Beck vs. Sharpton: And the Winner Is…

Share

Whether by design or by accident, as claimed, TV and radio commentator Glenn Beck chose the date and place of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to stage his “Restore America” rally this past Saturday. Whether it was a success is difficult to say, although if turnout is any indication, the event — which attracted somewhere between 200,000 and half a million followers — accomplished its mission.

That mission, according to Beck, was to put the power-hungry “ruling class” in Washington on notice that its agenda and values are not those of the masses, who would be coming by presently to pick up the keys to the country.

Again whether intended or not, the mission had a second purpose. And that was to drive liberals further onto the defensive.

One of those liberals is race huckster Al Sharpton, who — obviously mindful of the adage “If you can’t beat ‘em, try harder to beat ‘em” — came to Washington to stage his own counter rally. So how did he do? Not surprisingly, Sharpton — who is increasingly yesterday’s news — drew a much smaller crowd that was mostly black. Equally unsurprising was his message, which was typically cloaked in racial grievance, punctuated by an insistence that King’s dream has yet to be attained.

The president, himself on the defensive, sent an emissary to Sharpton’s rally in the person of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who spoke of education as the “civil rights issue of this generation.” Also on hand was Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who noted that King’s speech decades ago “reached to overcome the low points of our racial history,” insisting that “Glenn Beck’s march [sic] will change nothing.”

She is wrong. Beck has already helped foment a change in the country, if in no other way, than by stirring the pot of unrest that was already brewing when he began his television career. His event at the Lincoln Memorial didn’t resonate in the manner of Dr. King’s legendary speech, nor was it meant to. It was more of a national roll call, as contrasted with Sharpton’s counteroffensive, which was sound and fury signifying nothing. The White House ignores the attendance sheet from the Beck rally at its own peril.

Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

Trackbacks/Pings

Trackback URL

Comments