Friday, October 2, 2009

Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Girl in 1990?

I don't know...could be...it's not impossible... [furtive movement of eyebrows]

All right, some explanation:  a new internet meme arose recently which involves insinuating that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, often by mentioning it in the form of a question or using other such underhanded tactics.  This is to lampoon Mr. Beck's own use of such tactics.  Just read this little blurb from what may be considered the authority on the subject matter:


This site exists to try and help examine the vicious rumour that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. We don't claim to know the truth -- only that the rumour floating around saying that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 should be discussed. So we're going to do our part to try and help get to the bottom of this.

Why won't Glenn Beck deny these allegations? We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 - in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?

Anyone seeing the joke yet?  The comedy?   No?  How about in the selection of quotes towards the bottom of the page....[beware:  vulgarity ahead]
-How long before we find out that Sarah Palin is implicated in the alleged 1990 rape and murder of a young girl by Glenn Beck?
-Come clean, Glenn, just come clean. It's the right time now. It is the decent thing for you to do, out of respect for the American people, and if you don't respect them, out of respect for yourself. For the sake of the girl's family, or girls' families, *sniff* think of the families, Glenn, *sobs*, they need just that little bit of closure your confession can give them, just, please, Glenn, think of those poor families *cries* and what you have *cries a bit more* have put them through. I can't ... *breaks down*
-Not only does Google say that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, it also says that Glenn Beck blows goats. So he's a raping murderer who's into bestiality. Wow, it just gets better for ol' Glennie.
-Why is the MSM not reporting that Glenn Beck might have raped and murdered a girl in 1990? Why are they not investigating these allegations?
-Glenn Beck raping and murdering a girl in 1990: could it be a good thing?
-Guys, this is getting kind of scary. I just did another Lexis-Nexis search, and there is not one record of the statement "Glenn Beck did not rape and murder a girl today" in all of the records for 1990. It is possible, then, that he raped and killed as many as 365 1/4 girls in 1990. We're through the looking glass here folks.
Gotta admit, the last one was actually pretty funny.  See the comedy now?  Do you see the point?   If so, then you obviously deserve some kind of medal, because so many people fucking missed the point of this that the website needed to post the purpose of all of this satiric libel at the bottom.  




Notice: This site is parody/satire. We assume Glenn Beck did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990, although we haven't yet seen proof that he didn't. But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.
Read the last sentence again. That's the point. Read it a third time and ignore the name of the site itself, because anyone who believes that we're trying to actually get people to believe Glenn Beck raped and/or murdered is *whoosh* missing the entire point. So don't be dumb like a lot of people are. I greatly expanded this text because so many people *read* it, and *still* didn't understand.

Granted, I was not sure myself what the point of this particular joke was at first, or if it was a joke, until I had happened across the main page of that website.  Why?  Because I came across sources like this first. 
 What evidence is there that Glenn Beck raped someone? Well, there's a "police report" that has been released and has shown up everywhere from Reddit, to the Daily Kos, to the Democratic Underground among other places....The whole point here is to simply repeat the words "rape," "murder," and "Glenn Beck" enough so that people who don't pay attention will falsely associate them -- and the only piece of "evidence" presented has been a "police report" with unknown origins.Of course, no one could ever just create a police report from scratch or alter one to put someone else's name in -- or, so you would think.
 He then proceeds to put up copies of the photoshopped police report that he himself photoshopped so that it is now Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's name listed as the culprit instead of Glenn Beck's.  While turnabout is fair play, it would be nice to see that such a thing was done without robbing the original police report of its context:  namely, making fun of the mostly unevidenced conspiracy theorist kind of claims that Beck makes, and that the parody is itself supposed to be in an obvious manner.   He does this in order to make the exact point about the parody (that the evidence for it is pathetic) by being completely oblivious to the fact that that was the entire purpose of it.   Another site linked to him, with the title of "The Left Creates Fake Glenn Beck Rape Document.  You Stay Classy, Libs!."  I have to say this at least:  when the left creates a crusade against a popular figure of the opposite political affiliation using specious or outright fake evidence to claim that they are guilty of heinous crime, at least they're doing it in a tongue-in-cheek fashion!  (Well...some of them are at least...)

 RightWingNews cited this article for its own, which had this statement:
The attack on Glenn Beck continues by the internet crowd calling for a boycott of Beck’s advertisers. Can we now boycott the internet for making false accusations? The accusation that “Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990” has apparently gone… well, viral. 
Aside from obviously not getting the point of the "false accusation"  (despite later referring to it as a "viral joke"), the analogy is bad.  Boycotting the individual websites that spread misinformation would be analogous to boycotting the Glenn Beck program.  Boycotting the entire internet in response to some "false accusations" about Glenn Beck is more akin to deciding to boycott all of television because Glenn Beck is an insane liar.  They then mention briefly something that I agree with:  that many people [might] believe that this is true and that this isn't a good thing.  People not understanding that it is a joke is quite clearly a problem.  As we can see by the presumably objectionable quote they put at the end of the article:
"With all this controversy, there must be something to it". hamobu
Heh.  So true.  So true.

While there are a few things that I find objectionable about this particular meme (such as the possibility of accidentally making people believe it is true, or the fact that it is basically making light of "rape and murder"), the message that it is trying to convey, by showing Beck's (and several other media members') illogic for what it is, is something that I can appreciate.

Update:  the joke loses some originality points with me because apparently it is just a rephrased version of a joke done by Gilbert Gottfried at the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget, which is shown here.  They also explain in the link that Glenn Beck is trying to get the glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com taken down due to defamation in the domain name (and that this legal action will only bring more attention to it).

8 comments:

Pliny-the-in-Between said...

Boycotting the entire internet in response to "false accusations" of Glenn Beck is more akin to deciding to boycott all of television because Glenn Beck is an insane liar.

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Maybe he's an insane liar because of remorse - about the alleged murder.... would explain all the crying at the drop of a hat.

Actually the alleged murder may have taken place in Grover's Mill, New Jersey.

Asylum Seeker said...

It very well may have been. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary. I'll try to go and "find" the police report....

(Does it count as murder if he thought they were an alien invader? You know...the kind that aren't Mexican?)

Anyway, the sentence you quoted has been edited, so hopefully it is a little less incoherent now. Just needed to announce it because otherwise it would look like you were misquoting me or something.

Pliny-the-in-Between said...

(Does it count as murder if he thought they were an alien invader? You know...the kind that aren't Mexican?)

I suppose it depends on whether the alien is of the ET kind or the Predator kind. Or from the Middle East.
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Boy it surely feels a bit dirty to defend Glen Beck. But I suppose it's the right thing to do. Can't be confusing things with this kind of accusation. Especially with all the accusations of cannibalism going around about Karl Rove.

Stacy S. said...

Hi Seeker - welcome back!

Well, certainly Glenn Beck sounds like a rapist. Couple that with the fact that there's a police report saying that he raped and murdered a girl in 1990, I'm going to have to assume he's guilty - until he proves otherwise. ;-) Follow the chain! It all makes sense!

Asylum Seeker said...

It is truly disturbing how those amoral liberals can go dragging Karl Rove's good name through the mud like with such blatantly absurd falsehoods as that. I mean, sure, Rove was trapped in the same cave as the other four for three weeks, and all that was left were viciously mangled corpses. And, sure, Rove mentioned something about eating chili, but all of this entirely circumstantial. It is possible that Karl Rove chopped up the still living bodies of four people in order to get enough oxygen to survive, and it is possible that he prepared their various internal organs using Rosemary and pepper that was found in the torn up knapsacks of the other campers. It is also possible that, in various correspondences after the fact, Rove may have joked about killing and eating people. But, it would be incredibly irresponsible to make these suggestions, since we just don't have the evidence...yet.

Asylum Seeker said...

Side note: I have been rebutted. Sort of.

Anonymous said...

I am conflicted.

The satire is brilliant, wonderful and necessary. Sorry Asylum, I like it through and through.

But some part of me agrees with the defamation concerning the domain name. They could choose a variety of great domain names without falling into defamation territory.

But this is what America is about. Finding balances...

Asylum Seeker said...

I did not know I could delete other people's comments. Neat.

Anyway, I agree with you about the domain name oneblood, mostly because it leads to the confusion. Granted, actually entering the site makes it clear that the name is a joke, but I assume the issue is about what people who just see the domain name will think. But I don't really now. Not fully informed about libel/slander laws, and generally have a certain level of distaste for them if they apply to anything but the most egregious cases. Slippery slope arguments applied to such laws seem more appropriate than in most cases, is what I am trying to say.