Dark side of the loon?

http://ltradio.blogspot.com/2009/09/dark-side-of-loon.html

Hey, did you hear the one about Glenn Beck raping and murduring a girl back in 1990?

Well, so goes the latest meme crawling around the web. It claims that the FOX 'News' squawker has a very dark and sordid past. Very dark and sordid. Allegedly, he committed rape and murder.

And one site is looking to expose the high-strung wingnut screamer. The accusing site even claims to have evidence, including a police report. And ifall the crazy stuff Beck spews is true, then perhaps this is as well. After all, the information is presented in the same ways Beck frequently uses to target his adversaries and subsequently lose his advertisers.

Hey, I'm just sayin'.

Nobody really knows whether Beck raped and murdered that young girl back in 1990, but the meme seems to have the fingerprints of a group of internet pranksters all over it. The website Mediaite suspects it's all the work of a group with the likely moniker 'Anonymous'. They're a powerful clique connected with hacker/prankster site 4chan, and have created elaborate stunts like attacks on the Church of Scientology and the flooding of YouTube with porn clips. Some of their stunts were beyond the pale (such as an attack on a support forum run by the Epilepsy Foundation of America). But hey, they did harass white supremacist shortwave radio talker Hal Turner and they launched online support efforts for Iranians to contest the questionable presidential election there earlier this summer, so they,'re not all bad. And they even designed the cool Beck/Joker pic shown at the top.

But, what if it is all real (sarcasm alert), and the meme is being spread by people aware of Beck's grim past? Needless to say, this meme is an interesting example of how fast bullshit travels across the tubes in the internet era. If the Beck rumors are indeed false, doesn't that cast doubt on the various falsities spread by right-wingers over the years? Can we finally stop talking about the Swift Boat vets, President Obama's birth certificate, 'death panels', the pending American nazi/socialist revolution and the Clinton Body Count? After all, if they claim without a doubt that the Beck rumor is a lie, what does that say about the fertilizer they spread? After all, if he can launch a smear campaign against the President, calling him a racist and accusing him of hating white people (and we all know the flack that Kanye West got when he said something similar about our previous president), well...

Regardless of where it came from, the meme has spread like wildfire, as the just-launched website has accumulated thousands of page views. The perpetrators have launched a massive viral campaign, using sites like Fark, Yahoo! Answers, Reddit, Twitter, and others. All that's left is for Beck to deny it.

You see, in Beck's world, the burden of proof lies with the accused, rather than the accuser. It's a really old trick used in campaigns (Lyndon Johnson, after seeking to spread one wild rumor, said something to the effect of "I wanna see the sonuvabitch deny it!"). The wingnuts live and die by this dirty trick, using it for bullshit accusations such as the Swift Vets smears on John Kerry and the recent birther movement that threw the legitimacy of Barack Obama's birth certificate into doubt. Glenn Beck uses this trick more than others, and drools whenever others do it. So, if he thrives on playing this kind of game, shouldn't it be up to Beck to prove that he didn't rape and murder a young girl back in 1990? And should we really sympathize with him, as if he's the 'wrong man' in an old Hitchcock flick?

Mediaite says:

People will ask the question and not answer it, insisting that Beck "prove that he didn't;" supposedly, this parallels Beck's argumentative style. The bottom of glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com reads, "Notice: This site is parody/satire. We assume Glenn Beck did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990, although we haven't yet seen proof that he didn't. But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation." Really, though? It all comes across as a malicious, masterfully executed prank whose pranksters were grasping for a higher political justification.

As one poster on Fark puts it:

FootInMouthDisease: ...Instead of actually refuting the facts. I know. Not one person has come in here with a link to Glenn Beck's murder record to prove that not one of them involved a rape and a girl in 1990. For real. What is he hiding? You know... If it weren't such a big deal, you think he would just go on tv and clear the air. Just show us all the long forms, seriously, is it that hard, cchris_39? you could just lay it all to rest, with the official, undoctored, signed, long-form investigation certificates. Or that, if it were so obvious that glenn beck raped and killed a girl in 1990, weren't true surely there would be some reputable source we could cite?

(snip)

Not to add to the rumor mongering, but have no knowledge of any plausible alibi Glenn Beck has that would prove he didn't rape and murder that girl in 1990. Lexis Nexis provides 0 articles that state Glenn Beck didn't rape and murder a girl for the entire year of 1990. Some say Glenn Beck has spent possibly THREE BILLION DOLLARS to cover up the fact that he raped and murdered a girl in 1990. Why won't Glenn Beck release her death certificate? WHERE GLENN WHERE HEY. The State of Hawaii issued a Certificate of Live Death. That's all the evidence you need. And they said that after glenn beck raped every orifice, he ate her dead body with arugula and spicy mustard in 1990.

So, is this all fair game? Did Beck really do what they claim he did back in 1990? True or not true, shouldn't Beck come out and deny it all? Granted, it's a rather tasteless prank (if that's what it is). Accusations of rape and murder are kinda pushing it a bit. But it also proves the old saying, what comes around goes around. Beck and his ilk make millions of dollars to spout lies, insults, racist and xenophobic taunts and various other inanities across alleged mainstream news media outlets. Live by the sword, die by it. In other words, if you get in bed with the devil, you'd better be ready to put out. Beck has gotten in bed with the devil, using vicious means to attack his so-called enemies, then cowardly claiming it's all entertainment. However, considering Beck is everything short of clinically insane, I wonder just how many people really take this bloated coke-fueled sack of elephant shit seriously.

Regardless of whether the rumors are true or not, if Beck's bottom line is hurt by accusations such as these, I have no sympathy. It's the price one pays for collecting huge paychecks for being an insufferable asshole. That's life.

Now, do I believe that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? That's for you to decide. As far as I'm concerned, though, that coke-snortin' jerkoff can go cheney himself.

Hey, did you hear the one about Lou Dobbs and his Mexican love child?