Glenn Beck Calls Stewart/Colbert Rally a Progressive Plot

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Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 04:59 pm

On his radio show today Glenn Beck took aim at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s October 30th rally, by labeling at progressive plot to win the election. Beck said of the Stewart/Colbert rally, “They are going to activate the youth to try to get them to vote with the labor unions apparently.”

Here is the audio courtesy of Media Matters:

Beck claimed that the Christine O’Donnell witchcraft flap was designed to suppress the vote, and that the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies are designed to get young people to go vote with the labor unions. Beck said, “They are going to do everything they can to suppress the vote, and then Jon Stewart has shown his colors along with Comedy Central and Stephen Colbert. They are going to activate the youth to try to get them to vote with the labor unions apparently. I guess. I don’t know. That’s why it’s been scheduled the weekend before. Not to suppress that vote, they’ll suppress it all the way up, and then Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert will go and activate the youth to try to get the youth to go out and vote.”

Notice how Beck is trying to motivate his audience of blue hairs to go out and vote Republican by using a bogus fear campaign built around the Stewart/Colbert rally. The problem is that the calls for a rally came from the ground up. Stephen Colbert’s fans were calling for him to hold a Restore Truthiness rally in early September. Comedy Central got the idea from their fans, which by the way are way more likely to actually show up at the October 30th rally than the senior citizen brigade who didn’t bother to show for Beck’s Restoring Honor rally last month. The idea for a Colbert rally is not some Democratic plot to steal the 2010 elections. The whole movement began as a post on Reddit.

Unlike the Astroturf of the Beck and Fox News crowd, the Colbert/Stewart rally is completely organic. You won’t find any Freedom Works buses in the Mall on October 30th. Contrary to what Glenn Beck is trying to sell, this is not some progressive plot by media secret agents Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. In fact, Beck doesn’t seem to understand that 27% of Stewart’s audience are Libertarians.

What Glenn Beck is really afraid of is that Stewart and Colbert’s rally will draw more people than he and Sarah Palin’s, (which it will). He, like the rest of Fox News, is terrified of the young viewership of the Comedy Central mock news programs. Fox News pulls an old demographic. The majority of the network’s viewers are over 50 years old. Stewart and Colbert pull a very young demographic that if they keep watching Stewart and Colbert will probably never watch FNC. As I have written before Jon Stewart is training an entire generation of viewers to critically think about what they see on the news, which is not a good thing for a news network like Fox where facts are malleable and optional.

What must be eating Beck alive is that Stewart and Colbert’s rally is direct challenge and reaction to the extremism that he preaches on a daily basis. Imagine how crushing it will be for Glenn Beck to see hundreds of thousands of young people flood the National Mall in the name of reasonableness. Just think it took a comedy network and their fake news cast and pundit to put Fox News in their place, but the real humiliation for Glenn Beck will come on October 30.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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