Haters Gonna Hate

The morning of Aug 30^th, the first real news day following the 'Restoring Honor' rally in Washington, organized by broadcaster and pundit Glenn Beck, the discussion on MSNBC's Morning Joe was more about the man Beck, and the numbers of people who turned up. There's the occasional reference to Beck's message but little actual discussion of it. Howard Dean was there to call Beck a racist  and a hate monger. I wonder how often Howard Dean actually listens to the Glenn Beck show? Like many of Beck's detractors, Dean's venom and ire is directed at the man. To some this hatred extends to his fans, as well. Rarely is there a discussion about his ideas or the message itself. I didn't really expect anything else though. Most of these people are haters and haters gonna hate.

Perhaps the most outspoken opponent of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally in DC is Al Sharpton who has repeatedly accused Beck of trying to hijack the civil rights movement, calling Beck's rally a 'disgrace to the message' of Dr. Martin Luther King. This video shows the differences between Beck's message and the messages of Al Sharpton and his own own followers. In the segment where Sharpton is being interviewed by Kieth Olbermanm the reverend Al is offered two options to describe Beck's rally. “Is this an attempt in here to desecrate Dr. King's memory and what everybody stood for then, or is this just a publicity stunt by some sort of megalomaniac?” Neither of these people have bothered to listen to Beck's message, and neither address the substance of Beck's message. Sharpton himself seems to think that he is the exclusive inheritor of King's dream, and it's exclusively black. If Sharpton ever expects to live in a world where people are judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character then he should stop using skin color to invalidate people himself. Oh, but if racism were to truly end in this country he, and others like him would be out of a livelihood, so anything he says to preserve the racial divide is understandable.

There has been very little actual coverage of Beck's rally that doesn't in some way try to discredit either the man or the success of the rally. Most all of the coverage on the web news outlets for the major broadcast networks is punditry and opinion, with the exception of a couple of AP reprints.  Of these opinion pieces it's hard to find the ones which aren't hate-filled attacks on Beck and his fans. This should come as little surprise though, considering that 88% of broadcast network executives, writers, and reporters, contributed to Obama.

These people are haters. Haters are unimpressed by reason or the value of ideas. Haters gonna hate.

Here. have a picture of a cat.