Friday, March 13, 2009

Glenn Beck Goes Off the Deep End and Bill O'Reilly's Left to Talk Him Off the Ledge...

Having seen some of Glenn Beck's shows on CNN Headline News and the Fox News Channel, I can attest to the fact that Beck is perhaps not the most mentally stable indvidual. But yesterday, on The O'Reilly Factor, Beck was obviously projecting his feelings of frustration onto Michael McLendon, the Alabama man who "went postal" and went on a shooting rampage that claimed the lives of five realtives and five others earlier this week before taking his own life:



In any case, Bill O'Reilly appeared to be rational and sane next to Beck yesterday, as Beck brought up supposed political motives for the killings where those actually involved in the case say there were none. In fact, at no point did law enforcement authorities with intimate knowledge of the case ever point to political beliefs or frustration with the goverment. Still, that didn't stop Beck from projecting his own mental instability on McLendon:

"Here's a guy who felt that he had been wronged... He was disgruntled, and then he went out and shot a bunch of people... Clearly he's a psycho. But as I'm listening to him, I'm thinking about the American people that feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody's hearing their voice. The government isn't hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don't listen to you, on both sides. If you're a conservative, you're called a racist, you want to starve children. Yada, yada, yada. And every time they do speak out, they're shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?

Trust me. When Bill O'Reilly looks like a reasonable man when compared to Glenn Beck, you know he's a head case in need of psychatric help.

Now what would you expect for a wing-nut-case who never earned a penny by the sweat of his brow -- be it digging ditches, cleaning toilets or even flipping burgers at McDonald's -- to disingenuously commiserate with Alabama gunman Michael McLendon?

Why does this mad man have a show? Anyone possessing at the least a brain stem can obviously see the man is obviously sick and in need of help.

It's going to be a matter of time before Beck would cause some impressionable soul to take his word at face value and go out and murder someone. This is not entertainment, it is irresponsibility, and it's inciting violence. Clearly, the folks at Fox News Channel are enabling his televised tirades, and they must be held accountable as well.

And do you remember when the likes of Ann Coulter insisted that being a liberal was a mental illness? Apparently, they either don't own a copy of the American Psychiatric Association's Manual of Mental Disorders or even bothered to read it lately.

All this insane inanity brings to mind a memorable line from Joe Orton's play "What the Butler Saw: "You can't be rational in an irrational world, it isn't rational."

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