May 7, 2009

It's actually quite rare for Glenn Beck to invite onto his Fox News show a guest he disagrees with. Most often he's playing fanboy to the likes of Michelle Malkin and Jonah Goldberg, which means that the show is usually an hourlong right-wing mutual-admiration society. This means the Glenn Beck show largely is a big Snoozarama, livened up only by Beck's weepy wingnuttery.

But yesterday he invited on Scott Levinson of ACORN, which Beck has been chasing after and demonizing since last summer's campaign. As you can see, the entire exchange turns into a fiasco when Beck refuses to respond to Levinson's points and begins instead showing videos of a Burger King worker bathing in a sink.

At one point, Beck even orders Levinson's mike turned off.

Even more remarkably, after Levinson was off camera, Beck continued to attack him on the camera -- relaying to the audience the argument that ensued afterward (Levinson accused Beck, evidently, of being afraid of black people), calling him a "dirtbag," and then later telling his audience that Levinson had hit up on one of his female assistants in the green room.

Wow.

Now, on the one previous occasion when Beck did invite on someone he disagreed with -- Sam Webb of the Communist Party USA -- the behavior was similar: Beck refused to respond to Webb's points, insisted on peppering him with nonsequiturs and his own prepackaged narrative, talked over him, and generally treated him with so much contempt that any veneer of professionalism was eradicated.

So it seems that this is what any liberal can expect should they ever be invited onto Beck's show:

-- They will be talked over.

-- Their points will be ignored.

-- They will be used as a pinata for Beck to make fun of.

-- Beck will turn their mike off if they insist on trying to make their point.

-- After they leave the set, Beck will call them "dirtbags" and continue to smear them, perhaps even accuse them of sexually harassing his staff.

Why would any sane person want to endure that? Leave Beck to his little self-enclosed circle jerks. It's the only thing he's good at anyway.

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