A weblog by Knot O'Reilly

Glenn Beck has been using the power and influence gained from being a cable television host to influence more than public perception, he has been launching attacks which affect government policy. One of the techniques he has been using is McCarthyism, accusing his perceived enemies of being dangerous communist radicals.

On a recent show he went into a rage, or pretended to, over being compared to Joseph McCarthy, and claimed that he was more like Edward R. Murrow, the television news presenter that helped turn public perception against the anti-communist witch-hunts which had destroyed the reputations and careers of thousands of people.

Beck incorrectly offers up the quote ‘have you no shame’ and directs it at the people accusing him of McCarthyism. The quote he is referring to is “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” and was said by a Army lawyer named Joseph Welch to McCarthy after the Senator attempted to have a junior Army lawyer fired for having been a member of a left-wing guild in his youth.

Beck does not understand the irony that his recent attacks on Barack Obama’s Green Jobs Advisor, Van Jones, put him in McCarthy’s place, and he is using the quote that helped bring McCarthyism to an end.

Hopefully, it will help bring Beck’s attempt to revive an era of fear, dis-trust, and false accusations to a end.

Glenn Beck is not as powerful as Senator McCarthy was, and being labeled a communist is not as devastating, but to attempt to bring back a period in history in which being accused of some nebulous crime by a demagogue gets you fired and blacklisted is behaving like McCarthy, not Edward R. Murrow.

Here is the video from Crooks and Liars