Megyn Kelly conducted a slobbering interview with hate monger extraordinaire Glenn Beck tonight. As Part Two of the interview, she asked him to reflect on his time at Fox and tell the audience what he remembers. Watch his answer and tell me if you believe his remorse.
In Part One of the interview, Beck joined Fox’s prolonged – and overblown – campaign against Governor Cuomo. In case you missed it, Cuomo made some comments recently about extremist Republicans that the right wing has mischaracterized as a desire to rid the state of all conservatives.
And Megyn Kelly was there to help and hype! According to Kelly, Beck has written an open letter to Cuomo threatening to remove all his business operations out of New York (even though Beck admitted later in the interview “we have to have a presence in New York”).
Kelly began by calling Beck “one of the most powerful voices on the airwaves,” telling him it was “great to see you,” and asking why Cuomo had gotten him “all fired up.”
It turns out Beck – one of the most vicious attackers of those with whom he disagrees – is suddenly all about the importance of a big tent. He told Kelly:
If we can’t live in the same state, and work in the same state, what do we have?
Can we live with people of different points of view? If we can’t, we’ve seen that road in the 20th century over and over again. It doesn’t end well.
Credulous doesn’t begin to describe Kelly’s gushing reception. First, she swallowed the right-wing slant of Cuomo’s words. But, even worse, she “forgot” all about Beck’s poisonous divisiveness and acted like a PR agent for Beck’s new togetherness schtick. Her voice rose in sympathetic outrage as she exclaimed:
You talk about the importance of respecting minority rights and the history of our country and the troubles it leads to when we don’t do that!
Beck is probably most well known for saying about President Obama, “This president has exposed himself as a guy – over and over and over again - who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture, I don’t know what it is.” But on The Kelly File, Beck presented himself as a civil rights advocate:
I will tell you that Governor Cuomo sounds a little like the governor of Alabama when he was talking about the freedom bus and saying that Martin Luther King… should get out of the state, there’s no place for those people here. Where would the disenfranchised of the world in history be if we didn’t have that pushback?”
There was a not a peep of challenge or questioning of this new persona from “I’m there to keep everybody honest” Kelly.
In Part Two, which Kelly aired later in the show, she called Beck a “phenom,” praised his "great website" and described him now as “king of the airwaves.” Then, after a brief nostalgic look at some of Beck’s clips, she asked, “When you think back on your time here, …how do you remember it now?”
Here was Beck’s answer, spoken haltingly:
I remember it as an awful lot of fun and that I made an awful lot of mistakes and I wish I could go back and – and be more uniting in my language. Because I – I – I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart and it’s not who we are. I didn’t realize how really fragile the people were. I thought we were kind of a little more in it together. And now I, I, I look back and I realize if, if we could have talked about the uniting principles a little bit more, instead of just the problems, I think it, I think I would look back on it a little more fondly. But that’s only my role.
So do you believe Beck has changed? And what are your thoughts on why Kelly is making such a big deal of promoting him? Share your thoughts in our comments section.
The mouthpieces at Mercury, Beck’s baby, said back in 2011 that they plan to “develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News’ digital properties.”
Ruthless Rupert’s main focus is digital media for News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, and has met with News Corporation digital teams to discuss new projects. News Corporation recently acquired Storyful, a social news agency. By the way, Ruthless has a 3D printer. Maybe he can make a younger image of his aging face.
Keep your popcorn warm. There’s a shocker coming down the pipe!
That said, Beck regrets nothing- I still occassionally follow his radio and GBTV programs, and he thinks what he did was funny. He’s even gone as far as to “joke” that he regrets all the attempts at violence he inspired failed.
If he actually regretted something, other than how much it put his career in a tailspin, he would have shown some remorse long before now. He certainly wouldn’t still be laughing about it.
“If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.”
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