I’m as shocked as you are. You mean Joy Behar and Bette Midler aren’t the same person?

What’s the weirdest part about this segment? Not the Divine Miss M suggesting that those who traffic in “hate speech,” as she defines it, should have less than robust First Amendment rights. That’s par for the course for a certain strain of leftist dimwit. No, I think it’s the Rwanda analogy. Of all the demagogue comparisons she could have drawn and with which Beck is forever being bludgeoned — Father Coughlin, Howard Beale, just for starters — she reaches for … Rwanda? Her political frame of reference is certainly diverse, I’ll give her that.

Newsbusters also has the audio of Beck’s rebuttal, although it’s lengthy enough that you’re better off with the transcript. Or, better still, re-read Jesse Walker’s meditation at Reason about the paranoid style in center-left politics, by which each crime perpetrated by a fringe-nut douchebag is laid at the feet of mainstream commentators as part of some grand, ill-defined “conspiracy.” If the worst fears about Bill Sparkman’s murder prove true and he was targeted for being a census worker, rest assured that Glenn Beck will become public enemy number one on Behar’s show. Click the image to watch.