Guest columnist: Beck 2012!

Glenn Beck, ever lachrymose and megalomaniacal, appears to be propping himself up for a presidential run.

His “Restoring Honor” rally played out a little more than a glorified church service to God and Glenn, who made utterly spurious comparisons between himself and Martin Luther King, Jr., along with other historical greats.

His appointed guests simpered over him at every turn when he himself wasn’t lavishing his esteemed personage with praise. Take businessman Jon Huntsman, who said that Beck is “one of America’s most trusted and honored citizens.”

Or the Rev. C.L. Jackson: “God sent his son to this earth so that we could all gather. And I think that’s the dream and the vision of Glenn Beck.”

But Beck isn’t MLK. To Beck, King’s religious belief in economic justice, the need for a guaranteed national income, is odious. He believes that “big government never lifts anybody out of poverty.” He despises the social welfare programs MLK stood for. His hazy version of the civil rights movement focuses on reclaiming the country from Them, whomever They are.

Otherwise, the rally was a generic church service and insipid ode to patriotism, likely to avoid criticism, and largely apolitical — although the speakers and attendees were of a decidedly conservative background, with many in the audience sporting their misinformed Tea Party paraphernalia. Alveda King even showed up to sell her uncle’s name.

Beck hyped himself up as a God — appointed prophet of a “great awakening in America” — but his views are contrary to Jesus’. Jesus may have predated Marx, but much of his philosophy embodied a socialist strain — ”Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

Redistribution of wealth in any form? It certainly isn’t in Beck’s master plan.

In actuality, the Christian, family-values hype of his rally is but a superficial cover for the Tea Party platform he intends to run on, which, while vague, seems to be anti-spending of any kind, the worship of firearms (indeed, teaparty.org touts “Gun Ownership is Sacred” as one of their non-negotiable beliefs) and the views of the fringe crazies who gravitate toward the party.

Perhaps the rally was meant, in part, to legitimize a movement that has become a stronghold for racism, among other sentiments. Even so, Beck’s ghastly attempt to associate himself with MLK and vague “American” values fails to hide the underlying ignorance and hatred involved in the heart of the movement.

Mark Williams, leader of the Tea Party Express, once responded to a NAACP denunciation of “racist elements within the Tea Party” by penning a faux-letter to Abraham Lincoln.

Here’s an excerpt: “Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.” It’s simply sickening.

Yes, other members of the fuzzily defined Tea Party leadership have claimed he’s no longer a leader, but Williams remains a spokesman for Tea Party Express, one of the leading organizations of the movement.

Beck is no Williams, and while the thought of him running (presumably with Palin, who spoke at the event, as a running mate) is nonetheless revolting, it is his right if he so chooses. But the dishonor he did to Martin Luther King, Jr., will be forever repugnant.


E-mail: celgrund@indiana.edu