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Beck's
Religious Rally
by Gene Lyons
Here we go again. A self-promoting
TV evangelist has summoned yet another gullible throng to a
Washington pep rally/prayer meeting, and everybody’s expected to ponder
its vast significance.
But what if it hasn’t actually got any? Except perhaps as a validation
of H.L. Mencken’s timeless
observation that “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of
the American public.”
To Fox News impresario Glenn Beck, who staged the so-called
"anti-Woodstock" at the Lincoln Memorial,
its impact was literally cosmic. In promos, Beck modestly compared the
event to such landmarks in
American history as the Declaration of Independence, Iwo Jima, the moon
landing, the Montgomery
school bus boycott, and, of course, to Martin Luther King Jr.'s
epochal "I Have a Dream" speech,
delivered on the same date in 1963.
Claiming divine inspiration, the former disc jockey promised miracles.
"You’re going to see the
spirit of God unleashed," he told his radio audience. Even the weather
signaled the Lord’s approval.
"Dare I say it, God is smiling?" Afterward, Beck showed video of a
flock of Canada geese honking
their way over the Tidal Mall. "God’s flyover," he called it, and "a
miracle."
Beck then appeared on (where else?) "Fox News Sunday," to pronounce
Obama an adept of
"liberation theology," which he decreed "a perversion of the gospel of
Jesus Christ."
Beck himself is a Mormon.
This may have puzzled Fox News viewers who think the president's a
Muslim,
but let's not sweat the small stuff. Beck could call Obama a
Zoroastrian or a space alien
and his fans wouldn't know the difference.
I did not know Beck was a Mormon.