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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Clarence Page
It's so hard to please some people. After pulling off the most spectacular publicity stunt since his fellow Fox Newsman opened Al Capone's vault, Glenn Beck complains that media did not cover his big rally enough.
"We knew the reports would ... underestimate (the event's) crowd and we knew the media wouldn't get the message," he said on his Monday TV show. "And they didn't."
That's gratitude for you. All of the major media generously covered Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
Major media also covered the Rev. Al Sharpton's "Reclaim the Dream" rally, commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech 47 years earlier, but mentioned that Beck's rally was bigger than Sharpton's.
Still, as far as Beck is concerned, the media didn't get it right and he let us know it -- through media, of course. That included the media in which he works: his
"Here's the story the press gave you in the end," he summarized sarcastically. "This was a rally that was non-violent, not racist and not a tea party and 87,000 people showed up."
Yup. As with Minister Louis Farrakhan's historic Million Man March at the other end of the Washington Mall 15 years ago, the biggest news from "Beck-a-palooza," as some hipsters called Beck's big day, was what didn't happen.
Nobody fought, even when Beck and anti-Beck crowds encountered each other at one point in Sharpton's march. Nor did anyone of note sound overtly racist or partisan. And no matter how many people were reported by the widely varying media accounts, organizers of both the Beck and Farrakhan events insist to this day that actually there were many, many more.
And both events had something else in common: If you came expecting to hear calls to political action, you would be disappointed. Each events sounded less like a political rally than a tent revival.
"Every one of you must go back home and join some church, synagogue, temple or mosque that is teaching spiritual and moral uplift," Farrakhan preached at his 1995 march. "... (W)e've got to be more like Jesus, more like Mohammed, more like Moses."
Beck sounded even less political than Farrakhan, who at least called for voter registration drives. "Something that is beyond man is happening," said Beck, glancing at the sky. "America today begins to turn back to God. For too long, this country has wandered in darkness." Really? Beck had been predicting "miracles" in the run-up to the rally. I was expecting at least a halo, beams of light and a heavenly chorus.
Yet folks who are closer to Beck's wavelength than me probably heard his message and "miracle" without any help from the "lamestream media," as right-wingers call us.
For example, when he says with the certainty of a faith healer laying on hands that "America today begins to turn back to God," he actually is issuing a call for the faithful to join a national political transformation. So says D. Michael Lindsay, a
"To those for whom religion is a core identity," writes Lindsay in a
Some of Beck's fans were disappointed that his rally was less raucous and less anti-Obama than typical tea party rallies. But the tea party movement has mobilized economic conservatives. Beck was reaching out to another crowd Republicans need, says Lindsay: religious conservatives, who remain as loyal to Republicans as organized labor to Democrats.
If Lindsay is right, Beck's attachment of a holy mission to his politics can help revive the sagging enthusiasm of the religious faithful, who turned out in big numbers for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, among other Republicans. Congressional scandals, economic troubles and Republican disarray turned off the Christian right in 2006 and 2008.
Maybe that's the message Beck thinks the media missed. I'm sure his audience heard it.
Available at Amazon.com:
Presimetrics: What the Facts Tell Us About How the Presidents Measure Up On the Issues We Care About
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
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