Jack & Jill Politics

Just so we’re all clear, Glenn Beck isn’t celebrating the holidays in small town Wilmington OH this week. He’s celebrating Christmas. Because only terrorists and terrorist-lovers celebrate holidays like Eid or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Diwali, apparently. Beck actually says at the beginning of his Christmas special: “By the way, I don’t know how people eat Kosher food!” and talks about choking it down for Hebrew lessons. I’ve had kosher food and it tastes great if prepared well. Way to insult like 5000 years of Jewish tradition, Beck!

Yes, it’s a Glenn Beck Christmas and he’s gone on the road to a small town in Ohio (population around 12,000) that is over 90% white for his “America’s First Christmas” programming. This town was profiled by 60 Minutes awhile back in Jan 2009 when the town’s main employer DHL pulled out causing the town to lose thousands of local jobs. It’s a sad story of how our economy is changing and how many people are going to need help shifting gears in an increasingly service-based, green-based and information-based economy. And in fact, Wilmington is trying to make a transition to green jobs and has accepted Obama stimulus aid. Here’s good old Wikipedia to talk about Wilmington’s status now:

On July 16, 2009, the Wilmington City Council voted unanimously to establish Wilmington as a “Green Enterprise Zone”. The legislation will facilitate green economic development by creating financial incentives for the creation of green collar jobs. The City Council passed the measure in response to an economic grassroots movement initiated in October 2008 by two Wilmington High School graduates aided by Pure Blue Energy, LLC a consulting firm out of North Carolina. Wilmington is the first city in the United States to pass such a law.

On November 22, 2010 broadcaster Glenn Beck said on his radio show that Wilmington was dealing with its economic difficulties through voluntary cooperation and self-help, which is a strange claim considering that Wilmington has received over $13 million in federal aid since November 2008.^[14]

Hmm… strange that Beck never mentioned any of that! TalkLeft has a great piece on the struggle to re-invent Wilmington as a Green Enterprise zone from around the 60 Minutes segment.

I watched the first Beck show on Wed afternoon from Wilmington and it was eerie & creepy to see an all-white crowd described as “the real America”. The Beck show managed to shanghai one lone brother, apparently the only one in town, to stand on stage and sing “Go Tell It On The Mountain” — a traditional Negro spiritual — with an otherwise all-white choir. Probably threatened to lynch him if he didn’t! In a nation where over a third of the population is one of several minorities including black, Latino and Asian American, Glenn Beck is portraying Wilmington as some kind of last frontier where “real Americans” live. According to Wikipedia:

The racial makeup of the city was 90.66% White, 6.72% African American, 0.23% Native American, 0.65% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.25% from other races, and 1.49% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.84% of the population.

So a town that is over 90% white represents America? I don’t think so. I don’t it ever has represented the real America at all and I’m pretty sure from demographic trends that it definitely does not represent the America of the future. Towns like Wilmington are not real America just like towns like Mayberry and Bedford Falls, the town in It’s A Wonderful Life are also not real America. They are fiction. Beck’s portrayal of the struggle of Wilmington is a complete conservative fabrication based on the way the right wing wants America to be or have been rather than what we are, what we need and what we can become. Some folks in Wilmington may be smiling and laughing at Beck’s lame jokes in OH but the rest of the town seems ready to move into the future rather than live in a fictional past. Beck says on the show: “Something’s happening in Ohio.” Yes, while we have Ohio to blame for the disastrous re-election of George W. Bush, it’s clear that something is indeed happening in Ohio. And it’s not because of you, Glenn — it’s because of President Obama’s hard work to turn our country around. Note to Beck: it’s not America’s first Christmas — we managed to celebrate the holidays without your help in the past for a couple of centuries and I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to sort it out when you are finally kicked off the airwaves as you deserve for your constant lies and hate-mongering that divides our nation.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a typical comment from an old, ignorant & frightened white man on one of Beck’s Wilmington pages:

We have just a few days left to hear that the DREAM ACT has passed.–If this happens it would DISRUPT the U-S-A. yOU MUST KNOW WHAT IT CAN DO.===With further ado I am 91 years old ,A born AMERICAN a WW 2 VETEREN AND i AM WILLING TO GIVE UP MY LIFE IF IT BECOMES TO STREET FIGHTING TO DO SO.–MR.. BECK will you please ,between NOW and MONDAY will YOU tell THE SENATE to follow the dictates of the moriarty of AMERICANS and defeat this bill or suffer the CONSEQUENES. –PLEASE MR. BECK WE DESPERATELY NEED YOUR HELP NOW .THANK YOU WE WILL EVER BE IN YOUR DEBT.===ED,HAAS1943

Thanks Glenn Beck — for continuing to encourage RAHOWA everywhere you go

…with love from a Real American.