Rabbis Ask Fox News To “Sanction” Glenn Beck For Nazi References
A group of Rabbis took to the pages of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal to criticize Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel:
A coalition of rabbis wants Fox News chief Roger Ailes and conservative host Glenn Beck to cut out all their talk about Nazis and the Holocaust, and it’s making its views known in an unusual place.
The rabbis have called on Fox News’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, to sanction his two famous employees via a full-page ad in Thursday’s editions of the Wall Street Journal – one of many other media properties controlled by Murdoch’s News Corp.
The ad is signed by the heads of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements as well as Orthodox rabbis.
“We share a belief that the Holocaust, of course, can and should be discussed appropriately in the media. But that is not what we have seen at Fox News,” says the ad, signed by hundreds of rabbis and placed by the Jewish Funds for Justice, a nonprofit advocacy group. Earlier this month, the group organized a letter-writing campaign asking Murdoch to remove Beck from the air.
The rabbis were prompted by Beck’s three-part program in November about liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros, whom Beck described as a “Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps” during World War II.
Soros was a young teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the war and hid with a Christian family to escape the Holocaust. He once described accompanying his surrogate father while he confiscated property from Jews deported by the Nazis.
The Jewish Funds group has received financial support from Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
Ailes, in a November interview with the Daily Beast Web site, called NPR executives “Nazis” for their decision to fire Juan Williams, also a Fox commentator. He later apologized to the Anti-Defamation League, but not to NPR, saying, “I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word, but I was angry at the time because of NPR’s willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough.”
But Ailes, in the same interview, defended Beck’s frequent use of Nazi references to describe his political opponents by attributing outrage over such remarks to “left-wing rabbis who basically don’t think that anybody can ever use the word ‘Holocaust’ on the air.”
In the Journal ad, which is also appearing in the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper, the rabbis write that they are “deeply offended” by Ailes’s dismissal of those who object to such language.
“It is not appropriate to accuse a 14-year-old Jew hiding with a Christian family in Nazi-occupied Hungary of sending his people to death camps,” says the ad. “It is not appropriate to call executives of another news agency ‘Nazis.’ And it is not appropriate to make literally hundreds of on-air references to the Holocaust and Nazis when characterizing people with whom you disagree.
“We respectfully request that Glenn Beck be sanctioned by Fox News for his completely unacceptable attacks on a survivor of the Holocaust and that Roger Ailes apologize for his dismissive remarks about rabbis’ sensitivity to how the Holocaust is used on the air.”
Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an observance established by the United Nations in 2005.
Don’t hold your breath for an action by Fox, or anything other than derision mixed with insults from Beck.
You can view the ad here.
Beck’s numbers are dropping fast with the demo. Down 20%.
So actually, I suspect in the wake of Tucson and a sense that the aesthetic is changing, Ailes may already be looking for a way to ease Beck out. As for Rupert, he’s not going to fire Ailes, but that doesn’t mean he won’t order Ailes to do an Olbermann with Beck.
(Disclosure: most of my income is Rupert-derived.)
How can Beck be on the air after that “shoot them in the head” madness?
(Maybe Rupert/Ailes should demand a psych evaluation and go from there.)
The best line I heard on Beck was that “you used to have to find these guys on CB radio, now they are on cable.”
because, john, if you bothered to catch the full context (which I did, after enough liberals whined about it), you would know that it was not what you were told it was.
Beck was speaking to Pelosi and the other “useful idiots” on the left. He was warning them that they were taking sides with hard-core leftists, who have shown no mercy or patience for their useful idiots once they outlive their usefulness. Beck was telling Pelosi et al that in the end, they would “have to shoot them in the head” (the hardcore leftists) before the hardcore leftists shot them in the head.
In a slightly less graphic tone, he was warning Pelosi et al that they were riding a tiger, and killing the tiger is pretty much the only way to safely stop.
And I wonder where these rabbis were when Keith Olbermann was wearing his Bill O’Reilly-as-Hitler mask and giving a Nazi salute. Oh, that’s right. No one watched Olbermann.
How about, where were they when everyone and their cousin were talking about BusHitler and putting Hitler mustaches on him? Never mind, they were leftists, and no one ever takes them seriously. Until they try to bomb the Republican National Convention or kill a college president or something. Whoops, not even then.
“Godwin’s Law” isn’t an actual law, and no one is empowered to enforce it in real life.
Using Nazi metaphors is nearly always pointless and tasteless and stupid, but punishable? Please.
J.
And you consider this sane, adult, political commentary?
Do you need a psych eval?
john, I’ve heard worse. I heard Alec Baldwin shouting that “if we were in another country… we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they’re doing to this country.” I saw Sarah Palin hanged in effigy outside some guy’s home. I’ve seen Bush and Cheney hanged and burned in effigy.
Beck? Small potatoes. I don’t listen to him, and don’t recommend you do. I don’t because I find him slightly boring. You, apparently, are so weak-willed that you take him far more literally than you should, and so weak-minded that you outsource your thinking to whatever the left is pushing.
J.
Where were the rabbis when O’Reilly was calling the NY Times Nazis? The fact is that both sides have used this, but it woulnd’t be worth anyone’s time to even count the number of Nazi references that Beck has made over just the past year because of the frequency.
And also, it’s funny that you don’t see some speech as punishable, but there wasn’t a conservative alive who wasn’t begging for Helen Thomas to be fired when she made her comments about Israel. I don’t think that either Helen or Beck should be fired, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with a boss telling an employee what is and isn’t appropriate if its somewhat reasonable.
“In a slightly less graphic tone, he was warning Pelosi et al that they were riding a tiger, and killing the tiger is pretty much the only way to safely stop.”
Projection, perhaps…as that perfectly describes the relationship between the GOP and the Tea Party types…
“Until they try to bomb the Republican National Convention or kill a college president or something. Whoops, not even then.”
Oh? When and where did these things happen?
So you raise the level of discourse by attacking me? Seriously?
Alec Baldwin is a semi-stable actor. He does not have a cable network political commentary show. If he did, I’d worry about the sanity of those who provided him that opportunity, those who tuned in, and yes, those who defended him.
And that “some guy’s house” thing was brilliant too … does that “some guy” have a national cable show? Is anyone defending his madness?
(I think the sad thing about the far right, at this point in time, is that they can’t quit the crazies.)
Neither Olbermann nor O’Reilly has engaged in anything comparable to Beck’s incessant Jew-baiting: the whole weird Soros obsession, his list of the nine people who are enemies of America and humanity eight of whom just happen to be Jewish, his stating explicitly that “The Jews” killed Jesus. This isn’t just about frivolous Hitler and Nazi comparisons, which are indeed all too common on both sides of the political spectrum.
No, no, no. Megyn Kelly already told us, no one on Fox ever uses Nazi comparisons.
Oh good. Jay is here to tell us that Beck wasn’t telling his audience to go shoot people, he was telling liberals they need to shoot each other. So, it’s all good!
Jay, how about you go shoot yourself in the head?
Interested, my Web Fu is weak, so I apologize if these links don’t work.
Whoops, it was a college dean. My apologies.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/01/left_wing_climate_of_hate_and.html
2008 GOP Convention plot:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/us/05informant.html?scp=1&sq=brandon%20darby&st=cse
Sarah Palin hanged in effigy:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE49Q79N20081027
And let me restate one thing: Beck isn’t small potatoes. But what Beck said was, in context of crazy violent things, was.
J.
Oh, and here’s the full context of Beck’s statement.
http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/the-context-behind-beck-s-you-re-gonna-have-to-shoot-them-the-head-quote
From reading it, he’s warning Pelosi and the media that they have gotten in bed with some very, very dangerous people, and they need to get the hell away from them before they end up getting killed. Beck also promises to stand with them against their current “allies” should they walk away from them.
A bit over the top, and certainly not my cup of tea, but hardly anywhere as violent as the stuff I cited above.
J.
Shorter Jay Tea:
“Since these nuts don’t have daily cable politics shows, Beck should keep his.”
Shorter john personna: “The First Amendment isn’t for conservatives. Besides, we’re not punishing him for what he said, but for what we’re making up that he said.”
J.
You are deeply confused Jay.
It is not a first amendment issue, it is what we should consider our best, our goal.
You mentioned Alec Baldwin. He has some problems, does not suffer lack of free speech, and (thankfully) does not have a cable political show.
Beck should be like Baldwin, actually. He’s too nutty for his (and our) own good. We can do better, and you should try to find and defend something better.
All you do here is drag yourself down. Jay “Tea” … binding the Tea Party to the madness of Beck?
(Is that a Palinism? Say something nutty, and when called on it, declare it a 1st amendment issue?)
Thanks Jay for confirming that you are indeed a Glenn Beck fan and for some reason your parents found the “well they do it too” defense to be persuasive. Personally I realized that the “he did it first” and “he does it too” defenses weren’t really effective defenses by the ripe old age of 6..
When any of those nut jobs finds themselves on the national stage with their shows being promoted and shown on Fox news or CNN I’ll gladly condemn them too. Hell I’ll go ahead and condemn the effigy hangers and the “bushitler” people right now as a bonus for you.
Jay,
The “left wing radical” that attacked the dean was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic with a history of violence. I’m sure that makes him not culpable, right? Or if you do think it was motivated by politics, then the same has to be applied to Loughner, right?
Crazy is crazy.
http://adastrum.kansascity.com/?q=node/1095
By the way, the story of the of the Kansas City attack wasn’t covered by the news because he had been diagnosed as crazy years ago. The only person pushing this story as a cover up by the MSM was…you guessed it, Beck.
But you don’t follow beck, and find him boring. Right Jay?
@Jay
“Shorter john personna: “The First Amendment isn’t for conservatives. Besides, we’re not punishing him for what he said, but for what we’re making up that he said.””
This isn’t a First Amendment issue.
I am a Beck fan, and none of you, my liberal friends, know jack about him or what he does. Stop Attacking the messenger, copycatting hippocrates, and running with someone else’s scissors.
@GA
“I am a Beck fan…”
Your honor, the prosecution rests.
john, I’ve heard worse. I heard Alec Baldwin shouting that “if we were in another country… we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they’re doing to this country.” I saw Sarah Palin hanged in effigy outside some guy’s home. I’ve seen Bush and Cheney hanged and burned in effigy.
So what do we have here? An actor being an ass/making a bad joke on a late night talk show (12 years ago), a very crazy individual committing an obviously insanity-induced attack, and the old hanging a politician in effigy thing which is, as you know, is a pretty bipartisan (and stupid) thing to do. If you’re a politician and you haven’t been hung in effigy, well, you’re probably not a very well known politician.
On the other hand, we have Republican members of Congress, candidates for national office and state governorships, and extremely popular Republican media personalities all advocating violent revolution over political disputes/lost elections.
Yeah, those are pretty much the same thing.
Jay, it’s clear from things you’ve written that you have a hard-on for the idea of bloodshed at the hands of gun-totin conservatives, and your attempts to justify that by claiming everyone does it are extremely weak. Especially when you consistently claim it’s a-ok when the right does it, but the greatest evil the world has ever known when the left does.
No one here defends Baldwin for what he said. No one here defends Casey Brezik for his violent insanity. No one defends those who burn politicians in effigy. However you pop up every time someone on the right pushes their violent revolutionary rhetoric to defend them. Hmm…
A true Sarah Palin fan, Jay claims any criticism of anyone on the right is a 1st Amendment issue. I think you need to re-read the Constitution.
Hey Jay, how come you didn’t mention this story in your roundup of political violence that us lefties all engage in while you on the right are all angels and saints?
Who is Shawna Forde? Oh, just another peace-loving anti-immigrant Tea Partier.
BTW, Forde’s blog from the Phoenix Tea Party is still up on Google cache. In it she gushes her enthusiasm for this outpouring of Obama-hatred. She concludes by exhorting her fellow rightists.
“This is the time for all Americans to join organizations and REVOLT!!!,” she writes. “Refuse to be part of a system only designed to enslave you and you children. Times will get worse before they get worse, *Say no to illegal immigration* Lock and Load, Shawna Forde.”
But she was arrested under the direction of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who you wingnuts have decided is Enemy Number 1 this week for pointing out that you lunatics are dangerous people. He has a lot of experience with it down there in Tuscon. Here’s what you say about him:
Well, we now just might know why he was so eager to point fingers — he seems to have a hell of a good incentive to make certain those fingers point in places other than at him.
Yeah, it’s not at all because he sees anti-immigrant Tea Partiers murdering 9-year old girls at all. He must just be covering for himself.
Lock and load, Jay! Lock and load.
> Shorter john personna: “The First Amendment isn’t for conservatives.
Beck can say anything he wants on his own time. When he is doing his show, he has a contract, and he is an employee. When I am at work, if my boss tells me to shut up, I shut up. The Constitution is not involved.
Additionally, even if we were to invoke the magic pony clause of the Constitution and extend the first amendment to giving Beck the right to say what he pleases when he is sitting in a studio owned by Fox, going out over the Fox network, while he is being paid by Fox to talk, no one ever said there are never consequences for engaging in free speech. Say enough stupid crap, tell enough lies and piss enough people off and you can lose your job.
****Your honor, the prosecution rests.****lol rest what? That I know what he says on his show and how he says it, and that all you have no idea, and are making poop up and or regurgitating the poop of others to attack him with? eww…..
Dude, AS BECK SAYS DO YOUR OWN REASEARCH!!!! DON”T BELIEVE ME!!!!! QUSTION WITH BOLDNESS!!!!! I DON’T WANT TO BELIVE HALF OF THE STUFF I REPORT TO YOU, TWO YEARS AGO I WOULD LAUGHED AT YOU, FOR BRING SUCH THINGS UP, THEN I STARTED TO REASEARCH AND READ ABOUT IT MYSELF, I HOPE I’M WRONG ABOUT ALL OF THIS!!!!!!!
Every freaking day and so on and so on over and over again…….
blah whats the point of trying to convince you….
I hate that people I love are brainwashed, but what can I do? Peace out homie, I going back to the caption contest only mode for a while, have fun and don’t hurt anyone.
Nazis, commies, donkeys, oh my……
****Your honor, the prosecution rests.****lol rest what?
Phillips let me spell it out for you.
You’re a scalliwag, a maroon, a crank, cretin, nut, loon, kook, dimwit. You’re loco, crazy, credulous, gullible, in orbit, three fries shy of a happy meal, one bulb out on the christmas tree, firing on only three cylinders.
That you only realized two years ago you should think for yourself should be a really big clue. That you worship at the feet of a man who knows NOTHING seals your fate.
Pleae keep entertaining us.
Your honor, I would ask that the witless to restrain himself. The prosecution realizes the witless is distressed because it has offered the witless as evidence that Glen Beck’s audience consists of morons. But his outbursts, supportive as they are of the justice of the prosecution calling him to the stand, disrupt the calm proceedings of this court. And I would also ask that the people observing restrain themselves when the witless uses the word ‘research’ to describe whatever it is he does. Thank you, your honor.