First off - this is an over-exaggeration and completely off base. People do care - politicians care when it suits them. A better line to say would have been "politicians only care when it suits their political agenda." I could have agreed with him on that. But he didn't say it, nor did he imply it. He said that you, me, and the people we know don't care. This kind of absolute statement is insulting to me, and makes me want to never listen to the guy again. I hate reading his words, I hate hearing his preacher-esque diatribes, and I'm sick and tired of his rants. The guy has a great start on most of his lectures, and makes some good points... for the first fifteen minutes. Then he goes crazy and starts pointing fingers and telling us all what our problems are. It's a pattern he uses to make good people think that everyone else around them is bad - he uses the image of himself as 'the prophet' to put us all in our places. It's insulting to me as a person, and quite insulting to our society. But let's take these cases he speaks on.
The Trayvon Martin incident - this case was in Florida, and was sensationalized to the point that every television news source covered the trial from start to finish. Why? Well, when George Zimmerman was not originally brought up on charges, a community of people, who knew Trayvon Martin and his family, raised hell. A community brought it to the attention of the President, different social activist groups, and news sources, and begged for help to get George Zimmerman brought up on charges for killing Trayvon Martin in what seemed like a premeditated murder - or manslaughter in the least. A community of people CARED enough to bring the man to court. Whether or not George Zimmerman was found guilty, the people CARED and pressed the courts and police officials to file charges.
Forget the fact that people in the news decided to make it about race. George Zimmerman was half-white, half-hispanic. Trayvon Martin was black. Who cares? The fact of the matter was that someone trailed a 17-year old boy for several minutes in the dark and, when the boy decided to stand his own ground and fight the mysterious follower, the boy got shot and killed. Police automatically decided to release Zimmerman without charging him. Then, after PUBLIC OUTCRY, most likely because people cared, Zimmerman was arrested. He told a different story the second time, from what I know, and the case was one of those that acquitted the defendant because there was a fishy story - we did not get to hear Trayvon Martin's side of the story. So, we got to hear about a scary black boy who wore a mysterious hoody walking in the dark who beat the crap out of Zimmerman. Then, Zimmerman shot him - in supposed self defense. The prosecution, it can be said, dropped the ball.
It's no wonder why so many black people were offended, and chose to chalk this one up to racism, or chose to speak about racism. I understand where they're coming from. When I was a teen - an obviously white male - I had long hair, a beard and wore baggy clothes. Police often stopped me while I was walking down the street, frisking me and asking me if I had any drugs on me. I never did have any drugs, but I let them frisk me because what else am I to do? I had police stop my car and ask to search my vehicle several times because they saw my long hair and supposed I was a 'dirty pot-smoking hippie.' I was told by several jobs that they wouldn't hire someone with long hair. The difference between having long hair and being black is that it was my choice to have long hair. When I cut it my senior year of high school, the stop and frisks suddenly stopped. The police pulling me over actually had legitimate reasons. Black people don't have the same choice - they are born to their skin, and cannot change it. They live with that kind of treatment their entire lives. Is it any wonder why they decided to speak up?
A white 13 year-old girl, who was in foster care, ran away from the facility. She got into the car - of her own free will - and then went to a hotel where she was raped by up to ten different men. The Hispanic men who dropped her off afterword gave her a cell phone, and because of that, they were found and charged with the crime. There are two problems here in this case: 1.) The runaway girl, despite being allegedly raped, ran away from her foster care facility. Her story is tragic in any case. She is not a reliable source because why a would a 13 year-old girl willingly step into the car with people she didn't know? If she had been abducted, I might believe it. 2.) Why would people who didn't care about her, and raped her, give her a cell-phone so she could call someone to help her? That seems like a couple of guys who might not have felt comfortable about what they did, and wanted to get rid of her before she got them caught. She called her foster brother who REFUSED to pick her up - why?
The story, on the whole, is a tragic one. I think it's unfortunate that she was raped. I think rape in this country is a serious issue and needs to be addressed as well. But here's the difference between the Martin/Zimmerman case and this girl's gang-rape: Zimmerman was not charged until the public sought charges - the two Hispanic men were arrested and charged as soon as they had the caller ID information from the foster brother. Yes, the raping of this girl is something we should be concerned about - especially since some of it was filmed. Yes, this hits home to anyone with a child around that age. But just because this doesn't make the national headlines, outside of Beck's own publication, does not mean that no one cares about it. The police cared to follow up on the girl's allegations. The doctors gave police evidence supporting the girl's claims, and now the Home in which she had once lived is under investigation - most likely to answer the question of why the girl felt the need to runaway.
More importantly, however, why aren't we talking about the fact that she was in a foster home and ran away? Where were the foster parents? Where was DCFS? Glenn Beck doesn't ask the question about why DCFS couldn't be there, or why the girl was put into foster care, or why the girl's home seemed so bad that she decided to run away. Instead, he points fingers at everyone else and tells us that we don't care about this girl's story, or that she was gang-raped by a bunch of guys in an apartment. No - we care - and her rapists are in jail and awaiting court dates. Police are still trying to discover the remaining men, and are questioning the two they DO have about it.
Zimmerman was released without charges after murdering a 17-year old boy. Two hispanic men were imprisoned and brought up on charges once it was found they had been involved in the girl's gang-rape. Two different stories altogether. One where the public had to cry out to get charges filed, the other where charges were filed immediately. Now, here's one, dealing with Marissa Alexander that got swept under the rug because of the Zimmerman trial. Take a look at that - why didn't Glenn Beck speak about that one?
I'd conjecture that it's because Glenn Beck is getting paid by people to argue that blacks are now being racist against white people. I'd also argue that Beck is also of the mind that black people want use racism to get their way, as conservative news sources suggest, like FoxNews and others. I think Glenn Beck is just a part of the conservative media circus leading conservative America to feel isolated. They instill fear using tactics that would have us think we are a separate people - they would have us look at the people who are different from us with fear.
But this isn't the only time Glenn Beck has been used. He's been used to put a target on the heads of Obama - for violating people's rights and wanting to take our guns away (though there is no proof to the latter) despite the fact that presidents in the past have done the same. He's been used to say the root of all evil is George Soros, despite being funded by the Koch Brothers, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch - all of which do the same thing Soros does in a different way. He's been used to say the Tea Party is the next real American development politically, despite the fact that they are attempting to destroy publicly funded schools (been around since the late 1600's), publicly funded transportation (been around since the invention of the street car), unions (helped to establish American worker's rights and voices against corporate infractions), the EPA (helped to stop pollution of the American environment and created during Nixon's term - Nixon was a Republican.), and have expressed the desire to hold the American economy - and jobs - hostage if they don't get their way. Beck is just part of the conservative media circus - a sideshow, really. I rarely listen to the guy, but when I do I cringe.
Where is the art in this? The ignorant man on the soap box railing against things that aren't happening. The sophomoric intellect who does not listen to the whole story before he jumps to conclusions. Maybe there wasn't a political angle involved in the girl's gang rape - maybe it was just Glenn Beck trying to get us to fear immigrants. Other conservatives have done that in past, and they all became just that - the past. The more we live in the past, the less we understand the present, the less we see the future. Glenn Beck is stuck in the past - he wants to rail on about things that are happening now while crying for a return to the past, when people cared.
Beck is just another man with a sign telling us all "The End is Near." The problem is he doesn't have a clue why the end is coming, and points the finger at everyone he can see to try to get them to change their ways. He is the man with the plank in his eye telling everyone they have splinters in theirs. At least, that's how I see him. You're free to form your own opinion.
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