Glenn Beck is being super modest about his event this weekend:
In a new promo posted on a "Producers' Blog" at his website, Beck humbly places the rally in the context of the moon landing, the Montgomery bus boycott, Iwo Jima, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and other landmark historical events. It also not-so-subtly suggests that Beck is following in the tradition of Martin Luther King (which is a farce), Abraham Lincoln, most of the Founding Fathers, Martha Washington, the Wright Brothers, and other notable historical figures.
This is a bit like the gold thing where Beck's actions are so outrageous they betray a hint of conscious irony and contempt for his own audience. The reason they buy this stuff is the same reason why Beck is constantly reminding his viewers that they stand on the knife edge of Armageddon -- liberals hear a Beck and think he's a complete egomaniac which is that it actually makes everyone involved, his audience in particular, feel super important. After all, they're about to be part of the most important American historical event since the Revolutionary War. Also, Beck's retroactive embrace of MLK offers to assuage the shame of the movement's historical opposition to the civil-rights movement by redefining that historical moment as a right-wing phenomenon in which they were the central actors.
It's actually a little bit like that scene in the British Office, where David Brent and Chris Finch lose on quiz night and they decide if Finch manages to throw Tim Canterbury's shoe over the pub then "that's the real quiz."
Of course this is deliberately funny. But something tells me if liberals weren't paying so much attention to this thing it wouldn't be as big of a deal. It's so clearly designed to be offensive.
