Randi Rhodes Show - August 26 2010

The Navy has OK’d a reality television show about the military bomb squads risking their lives defusing explosive devices. Well that’s one way to make those “Ice Road Truckers” and crab fishermen look like wusses. The show is called “Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan.” I guess it sounds better than “I Enlisted for the College Tuition, Get Me Out of Here!” The show will be on the G4 Network. The problem of course is that this could easily be handled in a tasteless and exploitative manner, or as TV networks call it “business as usual.” The first indications from the G4 Network don’t look good. Their promo material stresses that the soldiers’ patrols “could put an EOD tech wearing a 70-pound protective bomb suit in direct contact with a potentially deadly IED.” At least they’re not calling the show “Survivor: Kandahar.” The problem is that they’re teasing it with the possibility that some of those involved may not survive. This is an abomination. Why don’t they just call this show “Pimp My Military”? Besides, if I want to see an explosion on reality TV, I’ll just watch Teresa on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Reality can be ugly, especially when it involves Glenn Beck. This weekend is Glenn Beck’s big “Restoring Honor” rally. Glenn Beck restoring honor? That’s like using Mel Gibson to restore civility. Beck is taking over the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech there. If Martin Luther King were still around, this would make him wake up screaming. The rally headliners are Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. It’s kind of like a Woodstock for conservatives, but I’m sure this one will feature a lot more mud. As far as I’m concerned, the mere presence of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin at the Lincoln Memorial qualifies as vandalism to a national monument. Glenn Beck says “we will reclaim the civil rights movement….” Reclaim? I didn’t know conservatives claimed it in the first place. Is that what you were doing with the water cannons and police dogs? Glenn Beck is completely rewriting history for the sake of a bunch of old people—the kind of people who didn’t like that history back when they were forced to live it. These are people who spent their lives hating the legacy of the Civil Rights movement. Now Glenn Beck is telling them they don’t have to hate it—they can co-opt and distort it. The bottom line is clear: Glenn Beck comes not to praise the Civil Rights movement, but to bury it.

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