The Mystery Of How Spilt Wine Landed On Glenn Beck’s Blanket In Bryant Park

What Glenn Beck says happened

Glenn Beck, on his part, disputes a great deal of these claims. In fact, the only intersection between these two stories is that wine, at some point, was spilled in the vicinity of Beck’s family. In his first attempt of telling the story, Beck notes the crowd was so vicious he thought they would lynch him if he gave them a rope– likely intentional hyperbole. On Fox News later in the day, he retold the story sans lynching metaphors, but the structure was the same: he was jeered, his wife had wine spilled on her, but he did not leave as a display of courage. On his radio show today, he addressed Piscitell’s claims:

Beck called the claims “false” and identified Piscitell as “The lady, I’m sure, that screamed at me ‘You’re in a park! Get over it! When you come to a public park you should expect gymnastics!'” He also defended his bodyguards, who Piscitell accused of unnecessary prickliness, noting that “these guys are unbelievably professional” and that they said “not a word” at anyone (Piscitell says the bodyguards told them to knock off the acrobatics). As noted before, Beck also noted the evidence via The Blaze on his side of hateful invective at him from Piscatell, who claims to be a friend of the wine-spilling culprit. He noted that even in her claims that it was an accident, Piscitell tweeted, “we were of course, [sic] VERY happy that it happened.”

The acrobatics may also be a key to proving Beck’s point right, as the witness that spoke to Bershad also noted Piscitell’s friends doing them: “the only real jeers she heard were directed at a group doing fake acrobatics sitting near him.” Bershad’s witness did not specify whether the bodyguards were jeering as well, but from the context, it appears that, if they were annoyed by the acrobatics, they weren’t the only ones.

Beck has Piscitell’s ill will on his side– no matter what actually transpired between Beck’s family and Piscitell’s friends, the evidence is overwhelming that she is more than happy that something bad happened to Glenn Beck. Not that this translates into guilt, but it certainly does nothing to help her account.

But as much as Piscitell and company has the motive to commit the crime, so does Beck have the motive to want to incite it– his last week at Fox News. It is as much as “happy accident” for Piscitell that Tania Beck had wine spilled on her as it is a “happy accident” for Fox News’ The Glenn Beck Program to have a major controversy involving hateful liberals occurring during it’s last week on air. The crowd at a Bryant Park Movie Night is fairly predictably liberal– Beck must have known he was going into the lion’s den– and as much as his point about being courageous is a valid one in going, the evidence of him going out to similar events in the past is rather scarce (the only similar event in recent memory is his field trip to Harlem for the program in October 2009).

What we think happened

As with every news-story-cum-Rashomon-remake, it will probably take the testimonies of several other witnesses coming forward to figure out what truly happened at that park, or perhaps security camera evidence if it exists. Motives for hyperbole on both sides exist, as does universal evidence that something that upset Beck’s family happened– only the magnitude is in dispute. The facts we know for sure are that Beck and his family were at the movie event, some people near them were doing fake acrobatics, and some alcoholic liquid found itself on Tania Beck. After that, only Beck made a story out of it– a suspiciously convenient story which he embellished with lynching references and tears. Piscitell, while not exactly a fully reliable witness, gains nothing but 15 minutes of liberal martyrdom by attacking, while viewers flock to Beck’s program expecting further outrageous details. As tomorrow is Beck’s last night on Fox News, one would expect him not to devote much time to this private event, but the back and forth about an occurrence at such a public venue is bound to blossom more witnesses as the story develops.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.