Glenn Beck Outdoes David Duke With Shameless Race Baiting

“It’s like the damn Planet of the Apes. Nothing Makes Sense,” said Fox News Glenn Beck in a recent rant against President Obama and the America he has created. It was one of the angriest and most thinly veiled racist rants in recent history but simply a continuation of his general theme.

You might remember the original Planet of the Apes. It came out in 1968 and was based on the French novel "La planète des Singes" by Pierre Boulle. It was written as a science-fictionalized account on one possible outcome if Black Nationalism did succeed in the U.S. In the film, Charlton Heston, a white astronaut, crashes his aircraft on a primitive yet futuristic society where apes run the world and humans are intellectually inferior and enslaved species. In the Planet of the Apes, humans cannot even speak. In ape society, there is a very specific class system, gorillas as police, military, and hunters; the orangutans as administrators, politicians and lawyers; and the chimpanzees as intellectuals and scientists.

The subtext of the Planet of the Apes, whether novel or film, has never been questioned. It's not just science fiction but social commentary and Glenn Beck knew exactly the coded comparison he was making.

At this point, I really don’t know why Beck even bothers coding it anymore. Why doesn't he just come out and say it. "I don’t like this N-word running the country, and you shouldn’t like it either, because he’s a dirty N-world and all us hard-working white folks know that N-words can’t be trusted."

Not even David Duke got away with the crap that Fox News gets away with on a daily basis, but it seems our appetite for racism is endless. What makes it worse is that the mainstream media outlets won’t really take Fox News to task for its racism. Rachel Maddow did it recently on MSNBC, but it hasn't changed a thing at Fox News. Why? Because they don't care. They know a good chunk of their viewers are racist, and they also know minorities generally don't watch the network, and they couldn't care less if they offend us. But what about decent white America? How is this really palatable to them? How does this network remain the most popular among all cable outlets, when they preach racism and hatred on a daily basis and do nothing but draw these archaic tribal lines in the sand?

Fox News created the tea parties during the health care debate. It validated this movement, hyped it up to no end and has actually tried to replace the Republican party with the far, far right base -- which is where the tea party folks hail from. Here’s the former tea party leader, who recent resigned because of his overt racism, months prior showing us what he’s made of.

 

George W. Bush faced a litany of criticism from the left. The left complained that his administration lied to get us into the War in Iraq. They claimed his incompetence worsened the impact of Hurricane Katrina. They claimed his administration tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Former President Bill Clinton faced criticism. He was called a womanizer. But guess what, those criticisms were actually true. President Obama has faced nothing but a litany of nonsensical and racist madness since he was sworn into office, and instead of getting fed up, tired, or bored with the insults, it only appears to get worse. Every criticism of this President skirts policy and goes right down to race, that’s the difference.

Fox News has a long history of using racism to stoke resentment among whites. But the strategy is pretty thin. They’ve got a few moves and simply reiterate them daily.

Black folks are coming to get you White America: This strategy was most recently used with the New Black Panther Party story. Here, Fox drags out footage of some black nationalist types saying they want to kill white babies, then it indicts the current U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, a black man, for not protecting “white rights.” But the racist rant occurred during the 2008 presidential election before Holder was ever appointed to the Department of Justice and before President Obama was ever in office.