what Socialism is. The term has been shrewdly twisted by people who profit from Laissez-faire policies to effectively mean any and every service the government provides. But that is not socialism. The "means of production" is not defined as the ability to produce any product or any service like you seem to think.

    It could just be that people are ignorant in general, and because they resent and distrust intellectuals, they end up getting their history lessons from buffoons like Glen Beck. The result is that a disturbing number of people end up truly believing that Nazism, Communism, Socialism, and Fascism are all the same. How can America hope to remain an innovative, dominant competitor in a global economy with such widespread ignorance?

    -Grym

  18. The point by warrax_666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you look at the language of the site, they're specifically not accusing him of rape (odd, that you should pick that over murder, but oh well).

    The point is that he uses exactly the same kind of language to accuse people of all sorts of things -- f.ex. accusing a Muslim congrescritter of being a terrorist by using absurdly leading language such as "Now, *I'm* not saying that you're a terrorist, but some people might think .... Why don't you deny the rumour that you are a terrorist?"

    Glenn Beck is a fucking pussy who can't handle being confronted with his own tactics and he no moral high ground in this case.

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    HAND.