Beck's Campaign Against Francis Fox Piven (3)

"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income." - Martin Luther King, Jr. Where Do We Go From Here? (1967).

"It is our purpose to advance a strategy which affords the basis for a convergence of civil rights organizations, militant anti-poverty groups and the poor. If this strategy were implemented, a political crisis would result that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty." - Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward The Nation (1966).

In The Guardian today there is yet another story on Glenn Beck's ongoing campaign against Francis Fox Piven. I found it funny that Piven arranged to meet the correspondent from the paper at a NYC restaurant called "Havana Central."

One thing that strikes me about Beck is his ignorance about history. You can find a link to the 1966 essay by Piven (and her husband, the late Richard Cloward) that so exercises Beck here at The Nation. That is where I lifted the statement above - from the first paragraph of the essay. My point today is just to say that Piven and Cloward were advocating a strategy to implement a policy that, as I noted here a year ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. also endorsed. And since Beck has announced his aim to reinvigorate Dr. King's message, how is it that he objects to Piven and Cloward? What better way to end poverty does Beck envision than the one King came to embrace? Beck instead ought to be embracing Piven as an ally in that cause. Maybe that is why he has afforded her all the publicity that trails in the wake of his diatribes.
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P.S.: You might find this portrait of Piven and this more recent Op-Ed from The Los Angeles Times - both by Barabara Ehrenreich - interesting.

Beck's Campaign Against Francis Fox Piven (2)

As a follow up on my earlier post, it is important to note that Glenn Beck is not obsessed just with decades old essays by Francis Fox Piven. He takes exception too to her other writings, especially those in which she endorses collective action on the part of the disenfranchised, the poor, the unemployed.

You can find one of Piven's recent essays, one in which she calls for mass protests of the unemployed, here in The Nation. Beck claims he denounces violence left, right and center. Where in the essay does Piven call for violence? Where does she claim that the protests she proposes will overthrow what Beck calls "our system"? Indeed, she explicitly remains agnostic about the stability of American capitalism. And she proposes local protests as a strategy for mitigating the hardships of the unemployed regardless of what one thinks on that larger issue. Beck seems not to be able to read terribly well. He is simply worried terribly about political protests. Protesters can be "unruly" (Piven's word) and obstreperous and confrontational without being violent. Is that too difficult for Beck and his listeners to understand? Is it too difficult for Beck and his listeners to understand that when 'politics as usual' is not working for them, those who are enduring hardship have a right to collective action? Perhaps so.

Which of the following protest movements might Beck find objectionable? The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who have been protesting in Buenos Aries since the early 1980s? (After all the mothers initially made contact in various government offices as they tried to find their "disappeared" children. And they arguably contributed to the collapse of dictatorship in Argentina.) The delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party who raised a ruckus at the 1964 Democratic Convention? (You remember Fannie Lou Hamer talking back bluntly to the politicos?) The striking Sanitation Workers in Memphis in 1968? (After all these were public sector workers protesting against inhumane - indeed lethal - working conditions.) The Polish trade Unionists in Solidarity or the churchgoers who flowed from services in Leipzig to occupy public space and protest Communism? (After all these were peaceful mass protests aimed, yes, at undermining the legitimacy of a regime that was not addressing the needs of common people.) The activists from ACT-UP who in the 1980s (among other things) took over government offices to protest a regulatory regime that was literally killing people with AIDS? (After all they were aiming to make government regulation effective in the face of corporate profit-making and bureaucratic sclerosis.) The protesters at (among other similar events) the 2001 G8 Meetings in Genoa? (After all, these people have diverse views about how the world economy should operate that their elected (and unelected!) leaders systematically neglect.)

It would be easy enough to multiply examples. One final point to note. In each instance I have mentioned here, any violence came disproportionately, indeed almost exclusively, from the government not the governed. Glenn Beck claims to be attentive to history. Maybe not so much.

Beck's Campaign Against Francis Fox Piven

I have posted here a couple of times on the perverse pre-occupation that conservatives have fostered in the writings of political scientist Francis Fox Piven. Well, the inimitable Glenn Beck has kept the focus on Piven with the result that some of his wacko listeners are issuing threats against Piven's life. You can read about the situation here in The New York Times and find a report here on DemocracyNow!.

I disagree with Piven about many things. But this state of affairs is both intolerable and directly attributable to Beck's behavior. Is it a reach to draw a connection between Beck's repeated "remarks" about Piven and her putatively dangerous ideas and the threats she now is receiving? Well, the paper that gets Beck especially exercised is a decades old essay that appeared in The Nation. Before this recent set of events, I (a political scientist and subscriber to The Nation) had never heard of the paper. How would regular Americans have come across the essay? So, 2 + 2 = ... Beck speaks and wackos do his dirty work.

Beck is a blustering, ignorant, bully. It is that simple. And there is simply no "civil" way to put that.

Glenn Beck, Nazi Hunter

Glenn Beck ~ Both Portraits
© Nigel Parry for The New York Times.

Today we are treated to the latest installment in the series of New York Times puff pieces on right wing ideologues. We already have had portraits (all by celeb photographer Nigel Parry) of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. This time the portraits are less scary, but they remind me of Richard Avedon's portrait of Karl Rove - the similarly buffoonish look on both faces is striking.

Karl Rove, Republican National Convention, NY,
2004 © Richard Avedon.

The problem, of course, is that Rove and Beck are no joke. They use their cleverness in more or less thoroughly malevolent ways. The Times reporter depicts Beck as genial and approachable and sensitive and so forth. The guy (Beck) is full of it. And instead of an argument he regularly simply closes off debate in the best way possible - accusing those he disagrees with of being Nazis.

ON THE AIR and in person, Beck often goes on long stretches that are warm, conciliatory and even plaintive. He says he yearns for the cohesion in the country after Sept. 11, 2001, and will speak in paragraphs that could fit into Barack Obama’s plea for national unity in his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. “There’s a lot we can disagree on, but our values and principles can unite us,” Beck said from the Lincoln Memorial.

But “standing together” can be a tough sell from someone who is so willing to pick at some of the nation’s most tender scabs. Beck’s statement that the president’s legislative agenda is driven by Obama’s desire for “reparations” and his “desire to settle old racial scores” is hardly a uniting message. While public figures tend to eventually learn (some the hard way) that Nazi, Hitler and Holocaust comparisons inevitably offend a lot of people, Beck seems not to care. In a forthcoming book about Beck, “Tears of a Clown,” the Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes that in the first 14 months of Beck’s Fox News show, Beck and his guests mentioned fascism 172 times, Nazis 134 times, Hitler 115 times, the Holocaust 58 times and Joseph Goebbels 8 times.

In his quest to root out progressives, Beck compared himself to Israeli Nazi-hunters. “To the day I die I am going to be a progressive-hunter,” he vowed on his radio show earlier this year. “I’m going to find these people that have done this to our country and expose them. I don’t care if they’re in nursing homes.”

“Raising questions” is Beck’s favorite rhetorical method. Last year during the health care debate, Beck compared Obama’s economic agenda to Nazi Germany — specifically he paralleled the White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s statement that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” with how Hitler used the world economic crisis as a pivot point. Photos of Hitler, Stalin and Lenin then appeared on screen. “Is this where we’re headed?” Beck asked. He allowed that “I am not predicting that we go down that road.”

If you treat people as Nazis, then you hound them like criminals and dismiss (or worse, eliminate) them rather than, say, addressing them as a interlocutors to be taken seriously enough to disagree with. That's Glenn Beck, Nazi hunter.
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Update: Today, Michael Shaw, perpetrator of the terrific BagNewsNotes, poses this nice query the folks at The Times at HuffPost: just what is your puffery meant to convey? The problem with The Times is that when their ideology is not just blatant (as when they disparage any vaguely progressive politics), they tend to pretend that being objective means being 'non-committal' or 'neutral' (whatever that means). And they end up being irresponsible by giving right-wing nutters a pass.

Why Glenn Beck is Right (Meaning Correct, Not Just Reactionary)

Glenn Beck speaks at his 'Restoring Honor' rally in front of
the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010
(Image © AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

I never thought I'd say it, but here goes. Glenn Beck is right! Reviving the message of Martin Luther King , Jr. would indeed go considerable distance toward restoring honor to America.

Unfortunately, Beck fails to grasp the implications of his call; MLK Jr.'s message entails radical politics of just the sort that he and his reactionary followers would find appalling. After all, King preached a message of progressive political-economic reform. For instance, he demanded a universal guaranteed income to directly address the widespread poverty that plagued the U.S. in the 1960s and continues to do so today. He also spoke and acted in solidarity with striking workers - indeed, he was shot in Memphis where he had traveled to support the demands of sanitation workers seeking to exercise their right to form a union. King also spoke eloquently against American military aggression in Viet Nam; his message on that score translates more or less seamlessly to our current disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, let the Merry Becksters re-orient their politics to accommodate King's message. We'd all be much better off.

The fact that those on the left are so pre-occupied with the resonance of King's "I Have a Dream" speech, suggests that they too ought to look more closely at Dr. King's message. He did not stand for freedom and civil rights in the abstract, but for freedom deeply embedded in circumstances of solidarity and justice and peace and equality.

Liars on the Right - Kyle Olson

This is a mug-shot of a liar. His name is Kyle Olson, a political extremist who runs this outfit. Among his recent escapades has been participating eagerly in a right wing campaign* to slander and intimidate Francis Fox Piven, a fellow political scientist. I disagree with Piven on many things but we agree on the importance of free and open inquiry. That is where we part company with liars like Olson who deceived Piven in order to enter her home and videotape an interview. You can read the details here at The American Prospect. Kyle has not got the courage of his convictions and that should be a cause for embarrassment on the right. Unfortunately, it is not. Just as they celebrate nepotism (while deploring the way affirmative action - always said with a sneer - allegedly offends against merit) they seem totally comfortable with duplicity. I guess the right has decided that the ends justify the means.
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PS: I mentioned this campaign in passing here. You can find Glenn Beck rants about the dangers of Piven and her late co-author Richard Cloward on YouTube by Googling 'Beck Cloward Piven.'

It's True! But Shhhhh! Don't tell the 'Teabaggers,' Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, or the Rest of the CPAC Crowd ... They Will Be Insufferable.

Beijing, China: The face of US's President Barack Obama
portrayed as ObaMao is seen printed on a keyring for sale
at Chaoyang park during the Chinese new year holiday.
Photograph © Diego Azubel/EPA.

One Important Way That I Am Not Like Glenn Beck

I am not like Glenn Beck. That that is true in all sorts of ways. But, perhaps the most important of those is that I am not certain. I know a lot of things and am confident about that knowledge. I'll come back to some of the things I know in a minute. For now, I simply want to say that there are lots of things I don't know. And I am willing to concede that among the things I am pretty confident about, some may turn out to be wrong. Glenn, by contrast, is certain. That is a pretty important difference.

You may be wondering what prompts me to make this comparison. Well, according to this report, which I found via The Huffington Post, Beck is out to get a number of Obama appointees, including Cass Sunstein who has been nominated to direct head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Republicans in the Senate have delayed Sunstein's nomination - like many of Obama's choices for senior administration posts* - via a variety of procedural gambits. Apparently, Sunstein's nomination will finally be coming before the full Senate this week. That leads me to a few things I know.

First, I met Cass Sunstein when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1980s. I know that we disagree about a lot of things. I also know that he is a smart and decent man. But enough of that. Sunstein hardly needs me as a character reference. Nor, however, does he need to defend himself in the sort of frenzied sideshow that Glenn Beck is trying to orchestrate.

Second, I know that Sunstein is right about at least one thing. We make choices under particular descriptions. This is hardly an earth-shattering revelation. Indeed, it is well established that the way a choice is described can have a considerable impact on the way people decide to act. This is important because much of the hoop-la over "behavioral economics" boils down to the simple not-so-earth-shattering recognition that we necessarily choose under some description. And Sunstein has been bitten by the behavioral economics bug. That is among the things about which we disagree. While I believe the commonplace observation is, well, commonplace, I don't follow the path toward behavioral experimentation. In any case, the commonplace is what seems to have gotten Glenn's knickers in a knot about Sunstein.

Third, I know what it is like to have to make a decision about whether or not to donate a loved one's organs for transplant. When my 14 year old son died two and a half years ago, one of the most excruciating conversations I had was with the young resident who drew the short straw and had to ask whether we would consider donating Jeff's organs. The conversation was excruciating because of the young resident's discomfort. The decision to donate Jeff's organs was a no-brainer. His heart still beats. His liver and kidneys and corneas and lungs and pancreas are still keeping a bunch of people alive who otherwise would likely be dead.

This knowledge is relevant insofar as Sunstein has written about the benefits of a 'presumed consent' regime for making decisions about organ transplants. On such a regime, individuals would explicitly have to 'opt out' of a donation scheme. In the event they died, medical personnel would presume that they would want to donate their organs. Their surviving relatives would still need to agree to having the organs harvested for transplant. But there would be less ambiguity about what the deceased person would have wanted. Jeff, of course, was just a kid. So the scheme would not probably have applied when he died. But I know what he would have wanted. His mother knew as well. That said, I think the 'opt out' scheme is sensible. It would mitigate uncertainty. Unless the deceased person had explicitly indicated they did not want to be an organ donor, they would be treated as one.

Finally, I know that it is craven and disgusting for Beck (and others on the right) to be politicizing the sort of decision I had to make about Jeff's organs. I think Sunstein's basic claim is correct - how the decisions people face at such moments are framed effects their choices. We choose under descriptions. And his prescription - namely that we ought, as a matter of policy, to insist on describing the choice about whether to donate organs of our deceased loved ones in ways that render it easier to say 'yes' is, it seems to me, not just sensible, but right. Having never faced that choice, Glenn Beck ought to simply stop talking. He ought to entertain the possibility that he is wrong. Fat chance.
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* "Out of 543 positions in the upper ranks of government, only 236, or 43 per cent, have been confirmed by the Senate, according to the White House Transition Project. A further 83 are awaiting confirmation" (source).

** To listen to Beck, one would think Sunstein were a wild-eyed lunatic on this issue. My understanding is that Austria, France and Spain operate under a presumed consent regime while Britain is currently debating whether to move to one. While the issue of consent is not the only one that bedevils the availability and distribution of organs for transplantation, it seems to me an important one (link).