EBay thwarts Glenn Beck's satirical artwork.

"Obama in Pee Pee" violated a viewpoint-neutral policy:

Your listing contain [sic] the bodily fluid of urine. We do not allow bodily fluids to be listed on our site. Even if the liquid in the jar is not urine, you are describing it as such. We do not allow this type of listing and we ask that you do not relist this in any way....

Too bad Beck didn't do a more accurate satire of Andres Serrano's notorious "Piss Christ," which was a photograph. EBay's policy wouldn't have covered a photograph of urine (or of liquid described as urine).

"Does Mitt Romney’s Mormonism make him too scary or weird to be elected to president of the United States?"

Asks Glenn Beck, a Mormon, speaking to Evangelical Christians, reported in the NYT.

During his special program, Mr. Beck took questions from mostly evangelical Christian listeners, colorfully debunking misperceptions about Mormonism. The “magic underwear” was compared to a skullcap, and Mr. Beck insisted that polygamy was seen as a “perversion” in the modern church.

“It’s not weird to be a Mormon,” he assured his listeners at the end of the program, “and it’s not weird to be president if you’re Mormon.”

It's fascinating — isn't it? — how little anti-Mormon material has been spread about in this election. The only notable person who seems to be going there is Andrew Sullivan:

Andrew Sullivan recently posted YouTube footage of LDS temple ceremonies in an effort to turn Romney’s Mormonism into an argument against his candidacy.

The video posted by Sullivan was shot surreptitiously inside LDS temples by a former Mormon who wanted to use the publicity connected with the Romney campaign to embarrass the LDS community. (The video creator enhanced the footage with his own monologue — wearing a gorilla mask — and spooky "Carmina Burana" soundtrack.)...

I think most Americans have a deep sensibility respecting religion and don't care to look into details about any given sect that could be exploited to make outsiders see it as bizarre. Sullivan, like Joe Biden, is a Catholic. You could make an equivalent YouTube video holding Catholics up to derision and contempt. That's generally not how we behave in America. I wonder who is more susceptible to this anti-Mormon material: the middle Americans who are aggregated under the "Evangelical Christians" label, who listen to Glenn Beck, or the affluent, educated coastal Americans who read Andrew Sullivan and the New York Times? Whichever, the notable fact is that there has been very little effort to stimulate anti-Mormon sentiment, and that's an excellent thing about America.

"I went to the bar and I ordered a Jack and coke and I turned around and locked eyes with Tania..."

"... and before I took the drink I set it down and I walked over and I asked her if she wanted to go and have a cup of coffee with me - and we haven't been apart since."

Don't you already know whether you want to believe the stories Glenn Beck tells?

Media Matters makes a montage of the Glenn Beck show.

Media Matters hates Glenn Beck, but this montage is pretty damned entertaining, perhaps because the Fox News channel show is ending. Tonight is the last installment:

An advertising boycott that began after Beck said Obama had a “deep-seated hatred for white people” led to more than 400 advertisers telling Fox they didn’t want their commercials seen on his show.

Fox and Beck headed for a divorce, their relationship largely soured by control issues. Beck has set up his own diversified business, as he makes speeches, writes books and owns a website along with GBTV, which is run by a former Fox executive.

That Media Matters montage made me...
	... think about why I love Glenn Beck.
	... wish I'd paid more attention to what might have been a great show.
	... think about why I hate Glenn Beck.
	... realize that man needed to be exiled to the internet.
pollcode.com free polls

Glenn Beck will "transition off" Fox News.

Announced just now.

The Bob Wright/Ann Althouse email exchange about what free speech means in the context of saying Roger Ailes needs to kick Glenn Beck off Fox News.

Back on February 2, I wrote “When did the left turn against free speech?” and used some clips from a Bloggingheads I did with Bob Wright, in which I talked about free speech values and rejected Bob's attempt to restrict the idea of free speech to the constitutional right to free speech, which only deals with the problem of government restrictions on speech.

The text of my post, however, doesn't restate our disagreement about the meaning of the term, and Bob emailed me to complain. And then last Friday, I did another Bloggingheads, and Bob brought up his beef about the definition of the term again. So I invited him to give me permission to publish the whole email exchange, and he agreed, so here goes...

In the blog post, explaining Bob Wright's position, I said that he thought that "free speech is too dangerous because it might be false and it might inspire bad people to act out in terrible ways." Since Bob's point was that Roger Ailes should kick Glenn Beck off the air, Bob said:

Don’t you think most people take ‘free speech’ to refer to speech that is unconstrained by the government? In which case [that] passage from your blog post is a somewhat misleading characterization of my views?...

I said not once but twice in our exchange that I absolutely wasn’t suggesting any government constraint on speech.

I responded:

I said in the diavlog itself [in a clip embedded in the blog post] that I don't agree with that limitation. Free speech is a value that extends beyond the right that people have against government, just as privacy and autonomy are larger ideas than their corresponding legal rights. Moreover, it is when people lose the value in its larger form that they slip into accepting government limitations. There's an interrelationship between cultural values and the law, and an evolution of values against free speech can play out in legal restrictions later on.

Bob said:

Just about everyone loses the value in its larger form, including, I venture to say, you. Surely there is *some* essay or article that you would say a conscientious newspaper editor shouldn’t publish, right? Say, for example, an op-ed piece recommending that all black people be killed? And, again, the question isn’t whether the editor should be *allowed* to publish it; we’re talking about moral sanction, not legal sanction. I’m saying that pretty much everyone, when you examine their beliefs closely, *does* believe that moral sanction has *some* place in shaping our discourse. But maybe you’ll surprise me and say that an editor who publishes a piece recommending the killing of all blacks shouldn’t be be condemned, and wouldn’t be condemned by you. Is that your position?

I said:

What's missing from that hypothetical is that the newspaper has free speech rights too. It doesn't have to pass along other people's speech unless it wants to, just as I don't have to quote people on my blog unless I decide too.

It doesn't have to publish anything it doesn't want, for whatever reason. This is what it means to acknowledge that corporations deserve free speech too.

The moral sanction is just more free speech as I see it.

The simpler way of putting that is that people continue to argue about what is true, what is good and what to do and believe. That's free speech. My preference is to argue on the substantive merits rather than to gasp about how bad people need to be cut off from the people who are choosing to listen to them.

Again, I support the free speech of the publisher. No one has to reproduce any speech they don't want to... for any reason, so there is no need to say exactly where the line is for any given organization to decide what they want to say or offer up as an op-ed.

Bob said:

Exactly. And when you choose not to quote people on your blog are you denying them free speech?

No, right?

So when I advocate that you not quote someone I’m not advocating that you deny anyone free speech.

That’s the exact analogy: If Roger Ailes chooses not to give Glenn Beck a show, he’s not denying him free speech. So if I advocate that Roger Ailes not give him a show, I’m not advocating that anyone be denied free speech.

I said:

I agree that you are exercising free speech when you aim moral suasion at Ailes. You're doing the public shaming thing, which I understand. But Fox News wants Beck on the air, because a lot of people like to listen to him. You can avoid him yourself, but you want to stop the people who want to hear him from getting to hear him by convincing Fox that speech like that is not acceptable. So you're using speech to make an argument about what speech is acceptable and trying to persuade Fox to agree with you about the narrow range of acceptable speech, trumping the preferences of the people who do want to be able to see Beck on TV. If your method worked, there would be a narrower range of speech available to people who are currently eager to hear that sort of thing. You don't trust them enough to try to persuade them with arguments running in the other direction from Beck's. You want them to be protected from speech you think is bad. I see that as an anti-free speech position, because you aren't about talking more to the people you want to influence, you're about protecting them from the dangers in the speech you think is bad.

Bob said:

OK, so now I’m pretty convinced of the truth of something I suggested earlier in this exchange: If Roger Ailes ran a show whose host was devoted to encouraging people to kill every black person they see, you (a) would not condemn Roger Ailes and (b) would consider me anti-free speech if I did condemn Roger Ailes.

That’s in some sense a defensible position. But I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a minority position—most Americans don’t consider it “anti-free-speech” to condemn Ailes for at least *some* programming decisions, and to try to shame him into changing them. That’s why I said your depiction of my views as anti-free-spech is misleading. Most people don’t define “anti-free speech” the way you’re defining it.

Please do me one favor: Let me know whether my first paragraph, above, does or does not mischaracterize your position. If it doesn’t, then I think I totally understand your position and there’s probably not a lot to be gained by further elaboration. If it does mischaracterize your position, then I’m afraid I remain confused. (Wouldn’t be the first time!)

I said:

I think your hypothetical has the same problem that made Godwin invent his rule about bringing up Hitler. It's not conceivable that Fox would have a show like that, and if we lived in a world where there were shows like that on widely seen networks, everything would be different. How did it happen that blatantly racist speech (even without the incitement to murder) became off-limits in our culture? Not because extra-sensitive shamers got way out ahead of the rest of the culture and deprived people of access to speech they wanted to hear. In any case, we are so far beyond the imaginary world where there could be a show like that, that I have no idea what strategy I would adopt if something so bizarre came into being.

To make a hypothetical that is enlightening to this discussion, you have to have some speech that there really is currently a big or at least decent audience for, that a lot of people think is worth listening to, and then ask me if I would join you in saying these people should not get what they want. That's what you're doing with Beck. To me, this unwillingness to trust people to hear and think for themselves and to be challenged with additional speech is what characterizes you as anti-free speech.

You're trying to get me to abandon my definition of free speech, but I'm not going to do that. It's funny that your argument is based on what "most people" supposedly think. If the judgment of the people should prevail, why not let the people who want to watch Beck have their Beck? The issue is whether freedom of speech is a high value and where it appears in your hierarchy of values.

Bob said:

Well, IMHO, the purpose of a specific hypothetical in cases like this has nothing to do with its plausibility; the point is to establish the parameters of a person’s general guiding principles. So in this case, depending on how you answered my hypothetical, you’d be saying that either (a) yes, there are at least *some* situations in which you’d adopt the position that (when adopted by me) you call anti-free-speech; or (b) your reluctance to condemn speech, and those who help amplify it, is extreme, and places you among a very small minority of Americans.

So the point is that either (a) I’m anti-free-speech only in the sense that you are; or (b) I’m anti-free-speech only if you adopt a definition of “anti-free-speech” that is held by very few people—which gets us back to my original complaint: your depiction of my views as anti-free-speech was, according to conventional American usage, misleading; for the average American, “freedom of speech” is about the first amendment.

I said:

So the Godwin rule is misguided in your view. I disagree. As I said, when your hypos are off-the-wall implausible, they don't help us think about the real world. I'd have to begin by imagining myself in Crazy World and then come up with a way to think in Crazy World. That might be a fun game, but it's not useful in figuring out what to do in the real world, which is what matters.

My standard free speech answer is going to be in favor of expression, access to expression, and more speech, not repression of speech and not cutting off conversations that are still in play because they offend some other people who think the conversation should have already ended. I'm not against condemning offensive speech, though, as I've said. That's part of the "more speech" remedy to bad speech. I don't think it's very effective speech however. I'd rather see engagement on the merits with people like Glenn Beck, not hollow assertions that he needs to shut up. That's actually counterproductive. People who want to hear him are going to see him as more worth listening too. As Rush Limbaugh loves to say: "The left will tell you who they are afraid of."

So if Google or Facebook, private corporations, took steps to squelch free speech that would just not even make sense to you as a concept because they can't affect free speech since they are not the government? If people organized and regularly showed up at events to shout down speakers they disapproved of, it would be incoherent to urge them to respect free speech.

I realize it irks you to be characterized as anti-free speech, but surely you must realize that is telling me what powerful rhetoric it is. I'm scarcely going to abandon it because it irks you. You are encouraging me to keep using it as a way of saying what I'm trying to say. Why would I back off and adopt a weaker form of expression?

Bob said:

By that logic you should call me a rapist and a child molester! After all, I would protest that allegation, too—and that protest would just show what “powerful rhetoric it is” and would thus “encourage you to keep using it”.

Here’s a hypothetical that, I hope, is plausible enough for you to entertain: If a poll of your readers showed that most of your readers take “anti-free-speech” to mean “in favor of government censorship” *then* would you quit using the term to describe someone who is manifestly not in favor of government censorship? (Don’t worry, I won’t try to conduct any such poll—and I don’t purport to be sure what the results of such a poll would be. I’m just curious….)

I said:

Bob, you are indulging in logical fallacies like mad. If I'm doing something I already choose to do and believe in doing, and you give me an additional reason for doing it, that doesn't mean that I would do other things for the sole reason that was that additional reason. For example, if I love a dress in the store and it fits me, plus it's cheap, so I buy it, that doesn't mean I'd buy other things because they're cheap and nothing more.

Defining terms is a huge part of argument. The notion that a term means what would come in first in a vote on the definition is absurd. What would liberalism or feminism or equality or fairness or any number of important terms mean if the meaning was frozen at the current first definition. Even the dictionary doesn't work that way: there are multiple uses for the same word.

As for the right to free speech, the First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." Just on that text alone, you can see that there are 2 different things "the freedom of speech" and the specific direction to Congress not to abridge it. Now, if you say freedom of speech is nothing more than the direction to government not to abridge the freedom of speech, try to picture what the text would need to be: "Congress shall make no law... abridging Congress's proscription against abridging the freedom of speech" which would make no sense at all. The freedom of speech is something which we enjoy, and the Constitution bars Congress's interference with it.

Bob said:

Ann, I’ll bet you thought you had worn me out. Wrong! Although I have to admit that I don’t think I’ll last much longer.

As for your first paragraph: Obviously I’m not saying that you take the vociferousness of someone’s protest against your characterization of their views as the sole criterion for believing your characterization was valid. But for you to take it into account at all—to think that vociferous protests to *any* extent *validate* your characterization of their views—strikes me as odd. When someone tells me I’ve misrepresented their views, I think, “Oh, shit, maybe I did” and then go check to see if I did. I’d sure save a lot of time if I adopted your approach, and took every complaint about my accuracy as a degree of validation.

As for your final paragraph: I gather you’re saying that the authors of the constitution are here suggesting that “freedom of speech” can be constrained by something other than the government (though, actually, this doesn’t quite follow logically from the phraseology; i.e., they’re not literally implying it). That may be true, but it says nothing about whether, more than two centuries after the constitution was written, the phrase “anti-free-speech” has come to mean “in favor of government constraints on speech”.

Speaking of which: You failed to answer my hypothetical about whether, if most of your readers indeed shared this understanding of “anti-free-speech,” you would refrain from applying the term to me. So first you said you wouldn’t answer a hypothetical because it was implausible, and now it turns out you won’t answer plausible hypotheticals either?

That's the last email, dated February 22. Funnily, the conversation began before the Wisconsin protests began and ended 9 days into the real-life, free-speech extravaganza in my neighborhood. I'd like to say I let him have the last word, which sounds gracious, but I can see that Bob left some questions for me that I never answered. Except I think I did answer it. Obviously, I stand by my definition of "free speech," and I wouldn't change my position based on a poll of my readers!

But here's a poll anyway:

Do "free speech" values extend beyond rights held against the government?
	Yes.
	No.
	It's complicated.
pollcode.com free polls

"But what about Beck? Are his comments about Piven fairly characterized as having crossed some line into dangerous irresponsibility?"

Asks Peter Wood in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

What Beck does on the air is certainly not scholarship. He isn’t drawing careful distinctions, seeking nuance, or searching for contextual understanding. He is, rather, engaged in polemic. This is, however, a form that requires some mastery of the facts and considerable ability to frame a persuasive argument. He or his assistants have done their research. I doubt that he has factually misrepresented Piven’s statements. He has, however, offered a strong interpretation of what those mean, and his conclusion is that she is a deep source of intellectual mischief in American life.

Those who are culturally or politically more or less on Piven’s side resent this picture of themselves, and some have responded hyperbolically....

The left explodes in anger if you suggest it is the more rageful of the two [sides]. The right tends to laugh at the idea....

Higher education has no special immunity from the angri-culture. On the contrary, it is a privileged haunt for those who delight in scorn, derision, and wrathful dislike of mainstream American culture...

To claim academic freedom as a protection of one’s own diatribes while crying “no fair” when someone aims a diatribe back at you requires a clownish degree of self-regard.

Yes, and let's also question the assumption that what goes on in academia is certainly scholarship (and not polemic). Drawing careful distinctions, seeking nuance, or searching for contextual understanding...

Glenn Beck reacts to what they're saying about him.

Watch him watch Michelle Goldberg:



Michelle Goldberg is a lefty columnist I've done Bloggingheads diavlogs with.

Glenn Beck... I don't know what to make of him. I can't listen to him long enough to follow his theories. Seriously, those banks of creepily lit brown blackboards covered in orange chalkings... it's nightmarish. It flips my too-crazy-to-watch switch, which keeps me from ingesting the substance. But I don't turn around and call him crazy. I'd monitor him for you, but I don't have the attention. I'm suddenly like a schoolboy the teacher thinks needs Ritalin, and I just say no.

When did the left turn against free speech?

One of the commenters declares that my "assertion that 'the best test of the truth is its ability to get accepted in the marketplace of ideas' was probably the most offensive part of her argument." When questioned about whether I really said that, he comes back with:

She cited a Justice whose name I haven't retained, as in: "As Justice X says, ..." followed by the verbatim passage I quoted.

She cited a Justice whose name I haven't retained.... Oh, for the love of God, why doesn't every educated person in America know the name of the Supreme Court Justice who said that... or at the very least know that it's embarrassing not to know? As if I'd thrown out some abstruse legalistic peculiarity!

And that was part of an argument by the commenter — echoing Bob Wright — that free speech is too dangerous because it might be false and it might inspire bad people to act out in terrible ways.

Remember when lefties were all about free speech? When did that change? Why did that change? Perhaps the answer is: Free speech was only ever a means to an end. When they got their free speech, made their arguments, and failed to win over the American people, and when in fact the speech from their opponents seemed too successful, they switched to the repression of speech, because the end was never freedom.

"Sociology does not enjoy an especially elevated reputation in the academy, and the American Sociological Association provides an object lesson in why that is."

Says Instapundit, linking to my fisking of the sociologists' expression of outrage. He emphasizes the violence inherent in the Greek riots Francis Fox Piven rhapsodized about, quoting this Wall Street Journal article:

[T]ens of thousands of protesters marched through Athens in the largest and most violent protests since the country’s budget crisis began last fall. Angry youths rampaged through the center of Athens, torching several businesses and vehicles and smashing shop windows. Protesters and police clashed in front of parliament and fought running street battles around the city.

Witnesses said hooded protesters smashed the front window of Marfin Bank in central Athens and hurled a Molotov cocktail inside. The three victims died from asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, the Athens coroner’s office said. Four others were seriously injured there, fire department officials said.

"History tells us" something that history doesn't tell us, say sociologists stumbling to protect Frances Fox Piven.

Here's the expression of "outrage" by the officers of the American Sociological Association:

Scholars of her caliber, intellectuals of her stature, and especially those who tackle social conflicts and contradictions, mass movements and political action, should stimulate equal levels of serious challenge and creative dialogue. Being called by Glenn Beck one of the “nine most dangerous people in the world,” and an “enemy of the Constitution” is not a credible challenge; it is plain demagoguery.

So vigorous debate about Piven's ideas is really important, but it better be the right kind of debate by the right kind of people and most certainly not that terrible, terrible man Glenn Beck. She's very lofty and serious, so, while she should be challenged, she must be challenged only by lofty and serious individuals, and of course, Glenn Beck is not one.

Despite its lack of substance, Beck’s attacks have resulted in a flood of hate mail and internet postings attacking Professor Piven, including a series of death threats. While it is true that death threats are generally only a form of extremist rhetoric, they indicate an overheated emotional atmosphere that researchers on collective violence call “the hysteria zone.” It is a zone in which deranged individuals can be motivated to real violence against those targeted by demagoguery. History tells us that such things as the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords that resulted in six deaths in Tucson, Arizona can be examples of how abundant, polarizing rhetoric by political leaders and commentators can spur mass murder.

Does lofty, serious, intellectual sociology involve looking at evidence and analyzing it rationally? Linking the Tucson massacre to hot political rhetoric was a rash mistake made by demagogues — you want to talk about demagogues?! — demagogues who were slavering over the prospect of a right-wing massacre that would prove politically useful.

We call on Fox News to take steps to control the encouragement of violence that has run rampant in recent months. 

Fox News? And do you also call on The Nation, which published "Mobilizing the Jobless," by Frances Fox Piven, the article Glenn Beck brought to the attention of his large audience? Piven called for riots. She wrote:

An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees....

When did Glenn Beck call for violence?  Back to the sociologists' letter of outrage:

Serious and honest, undistorted disagreement and public debate on unemployment, economic crisis, the rights and tactics of welfare recipients, government intervention and the erosion of the American way of life should be supported. 

Undistorted? Okay, let's see you do it first. The "American way of life"? By that term, do you mean — in an undistorted sort of way — like Greece?

We in no way advocate restricting the freedom of speech of political commentators.... Where we all should draw the line is at name-calling and invective rising to the level of inciting others to violence.

So Piven should not have called for "something like" Greek-style riots, and it was good of Glenn Beck to point out that Piven crossed the line, right? I mean, we're dedicating ourselves to serious, undistorted analysis here. That's what you said you wanted, didn't you?

"So who’s inciting violence here?"

The Glenn Beck/Frances Fox Piven controversy.

ADDED: Do academics mean to have influence or not? Are we supposed to think of them as oversmart flakes who are tucked away in institutions where they won't screw up real life for the rest of us? Because that's the only way in which it makes sense to portray Glenn Beck as the villain. He took an academic seriously, as if she meant what she said and expected real people to hear and act.

"How many other demented people are out there? It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target."

"Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled—senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even nine-year-old girls."

One of the survivors of the Tucson massacre, Eric Fuller, says that is what he wrote down after staying up "most of the night" in the hospital, trying to calm himself down and organize his thoughts, and writing out (from memory) the text of the Declaration of Independence.

ADDED: Patterico notes:

But you never hear them ask the obvious follow up question: do you still feel this way?  And if you look at the rest of the report, created today, it is obvious that these people are completely dishonest.  They have deliberately skewed every other piece of evidence to indict the right wing, leaving out every piece of evidence that might exonerate their targets.  Why should we think they presented this man’s entire statement?

11.

11!

Glenn Beck has a medical condition involving "small fibers"?

"We don’t even know what all of the symptoms are at this point."

Is it Morgellons disease? Which I'm pretty sure is a flat-out delusion. What are the chances that Glenn Beck is delusional?

He says it's been "very strange."

I've told you also that I have been diagnosed with macular dystrophy... And if you're a long time listener, you might be even be able to tell it I can just by listening to my voice now. There is something wrong with my voice, and we're not sure what it is.... I've seen five different doctors and I've got an incredible group of doctors who are, I think only one of them really hates me, and I have the other four watching that one. But they're looking one of them said to me the other night, we have to do all of these blood tests because we have to look for toxins and poisons, and that word stuck out to me. And it's not poison like you know...

The last 24 hours as I've been thinking about the doctors saying we're looking for toxins, we're looking for poisons in your body, I know what they are. For four years I have tried to understand the mind of what I believe are monsters. It started with Walter Lippmann....

I believe in the American experiment. But I also believe there are very misguided people, and I have been drinking that poison, which others may not find poison, but I do because it is exact opposite of me. And I have been "That which you gaze upon, you become."

So... studying politics has injected him with toxin, making him a monster... and he might be going blind... there's something wrong with his voice...

Yikes.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo (a doctor) says:

Yes, he's describing a neuropathy, hence the talk about poisins/toxins.

He ain't the Morgellon's type, IMO...

Small fiber neuropathy: A burning problem

"On the right, hateful words are fired like bullets. I still ride a bike."

Richard Cohen* still rides a bike, but his mind is going. I mean, he's riding his bike, listening to a folk rock channel he created on Pandora on his iPhone, and for some reason, instead of throwing new stuff at him, which I think is the point of Pandora, it keeps playing the old Neil Young song "Ohio."

Cohen plunges into his 40-year-old memories about how awful it was when the National Guard shot and killed 4 college students who were protesting the Vietnam War. And naturally, in Cohen's bike-drained, folk-music befuddled brain, that leads to what's wrong with... Glenn Beck!

Why don't you see? Back in 1970, the Governor of Ohio said the protesters were "worse than the Brownshirts and the communist element. . . . We will use whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent." Cohen weaves his literary magic for us dogged old WaPo readers:

That was the language of that time. And now it is the language of our time. It is the language of Glenn Beck, who fetishizes about liberals...

... fetishizes about liberals... To "fetishize" is to make a fetish of. How do you make a fetish of about something? Cohen's rugged bike path is studded with incomprehensible prepositions.

... and calls Barack Obama a racist. It is the language of rage...

What language? You didn't even quote anything from Beck. Maybe you created a Pandora channel for Beck and you listen and ideate furiously while cycling, but I don't know what you're talking about. I don't pay much attention to the pudgy chattering TV pundit, but he doesn't seem to be raging. I have seen him crying. And oddly, in Cohen's first paragraph, he portrays himself struggling (while biking) to "repress a tear" when Neil sings "Ohio." Oh, compassion! It either builds credibility or it doesn't. (Depending on whether you're liberal or conservative.)

... that fuels too much of the Tea Party...

I'm supposed to have the right image of the Tea Party so I can just swallow that assertion whole. But I've been to Tea Party rallies — and heard about them from my husband — and the people seemed pretty nice and normal. To me, Cohen's attempt to smear ordinary people is what's ugly.

Cohen rants some more about how awful everything on the right sounds to his folk-music plugged old ears. He concludes:

I hear the song more clearly now than I ever did. It is a distant sound from our not-so-distant past, but a clear warning about our future. Four dead in Ohio. Not just a song. A lesson.

Pedal on, aging columnist. Let the stream of consciousness wash down. Flow river flow. Wherever that river goes, that's where Richard Cohen wants to be.

_____________

*That's WaPo columnist Richard Cohen, or as we call him around here: the never-slept-with-Althouse Richard Cohen.

ADDED: Michael C. Moynihan:

And no, Richard Cohen doesn’t catch the irony: The dissent of Kent State protesters, he thinks, was met with deadly force because of rhetoric that “otherized them,” that turned them into a domestic enemy. Pretty much exactly what Richard Cohen is doing to the dissidents of the Tea Party movement.

"Unfortunately, most Americans know little of this progressive history. It isn't taught in most high schools."

Asserts The Nation:

You can't find it on the major television networks or even on the History Channel. Indeed, our history is under siege. In popular media, the most persistent interpreter of America's radical past is Glenn Beck, who teaches viewers a wildly inaccurate history of unions, civil rights and the American left. Beck argues, for example, that the civil rights movement "has been perverted and distorted" by people claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. supported "redistribution of wealth." In fact, King did call for a "radical redistribution of economic power." Using his famous chalkboard, Beck draws connections between various people and organizations, and defines them as radicals, Marxists, socialists, revolutionaries, leftists, progressives or social justice activists—all of which leads inexorably to Barack Obama.

A proffered remedy in the form of a list: "The 50 Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century."

"In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one."

"... Saturday's rally was quite largely confined to expressions of pathos and insecurity, voiced in a sickly and pious tone. The emotions that underlay it, however, may not be uttered that way indefinitely."

Things that didn't meet the Huffington Post standards.

"$100,000 For Glenn Beck's Sex Tape" gets attention via Memeorandum,  but HuffPo has deleted it.

Newsbusters calls attention to the writer's bio:

Beau Friedlander is a writer living in Brooklyn. He was the editor-in-chief of Air America until it closed in 2010...

And yet people wonder why Air America didn't cut it.

"They have a right to rally. But what they don't have the right [to] do is distort what Dr. King's dream was about."

Said Al Sharpton, narrowly defining rights. It's so close to the time when everyone was talking about the mosque near Ground Zero and even the staunch opponents assured us that there was a right to build the mosque, but that didn't mean it was a good thing to do.

I haven't been following this controversy, and I don't really know what Glenn Beck and his cohort are doing that could be construed as "distort[ing] what Dr. King's dream was about." But it's quite obvious that we all do have a right to distort King's ideas or any other ideas as much as we damned well please. And Sharpton and the rest of us also have a right to say that there is no such right, but it's not good to say that. Because it's not true. And it's anti-freedom. Ironically.