It’s Easy to Call Someone a Conspiracy Theorist When You Can Just Make Up What They Believe

I don’t know who Michael A. Cohen is nor why he merits op-ed space at the Politico, but I do know he needs to get his facts straight. In his piece, he warns the Republican party away from “extremist rhetoric” and names Glenn Beck as the chief extremist.

It would have helped Cohen’s point if he weren’t so ridiculously wrong about what Beck believes.

Watching Fox News’ new sensation Glenn Beck is not for the faint of heart. It is a disquieting entree into the feverish mind of a conspiracy theorist who believes, among other things, that the government wants to remotely control our thermostats, that the relaxing of the ban on stem cell research — as well as efforts to prevent global warming — is reminiscent of Nazism, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be setting up concentration camps and, finally, that the country is on the path to socialism or possibly fascism but definitely some “-ism” that should be avoided.

A conspiracy theorist? Well, no. Not really.

The government really does want the ability to control your thermostat. Thanks to a device called a programmable communicating thermostat, it can. The government of California actually tried last year to do that very thing but was pushed back by an overwhelming public outcry that started, well, with guys like Beck.

It is also far from conspiratorial to look at the relaxing of prohibitions on embryonic stem cell research and see Nazism. This article by the science writer of the San Fransciso Chronicle which is not populated by right-wing conspiracy theorists, draws the comparison not only to Nazism but to the broader eugenics movement from which Hitler drew his ideas. That movement, by the way, was a mainstay of the American progressive movement, which our President claims as his ideological heritage.

I haven’t heard about Beck’s comparison of the Church of Global Warming to the Nazis, but I do know that Prince Charles, a noted member of the Church, likened global warming to Nazism. Ellen Goodman compared people who don’t buy all the global warming hype to Holocaust deniers. Even the High Prist himself, Al Gore, dusted off some World War II anti-Nazi words to help his cause. Obviously, it’s not just people with “the feverish mind of a conspiracy theorist” who are capable of the comparison. Should Cohen know that? I certainly would before I put something in the Politico under my name.

With two down, we’re left with two last assertions that are easy enough to debunk. Cohen says Beck believes that FEMA might be setting up concentration camps. If that’s the case, then you have to wonder why Beck himself spent parts of two shows over the past week debunking that very theory. Did Cohen not pay attention to Beck’s show back on March 28th or did Cohen just believe the left-wing hype about Beck?

As far as Cohen’s finaly, snarky “ism” comment, I can’t help but wonder if he holds a similar revulsion for all the Democrats who called George Bush a fascist over the past eight years. I tend to doubt it, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to write that part of the sentence without bursting into a white hot flame of hypocrisy. Fascism is an easy word to fling around. So is hack.

I’m sure that the rest of Cohen’s piece was a gentle and concerned warning to Republicans not to embrace the wacky extremists lurking around the fringes of the party. I don’t know; I didn’t read any more than the first paragraph. If Cohen can’t make his point honestly, why in the world would I care about anything else he said?

UPDATE: I see that Cohen is a “senior research fellow” at the New America Foundation which claims that it “is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States”.

Maybe they could hire a new research fellow. This old one they have seem a bit dodgy on the concept.

UPDATE 2: Wow, how did I miss this one? Cohen claimed that there was a “relaxing of the ban on stem cell research”? Really? I challenge him to show me which ban was relaxed.

That, by the way, is a challenge he won’t take on because there was no ban. What the President did was to lift the ban on Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. This is one of those commonly-held beliefs on the left that has always been an outright lie. Again, Cohen could have done a little research. it’s in his job title, after all.

Does anyone know if the New America Foundation is hiring? I”m pretty sure I qualify to work there, as Cohen’s supervisor.

UPDATE 3: Stacy McCain also took a run at Cohen, though he got farther into the essay than I. And what a surprise! Cohen’s resume fairly screams “Democratic flunky”.

UPDATE 4: Linked by Donald Douglas, whose post is definitely worth your time.

UPDATE 5: Linked by Dan Riehl, who is very smart on this.

Other Posts of Interest:

• Guess What Causes Global Warming Now?
• New York Times Invents Yet Another Bush Conspiracy
• The Iowa Floods? Totally Our Bad. Silly Us.

Tags: Glenn Beck, Media Bias, Republicans

Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., The Republican Minority