Revolutionary Subsidies
by digby
Adele Stan has a fascinating piece up today at Alternet about the entrepreneurial organizing being done on behalf of the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rage-a-thon schedule for the end of the month. (She calls Beck Rupert Murdoch’s community organizer.) It just shows to go you how nice it is to have the extremely wealthy bankrolling and organizing your “grassroots” events:
Tim Phillips, president of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, flatly denies that his organization has any partnership with Rupert Murdoch, CEO of Fox News’ parent company, News Corporation. Still, the coincidental evidence keeps piling up.
Take, for instance, the cheapy-cheap deals available through the AFPF Web site for those wishing to travel to Washington, D.C., for the big Glenn Beck event, Restoring Honor — which happens to take place at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which took place in the same hallowed location.
Okay, so AFPF doesn’t advertise the deals as being for the Beck event; they just happen to be wrapping their own annual D.C. conference around the Beck event, and will be ferrying attendees to their Defending the American Dream confab to the Beck event. And the buses will conveniently not leave D.C. until the Beck event concludes. (Coincidentally, FreedomWorks, which is using Glenn Beck’s image and endorsement to peddle membership in its Take America Back election campaign, is also hosting a conference the same weekend.)
Just how good are the deals? Well, check this out.
Read on. You won’t believe it. I’m tempted to sign up just so I can get the deal — I’ll go to the Smithsonian and see all my friends. (I just don’t know if I can stand the hotel elevator rides with lots of people who look like me swooning over Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.)
It occurs to me reading this that if the Democrats could ever master the art of the hissy fit, they could follow the sage guidance of Greta Van Susteran and turn the national case of the vapors over the alleged mosque to their own advantage by condemning Beck for using the hallowed ground of the Lincoln memorial on the anniversary of MLKs spech to spread hate and lies about American history and African Americans. It happens to be true, but even it weren’t, the wingnuts have proven that truth doesn’t matter. They should use exactly the same language (“sensitivity” and “hallowed ground” and “sure he has a right to do it, but should he exercise that right?”)and get all maudlin about the sacredness of America’s monuments.
Sadly, it will not happen. Liberals have never mastered the talent for turning the other sides’ propaganda back on them. It’s too bad. They spend so much money brainwashing people with it, it would be nice to put some of it to good use.
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