Glenn Beck Goes To College

I've documented Glenn Beck's anti-intellectualism crusade here before, so this little number should come as no surprise. Beck rails against tier one colleges, and Harvard specifically, for having huge endowments. He swears that it has nothing to do with what he sees as liberal indoctrination, even though he can't seem to help himself from mentioning liberal indoctrination throughout the piece. No, no, that's not it. It's just that he wants to "level the playing field," as he puts it. Let's tax the wealthiest universities, and give the money to struggling schools, so that all institutes of higher learning have equal resources. Beyond the fact that it's a little suspicious that a raging capitalist is pushing for educational socialism, what doesn't seem to occur to Beck is that we don't want all universities to be the same. The reason there are top-tier universities is that there are top-tier students. Top-tier students should face greater challenges than lower tier students. Make all universities the same, and you've furthered the notion that higher education is nothing but generic job training, something I'm sure Glenn Beck would love to see codified.

The reason Harvard University and universities like it have large endowments is that it allows them freedom. Their endowments protect the universities from have to cave to political, social or parental pressures. In a capitalist society, anything can be bought, including the principles of higher education. Being worth more than is practical to purchase keeps Harvard University from being bought out by politicians who want to artificially alter campus politics, religious zealots who want to teach intelligent design, and wealthy parents who think their child deserves a higher grade for less effort. So Harvard can go about producing high-quality Harvard graduates from both full-paying students as well as the over 400 students per year who receive scholarships directly from the school.

This is my favorite bit from Beck's piece:

Harvard University, which has the largest endowment in the country, has a total of $34.6 billion. To put into perspective just how much money that is, consider that the largest charitable foundation in the world, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has a total endowment of $37.3 billion.

But while their financial statements may look similar, their missions aren't. The Gates Foundation is working to cure malaria, develop new tuberculosis vaccines, and stop the spread of AIDS. Most of our colleges and universities are only working to spread the radical political views of some of their professors.

Who exactly does Beck think is doing to gruntwork behind these medical breakthroughs? Apparently he's forgotten that, in between all of their classes on enabling the lazy and hating America, Harvard students graduate with degrees. Degrees in things like medicine, molecular biology, chemistry. Who does Beck think is doing that research? $37.3 billion dollars doesn't cure malaria on its own. A quick look at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation site shows that the charity doesn't quite view Harvard with the distaste Beck does, given its donations to the school.

The Change Leadership Group at Harvard Graduate School of Education - $3.6 million

Civil Rights Project at Harvard University - $.2 million

Construction of the Harvard Computer Sciences Center - $10 million

And, as if to prove that Beck doesn't know what he's talking about, the foundation also gave:

$45 million to Harvard Medical School for Tuberculosis Research

$25 million to Harvard School of Public Health for AIDS prevention in Nigeria

Huh. Apparently, the resources available at Harvard University help establish it as a major player in exactly the work Beck lauds the Gates Foundation for doing. So much so, in fact, that the charity gives money to the school. Who'd have thought? Apparently not Glenn Beck.

So, it's a depressing day on the anti-intellectualism front. Can't anybody cheer me up?

Chris Matthews? REALLY?



I guess so. Go Chris. If journalists did this with any regularity, the entire neo-con agenda would be discredited in a week.

Glenn Beck: Flat Earther

According to Glenn Beck, the "vast majority" of Americans do not believe that global warming is caused by humans.

The other villain of the moment is the global warming "denier." Anyone who disagrees, even in the slightest, must be ridiculed. On "60 Minutes" last weekend, Al Gore said: "They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the Earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off."
...So, who are those people Gore was demeaning "a little bit" by these comparisons? There's a good chance it's you. That's because the vast majority of Americans believe something that categorizes them as a flat earther to environmentalists like Gore.

This does not jive with my experience at all. Glenn Beck states it as inarguable fact, though. So one of the following must be true:
1) Americans, across the board, hate facts.
2) Glenn Beck socializes solely with the ignorant, clouding his perspective.
3) Glenn Beck just makes shit up out of whole cloth.

Because, let me tell you, when it comes to theories about global climate change, you can take all of those peer-reviewed research articles by noted scientists and shove them up your ass. I'll get my information from an attention-starved Mormon recovering alcoholic.

Poor, Poor Glenn

So, in case the matter was still up for discussion, it turns out Glenn Beck is, in fact, a total assclown.

The evidence? Beck has the brass-plated balls to insist that the real problem with our medical system has nothing to do with the people who can't get the help they desperately need. The real problem is that health care practitioners don't kiss Beck's pseudocelebrity ass with nearly enough zeal.

My "routine" outpatient surgery (which was on my butt -- get all your sophomoric jokes out of the way now) went awry and I was in terrible, excruciating pain. To help, my doctors who were absolutely fantastic, created a sinister cocktail of pain medications so strong that it's usually reserved only for Hollywood starlets. It included morphine, Percocet, Toradol, some sort of synthetic morphine derivative on a pump, and my personal favorite -- Fentanyl, which my doctor told me is an opiate 80 times more powerful than morphine.

Beck goes on to describe how his pain medication caused scary hallucinations, as if it were some cautionary tale for all the people who can't afford medication to ease their pain, or even those whose skin is too dark to be allowed to have it. I'm sure all those uninsured people living in chronic pain appreciate Glenn's heartfelt concern.

At the hospital I was often treated more like a number than a patient. At times, staff members literally turned their back on my cries of pain and pleas for help. In one case a nurse even stood by tapping his fingers as if he was bored while my tiny wife struggled to lift me off a waiting room couch.

Poor, poor Glenn Beck. Not that anyone deserves to be treated with disrespect by a medical team. It just takes one hell of a self-centered asshole to assert that getting a bad attitude from a nurse is worse than dying of a treatable illness.

But maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe I'm taking Glenn's words out of context and not being fair to his actual tone.

That's why I don't want to hear anymore about universal health care or HMOs or the evils of insurance companies until each and every hospital in this country can look me in the eye and tell me that they their staff is full of truly compassionate people who treat their visitors like patients, not products. Hire and train the right people, and then and only then come talk to me about everything else you need.

Nope. Not at all. He is, in fact, that much of a dick.

Compassion in health care is certainly an important thing. But Glenn Beck bloviates, with no apparent self-awareness of his privileged attitude, that before we even think about getting someone who can't afford insurance the care they need, we must make sure that he gets doted on when his elective butt surgery goes awry.

Marketing Anti-Intellectualism

This pisses me off. Feel free to watch the whole thing if you want to, but it's long and boring and infuriating when you think about what it's doing. Feel free to stop once you get the gist of it.

Anti-intellectualism is a trend to be very afraid of. Nothing ensures the quick collapse of a culture like the vilification of academics and education in general. One of the most disturbing indicators of this trend is to corporatization of American universities. Pandering to parents has become more important than maintaining a standard of intellectual integrity. "Think the curriculum is too hard? Too mature in content? Too demanding? Too liberally biased? We'll change that for you, even if that means providing sub-standard education! Just please keep sending us your tuition!"

Why do parents feel entitled to this? Because morons like Glenn Beck assure them that they're entitled to it. "Look at the way Columbia University laid out the red carpet for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, embracing islamofascism. Hey, we'll even show you this video of the audience cheering for him. (We won't show you clips of the audience jeering him, nor will we show you University President Lee Bollinger explain why Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak despite the University most assuredly not supporting him.)"

These are statements from Bollinger's introduction of Ahmadinejad:

"...First, since 2003, the World Leaders Forum has advanced Columbia’s longstanding tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues. It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible...

...We at this university have not been shy to protest and challenge the failures of our own government to live by these values; and we won’t be shy in criticizing yours.

Let’s, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.

And so I ask you:

Why have women, members of the Baha’i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?..."

So I call bullshit on your allegations that Columbia showed any support of Ahmadinejad by allowing him to speak, Glenn Beck. But you don't really care about that, do you? Your agenda is much broader in scope. You are pandering to the growing numbers of anti-intellectual Americans, assuring them that the vigorously educated leaders of academic institutions are actually less intelligent than they are, because they are too stupid to understand the dangers posed by allowing someone like Ahmadinejad to speak. Is it any wonder we can't get our children to care about their own education when we reinforce the idea that the educated are dangerously stupid? You're a pandering hack, Glenn Beck.

"We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament. In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self- restraint against the very natural but often counter-productive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear. In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech."

-Lee Bollinger

Yes.