Some Background on Beck’s ‘The Blaze’

Posted on 08/31/2010 at 1:46 pm by Bob Cesca

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck revealed the inspiration behind his new Huffington knockoff site, The Blaze.

george_whitefield.jpgAccording to Beck, The Blaze is named after an 18th Century daily publication issued by a pudgy, cross-eyed Calvinist preacher named George Whitefield, arguably the founder of the American evangelical movement.

The modern iteration of Calvinism, by the way, is the basis for Christian Reconstructionism, a seriously disturbing effort to replace the Constitution with biblical theocratic law. Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that Whitefield was staunchly pro-slavery. In fact, when slavery was outlawed in Georgia, Whitefield successfully lobbied to have it reinstated in 1751, arguing that it was crucial to the economy. He’s good people. Inspirational!

Does all of this sound familiar?

And so we get Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.

Adding… No. I didn’t Photoshop the drawing of Whitefield.

Clarification… In response to a couple of emails — this is NOT a joke post. Whitefield is real, he was really cross-eyed, he was really a Calvinist slavery supporter, that’s an actual drawing of him, and Beck insists that The Blaze is inspired by Whitefield’s daily pamphlets.

This entry was posted in Wingnuts and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Kat

    Someone needs to check Beck’s family tree. The resemblance is striking.

  • http://tarackian.deviantart.com J M Ashby

    I think Beck would get farther playing the the communistic racist socialist card than he will playing the jesus card.70% of people ages 18 to 29 do not even go to church anymore.

  • ceu

    They have no problem with imposing biblical theocratic law on the rest of us, but the idea of Sharia (god’s law) sends them screaming into the night

  • lfslfslfs

    My favorite part is the “comments” section on the story about the new, redecorated Oval Office. Lots of vitriol about how “boring, communist, and weak” the colors are (the new sofas are beige, apparently). Lots of “the oval office should be red, white & blue” silliness. For curiosity, I looked at images of George W. Bush’s oval office furniture… yeah… yellow and beige. Guess GWB was a communist, too, right? Or at least his sofa was…

  • eljefejeff

    This whole thing is so disturbing. I can’t think of a more obvious con man than Glenn Beck, and the morons just eat his shit up.BTW, not to defend Whitefield, but let’s remember that many presidents we hold in reverence such as Washington and Jefferson, were also slaveowners.

  • MrBrink

    Glenn Beck has gone full-preachtard.

  • http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2010/03/morning_awesome_859.html Bob_Cesca

    @eljefejeff>>>BTW, not to defend Whitefield, but let’s remember that many presidents we hold in reverence such as Washington and Jefferson, were also slaveowners.Oh, I totally understand. But my emphasis on Whitefield’s pro-slavery position is in the context of Beck’s “reclaiming of the civil rights movement” and his recent tirades against Darwin’s “racism.”

  • alopecia

    The Blaze is one more way for the righties to insulate themselves from things that upset them, things like objective reality, and as such will be a roaring (pun very much intended) success.

  • http://broadwaycarl.blogspot.com Broadway Carl

    The Blaze launched with 50 bucks? …Yeah, that sounds about right.

  • eljefejeff

    “But my emphasis on Whitefield’s pro-slavery position is in the context of Beck’s “reclaiming of the civil rights movement” and his recent tirades against Darwin’s “racism.”"Good point. Beck is the king of hypocrisy.

  • A Facebook User

    I guess “The Burning Cross” was already taken.

  • janessa

    Hmmmm.. why does he remind me of Ron Christie???

  • http://fontofliberty.blogspot.com/ Rarianrakista

    How long till we dig up the Archives to start embarrassing Beck with Pro-Slavery Screeds, 1 2 3 4…

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/38911730@N05/3865216182/ bjritz

    I think he wants hits on Blaze articles to get to the top of searches so he can push down the political discussion in search rankings. Just like Fox equates ratings with being right.Or he just wants another revenue stream.But “Blaze” is good for one with pants on fire!