Well, no. What we can say with confidence is that nowhere near 2 million, or 1 million, or 500,000 people were there, and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or has fallen prey to those who are lying. One of many ways we know this is the case is that if it took two buses to get 100 protesters into the city, it would take 40,000 buses to get 2 million there. Anyone see any evidence of 40,000 buses (or their plane, train, and automobile equivalents) last weekend? Yeah, I didn't think so.
Time continued:
The old American mind-set that Richard Hofstadter famously called "the paranoid style" - the sense that Masons or the railroads or the Pope or the guys in black helicopters are in league to destroy the country - is aflame again, fanned from both right and left. Between the liberal fantasies about Brownshirts at town halls and the conservative concoctions of brainwashed children goose-stepping to school, you'd think the Palm in Washington had been replaced with a Munich beer hall.
What in the world is Time talking about? This is a grotesque false equivalence. Conservatives have been yelling about President Obama being a secret Kenyan bent on sending granny to the Death Panel, comparing him to Hitler and Mao and Stalin and who-knows-who-else -- and that, apparently, is matched in intensity and paranoia by liberals pointing out this unhinged behavior? Insane.
Eventually, Time got to its point: Glenn Beck. But even there, Time buried the lede. No, that's not quite right. Actually, Time completely omitted the lede.
See, Glenn Beck's defining characteristic is that he's deeply dishonest. He claimed that 1.7 million people stormed the National Mall last week to protest Obama. And that's just one example; Beck tells lies of such size and obviousness, and with such frequency, that to fail to make his dishonesty clear right up front is, itself, dishonest. But Time didn't even hint at it in its introduction of Beck:
Glenn Beck: the pudgy, buzz-cut, weeping phenomenon of radio, TV and books. ... Beck is 45, tireless, funny, self-deprecating, a recovering alcoholic, a convert to Mormonism, a libertarian and living with ADHD.
Indeed, the closest the Time article ever came -- ever -- to indicating that Beck tells lies and spreads falsehoods is this whopper of an understatement: "[H]e also spins yarns of less substance." Oh, snap! That really exposes him for the fraud that he is!
Instead, Time suggested Beck's rants are reality-based [emphasis added]:
Beck mines the timeless theme of the corrupt Them thwarting a virtuous Us. This flexible narrative often contains genuinely uncomfortable truths. Some days "they" are the unconfirmed policy "czars" whom Beck fears Obama is using to subvert constitutional government - and he has some radical-sounding sound bites to back it up. Some days "they" are the network of leftist community organizers known as ACORN - and his indictment of the group is looking stronger every day.
Well, not every day. See, on Tuesday, Beck aired a video of an ACORN worker saying she had killed her ex-husband and then went on a prolonged rant about ACORN employing someone who was guilty of "premeditated murder." Turns out that wasn't quite true. She didn't murder her ex-husband. Nobody murdered her ex-husband. Her ex-husbands are quite alive and well.
That's typical Beck: He rushes to make sensational allegations based on the thinnest of evidence, without bothering to check it out. It's behavior that careens from reckless to dishonest, and it's his calling card. But, to Time, Beck's treatment of ACORN is something to be applauded. It's looking stronger every day (as long as you ignore the fact that he just aired a bogus video in order to falsely suggest an ACORN worker is a murderer)!
It isn't just Beck's dishonesty that got left on the cutting-room floor. It's the extent of his offensiveness. Take a look at Time's portrayal of Beck's emotional recollection of the September 11 terrorist attacks:
On the recent anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Beck grew afraid that Americans may no longer be the sort of people who cross mountain ranges in covered wagons and toss hot rivets around in bold bursts of skyscraper-building. Tears came to his eyes (they often do) as he voiced this last fear. But then he remembered that the fiber of ordinary Americans is the one thing Glenn Beck need never fear. So he squared his quivering chin to the camera and held up a snapshot of ground zero, still empty eight long years after the World Trade Center was destroyed.
It goes on like that for a while. But one thing Time didn't mention? This famous Glenn Beck statement: "You know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families? Took me about a year."
Seems like if you're going to devote two full paragraphs to Glenn Beck's tearful remembrance of September 11, maybe you should note the contempt -- hatred, even -- he has expressed for the families of the people who died that day. Doesn't it?
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