“Unfortunately,” Glenn Beck is still explaining his wildfire comments

We’ve previously discussed the fairly appalling Glenn Beck’s fairly appalling bit of whimsy about liberals’ homes burning in Southern California. The bit that hacked off Southern Californians – and right-thinking people – as one was this bon mot on his nationally syndicated radio show:

“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.”

Beck has a history of speaking off the top of his head without letting his brain get in the way. He’s called Mexican immigrants “dirt bags” and survivors of Hurricane Katrina “scumbags.” He called Cindy Sheehan, who became an anti-war activist after losing her son in Iraq, a “prostitute” and Hillary Clinton a “stereotypical bitch.”

But hey, if pressed, he can find something mean to say about white males, as well: He called former President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter a “waste of skin.”

MediaMatters.org, a group whose members must have cast-iron stomachs to be able to listen to this kind of detritus in order to report on the more egregious examples of irresponsible speech, first unveiled the quote from Beck, who is also employed by CNN Headline News (that famous bastion of the “liberal media”) to spew his ill-considered bile. Once the toothpaste was out of the tube – or, more appropriately in Beck’s case, once the excrement was out of the rectum – Beck and his minions scrambled to try to reinsert it, with some brilliantly ill-conceived damage control.

First, Chris Balfe, Beck’s radio show’s producer, attempted to deflect attention away from what Beck actually said by responding, “To most rational people, ‘unfortunately’ still means unfortunately.”

Well, except that Beck didn’t just say, “unfortunately;” he said, “unfortunately, for them,” meaning the liberals he insists hate America so much. Not “unfortunately for Americans who hate to see fellow Americans suffer.”

And anyway, Beck returned to his radio show to argue in utter contradiction to Balfe’s explanation: He was just making a funny, Beck explained:

“When you listen to this program – I hate to break it to, you know, those who don't listen to the show, but if they ever would listen to the show, let me give you a little piece of advice: You have to engage what I like to call ‘your brain.’ You actually have to think. I might be making a joke. I might be serious. We joke a lot about, you know, the Hollywood crowd living in Southern California. For example, I believe I have advocated Hollywood building giant air conditioners so they can fix the global-warming problem. I'm pretty sure I was joking then.”

Ha, ha! And that, too, was Swiftian wit at its highest caliber! Got it? Beck’s on the cutting-edge of that ages-old brand of humor that pokes fun at the liberal loonies of Hollywood.

Leaving for a moment that engaging one’s brain or thinking are pretty much the last things Beck’d want a listener to do, lest they reflect for a second or two and realize what drivel is pouring from his mouth: Beck’s saying he was just joking. He was being ironic in saying that it was “unfortunate” that liberals’ homes were being destroyed. (Though, as we’ve noted, a lot of conservatives have lost their homes in these wildfires, too, and Beck didn’t feel the need to snark or even opine that their losses were “unfortunate.”)

He continued:

“But you wouldn't know that if you hadn't engaged your brain.”

Condescending much?

“So let me be serious for a minute. Let me extraordinarily clear. I clearly do not want anyone's house to be burned down. Now, some people may want to interpret what they think I mean, but that's what I mean. Some people want me to have said that I'm seriously happy about people losing their homes or that I somehow or another believe that they deserve to have their house burn down.”

So, while Balfe was insisting that Beck genuinely meant that so-called America-haters losing their homes was “unfortunate,” Beck was insisting he was kidding when he said it was “unfortunate … for them.” Quite the neat trick, saying sort of the same thing from completely contradictory viewpoints.

Still: Beck was joking to a national audience about a tragedy that affected upwards to a million people as it was ongoing. Gee, if that’s not the very definition of douchebaggery, then I don’t know what is.

He concluded:

“I just can't believe that I live in a country where I have to explain that.”

Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself, Glenn: It’s people like you who’ve lowered the level of discourse in this country to such a primitive level that all sorts of folks can’t process a thought contradictory to their own philosophies. So, of course you can believe you live in such a country.

Now that that’s settled, let’s examine, in its full context, the screed in which Beck’s little japery occurred. What’s nifty about this is, it reveals Beck’s thought processes as being even more incoherent than they initially appeared, which under the circumstances is a pretty impressive trick.

Beck was assailing Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for taking moderate positions – that is, any political ideology to the left of the far right.

“BECK: Schwarzenegger came out over the weekend and he said the Republicans need to run to the center and they need to grab the center. And the headline – I looked at it, and I went ‘OK, OK, what is this? What is this? Oh, it's Schwarzenegger. I'm probably going to disagree with it.’ And then I started reading it, and I absolutely disagreed with it. He said, they need to start talking about health care and education. That's not the way to win.

"‘Let's talk about health care and education?’ That's not the way to win. That's not the way to win on any front.”

Got it? Discussing issues of utmost importance to virtually all Americans is not the way to win an election. Back to Beck:

“I'm not even talking about -- the least I care about is winning the election. How about winning the war? How about saving our country?”

The least he cares about is winning the election? Clearly, that was originally what he was discussing. And he apparently believes that one can’t save the country by making sure people have adequate health care and their children get good educations. And he clearly believes that America isn’t competent enough to manage to help its own and win the war in Iraq simultaneously. So who’s hating on America now, Glenn?

Back to Beck:

“And, you know, it made me think.”

Oh, please, Glenn – don’t get our hopes up. Beck:

“I want to make this very clear. When I say on the air, and I've said it a lot lately, that we need to come together and we need to get back into the center, we're being pushed on to the edges - I want you to understand, that is not on policies. I don't mean that we come in the center on policies. We come to the center on principles. We come back to the center of the melting pot, that we're all one America, that just because I disagree with you doesn't mean you hate America, and I love America. We all love America. We just disagree on how we should function, what we should do, big government, small government.”

Well, certainly, Glenn, we can all return to the center with wingnuts like you insulting every Democrat, woman, liberal, minority and poor person in sight. Sounds like another famous American who promised to be a “uniter, not a divider,” and look where we are today. And how, exactly, does one return to the center on principles but not policies? This smacks of quintessential “We could all get along if you’d just agree with me.”

And now, time for a quick and utter and utterly baffling change of topic.

“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.”

Even Beck himself seems to backpedal from the harshness of this last declaration:

“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. But you don't come into the center. You have to stand up for what you believe in.”

Wait, wait: from “I've said it a lot lately, that we need to come together and we need to get back into the center,” to “But you don't come into the center – you have to stand up for what you believe in” in 20, 30 seconds of jabbering? My head is spinning; I can only imagine what Beck’s was doing while he was sputtering all of this nonsense.

A high-school English teacher would give Beck’s little essay/soliloquy a C-minus, at best, for its convolutions and lack of logic. But she might’ve actually kinda sorta appreciated his use of irony, no matter how poor its taste was.

“Unfortunately,” Beck doesn’t own real estate in the hills of San Diego County, or maybe we wouldn’t’ve been subjected to his latest round of boobery.