I think, as much as the unseemly schadenfreude of the sentiment, it’s the non sequitur aspect of this that’s getting attention. How’d he go from “can’t we all get along?” to “the homes of America’s enemies are alight!” in two sentences?

We all love America. We just disagree on how we should function, what we should do, big government, small government. It doesn’t mean you hate America. I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today. There are a few people that hate America. But I don’t think the Democrats are those. I think there are those posing as Democrats that are like that.

The clip comes from Media Matters which is enough to render it suspect, but it’s hard to see what context could be missing to explain this one a la the Jesse Macbeth reference in Rush’s “phony soldiers” comment. Beck’s producer reminded USA Today that he did say the fire was unfortunate, but that’s not quite true: he said it was unfortunate for them. I’m not even sure who he’s talking about here since he goes out of his way to distinguish the haters from Democrats generally. Does he mean Hollywood leftists who live in Malibu? I can only assume. In any case, while it may not have scaled the same olympian summit of obnoxiousness as Michael Moore’s “why’d they have to attack a blue state?” lament on 9/12/01, it’s certainly ensconced in a base camp somewhere on the same mountain.

Here’s a Google map of the fire. The sheer scale of it is astounding.