Beck's stupidity about tribal summit

Buffalo Post:  Fox anchor owes apology to Indians"It takes some real contortions to make this link, but somehow Fox News’ Glenn Beck managed to get from the tragic shootings at Fort Hood to the President’s address at the White House Tribal Nations Conference to the possibility of reparations for tribes.

Here’s the Fox News transcript of his remarks on Wednesday, Veterans Day (or watch the video clip above--the remarks come about 2 minutes and 25 seconds in):

"The first thing that hit me as I was watching television just like you were and I saw President Obama talking about native American rights in the middle of a tragedy at Fort Hood--I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it sounded almost like maybe, possibly, would there be some reparations involved?

" … Let me say this right off the top of the bat, nobody can question that Native Americans were mistreated, treaties were broken, promises not kept. Yes. You got it. We’ve definitely heard fairly recently about Native American rights and what we owe them. What we owe them. What we owe them."

Beck goes on to ascribe Obama’s remarks at the Tribal Nations Conference to the philosophies of the administration’s former green jobs czar Van Jones--who has been excoriated by the right--and then he says that "obviously, what he (Obama) had in mind goes far beyond giving them casino licenses and free government health care."

Finally, Beck wonders if it’s "just a coincidence that Obama "brought up Native American rights at such an inappropriate time--and it also just happens to be a pet issue of Jones? Maybe."

What a load of crap. The president didn’t "bring up" Native American rights--they were already on the table, as part of the long-scheduled Tribal Nations Conference, when Nidal Malik Hasan went on his murderous rampage. And he never mentioned reparations."Comment:  Right-wing pundits like Beck often talk about things we haven't experienced personally. But in this case, every person involved in the tribal summit knows what happened. To claim that Obama started talking about Native rights in the midst of the Ft. Hood massacre is sheer stupidity. Beck is either a blithering idiot or a bald-faced liar--maybe both.

And that doesn't even address his idiotic claims about Indians: that they get "free" healthcare or that Obama wants to give them "reparations." These are the typical ignorant claims you might hear from any ignorant American. Problem is that Beck and his fellow morons--Limbaugh, Hannity, Buchanan, O'Reilly, et al.--are the de facto leaders of the Republican party. Nillions of right-wingers take what they say as the gospel truth.

For more stupidity by right-wing pundits, see Limbaugh:  Indians = "Redskins," "Clowns" and Buchanan:  US "Built by White Folks."