The Glenn Beck Review: Beck offered support for D'Souza's lies



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On his radio program last Wednesday, September 15, Glenn Beck had Dinish D'Souza, author of the upcoming The Roots of Obama's Rage, as a guest. D'Sousa published an "appetizer" of his book in Forbes magazine, and his claims (now fact-checked and debunked) have been embraced by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. For Beck, D'Sousa is "someone who really gets it, and has a better handle on it than...anybody else out there."(1)

D'Sousa's "handle on it" includes a number of fabrications. From D'Souza's September 9 Forbes cover story:

Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism. Certainly that is the way the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi portrayed himself at his trial. Obama's perception of him as an anticolonial resister would explain why he gave tacit approval for this murderer of hundreds of Americans to be released from captivity.

"In fact, the Obama administration told Scotland it would not "endorse the early release of Megrahi under any scenario." The July 25 Sunday Times article to which D'Souza referred noted that the administration supported keeping Megrahi imprisoned, but that in the event he was released, they preferred he stay in Scotland rather than sent back to Libya...In August, according to the Associated Press, the Obama administration asked that Megrahi "be returned to a Scottish prison." (2)

From D'Souza's Forbes article:

...But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years -- the first 17 years of his life -- off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.

"Obama reportedly visited Pakistan for three weeks when he was 20. ABC's Jake Tapper reported in April 2008 that in 1981, Obama "traveled to Pakistan with a friend from college whose family was from there. The Obama campaign says Obama was in Pakistan for about three weeks, staying with his friend's family in Karachi and also visiting Hyderabad in Southern India." Kurtz reported that D'Souza "acknowledges" this error." (2)

Another deception from D'Souza's Forbes article:

Obama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.

"Islamic center is two blocks away from ground zero. In the span of two sentences, D'Souza contradicts his statement that the mosque would be 'built near' the World Trade Center site by referring to 'the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero' " [emphasis added].(2)

Again, from D'Souza's Forbes article:

A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else?
It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other country.

"In fact, Obama said U.S. is "exceptional" but we need "partnerships" to solve global problems. From the April 4, 2009, news conference:" (2)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don't think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.

Another distortion from D'Souza's Forbes article:

So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.

An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism.

"D'Souza crops passage from Obama's book to omit portion where he discussed shortcomings of his father. D'Souza quoted a passage from Dreams from My Father in which Obama writes, 'My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!' But D'Souza omitted the following paragraph, which states: 'Now, as I sat in the glow of a single light bulb, rocking slightly on a hard-backed chair, that image had suddenly vanished. Replaced by...what? A bitter drunk? An abusive husband? A defeated, lonely bureaucrat? To think that all my life I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost!' "(2)

There are other distortions of the President's views in this Forbes article. Somehow D'Souza believes that the President's "anti-colonialist" views that "American imperialism is on a rampage" in Iraq and Afghanistan even though Obama considers intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11 as "absolutely vital." D'Souza wrote, "[Obama] adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder." As previously pointed out on The Review, the President is a strong supporter of the free market.

Embraces poppycock

Given Glenn Beck's long record of distorting the President's beliefs and political orientation, it is not surprising that Beck would embrace reactionary D'Souza's "political poppycock," as conservative columnist, Kathleen Parker, described his article.(3) If "some of Newt’s old conservative friends worry that he has gone 'over the ledge,' ”(4) this is not likely the case for Beck since he jumped "over the cliff" long ago. For Glenn Beck, embracing and believing distortions and lies about President Obama is just another day on the job.


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