I want to say here that I don't particularly care for the strategy of trying to invalidate a larger premise or to cloud the big picture by attempting to drag the focus away onto arguments about smaller details of questionable relevance. Politicians do this, entertainment commentators do this, and too many people allow themselves to be lead off the trail by this type of distraction. I will try to get things back on track and say my piece to clear up any of these minor details regarding my earlier post....
One morning I listened to Beck and his radio cohorts going on and on and on about the great insult that Obama had just committed against the British by returning their gift of a bust of Winston Churchill. This bust was described as a gift presented to George Bush by Tony Blair after 9/11.......
Instances like this is why I can not believe anything Beck says.
So are you saying the British government
didn't offer to extend the loan?
And, I have to be honest...it makes no sense that " No one in Britain really knew about this matter". Apparently
someone in Britain did, to recieve the bust back--and, for that matter, to issue the loan in the first place!
No, I did not say that the Brits did not offer to extend the loan. I believe that they actually
did make that offer, but that detail is only a somewhat irrelevant side issue. My point was that Beck's unjustified outrage was over a falsehood that he
himself was propagating without bothering to report (or at least check into) the basic facts. He had it wrong.
The President had in no way inappropriately returned a "gift" from the British government.
Here's a cool fact: one of the the neat things about being being President is that you get to decide how to set up your office. He gets to choose what surrounds and inspires him in his workspace. He didn't want or need Churchill's bust there, and Churchill's bust was already already scheduled to go home before he even moved into the White House.
Also, I meant to say that
practically no one in Britain knew (or cared) anything about the loan until individuals in Britain were actually told the story in order to get their thoughts on the matter. My original wording did not best convey my meaning.
OBVIOUSLY someone in Britain had to know about the loan. I fell into the common, but sloppy, habit of using the phrase "no one really" instead of "practically no one". I think most people would understand what I meant, but it was my inadvertent mistake for not choosing my words better.
Another more recent example is his claim/rant that Obama's trip to India was costing U.S. taxpayers $200 million a day and his implications/hinting that one tenth of all our naval vessels was accompanying him on the trip. This claim apparently came from a single blogger in India. An official from the Pentagon had to come out and say the idea of sending all those ships along was a "fantasy".
"Implications/Hinting"? What was his exact quote, I wonder--or are you citing MediaMatters?
Nope- no MediaMatters- just actual video clips of Beck himself talking shown on the first segment of "The Daily Show" on November 8th.....
On his radio show on November 4th, Glenn Beck repeatedly claimed that 34 warships would be accompanying Obama. By the time he got on his television program, however, he must have figured that he needed to tune his tone down just a bit for his Fox audience, because he then would put it:
"... And how many ships will be there? Thirty-four warships
possibly...
I don't know!"
Innuendo? A disingenuous half-lie?
I don't know! I do bet you that most of his audience believed the misleading message that he intended them to walk away with. Mission accomplished! I have trouble believing this guy can actually be so ignorant of the facts that are out there, or so willing to make statements that can
not be backed up with facts.
Inaccuracy of my memory regarding exact wording (but not regarding the gist of the main message) should have lead me to go back check things from video clips and reports before I posted. I went back to confirm. While the word "fantasy" was not used, the actual quote gives the same sentiment for the Pentagon's take on the ridiculousness of the overblown naval force assertions:
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell during November 4th's Pentagon Briefing :
“I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy -- some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier -- in support of the president's trip to Asia. That's just comical. Nothing close to that is being done."
No one in Britain really knew about this matter
If we are to hold what you say to the standards you hold Beck...should
you be called a liar, too, then?
Also, you say the Pentagon called
sending the navy a fantasy. I am curious...you did not refute the $200 million number....
Bill O'Reilly was a guest on Bill Maher's "Real Time" on Friday, November 5th (you can watch the segment again on YouTube). When asked by Maher about the $200 million per day figure for the India trip that was being reported by conservative commentators, O'Reilly responded that the number "was bull", but stated that the number had come from "some guy in India" and the number had been picked up by the Drudge Report and had then been disseminated by certain other people, but not by the Fox hard news people. Some of my liberal friends hate Bill O'Reilly, but I can and do watch him because I feel he is a much more honest when presenting information and conservative point of view than Limbaugh or Beck. I don't always agree with O'Reilly, but I do feel that he does not completely make things up like the other two fellows, who I consider more windbags than gentlemen. They are no doubt, however,
VERY successful windbags.
I find it very interesting that in a case such as this, the people making these claims (Beck, Fox and Friends, Limbaugh, etc.) seem to have no need to provide reasonable evidence to back up their faulty assertions and -even more more important- these talkers
are not expected by their viewers to provide the the basis for these assertions. As long as they are hearing what they want to hear, why question the assertions? This is somewhat akin to all the Hollywood tabloids stating that some film star has been beating his wife (well, after all, this one guy who works in accounting at Universal claimed he heard about something!) and the flimsy accusation is accepted as the truth unless the actor somehow provides proof that he is
NOT beating her.... but even then, the some readers will refuse to believe him because they like the idea that he would do it! What a screwed up situation!
....And, no, I would not call myself a liar. Unlike Beck, who has three hours a day on radio and a television program later in the day to get the facts right and refine/rephrase his wording, I am simply someone who was trying to be
somewhat hastily concise in my post so people would actually want to read through it. Beck has no excuse. He should be able to get the facts right in the course of his daily show,however, this is clearly not his his goal. He chooses to be misleading. But once again, I believe that he and I do have different agendas and motivations.