OK — I’ll skip the obvious question of what kind of DJ has never really listened to the Beatles, especially one who was known to imbibe and just ask whether he eventually gets around to John Lennon imagining no possessions, no greed, no countries or religion?

Glenn Beck is the ‘fools prophet’.

I think you missed the point, maybe you should watch it again with someone that can explain the issues for you…

.

And wore a Mao suit…

But it was cool to wear a Mao suit, cool to mouth the same rhetoric about a people’s utopia, and how many movies are there about the Cultural Revolution?…

I suspect a mindless romanticizing and skipping down the path of things you don’t understand, is Beck’s point.

I’m sorry for being this blunt Hammacher, but no one needs to explain the moronic rants of a fool to me. When I think about all the problems we have in this country and that one of biggest voices is Glen, I’ve come to realize that we have a country full of overly reactionary, catch phrase loving morons.

I never supported Obama and we should always question our leaders, but when you try to take a song that represents the deep seated emotional toll the 60′s took on The British, not America, you only make yourself seem like a fool.

This is not relevant, this is a means to increase viewership. Please remember regardless of what he tries to convince you of all he’s doing is engaging you for ratings. You don’t believe, please see videos of him crying, throwing a fake frog in boiling water, ask a woman to come to his home so he try to take nude photos of her.

He’s no different then Jenny Jones or Oprah. The only difference, which is scary, is that people believe him.

Michael Sosa – You nailed it, excellent post.

“Glenn Beck is the ‘fools prophet’.”

He may be a prophet, and today’s show even to me was over the top, but Glenn ain’t no fool. He was spot on with his show on Friday about the history of so-called progressives, with a show loaded with facts and parallels of Communism and Nazi Germany that CANNOT be disputed. Particularly disturbing was the side-by-side “artwork” of Germany and Stalinist Russia. The woman who recounted the Ukraine famine was particularly poignant.

Sure, Glenn’s a fool. Go on and dismiss him. What’s really scary are the liberal lemmings who believe every word of the narcissist Øbama.

But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow

just so everyone knows that these lines are in the same song.. Anita Dunn started the whole Mao thing, then Bloom was found as well. Mao may be Beck’s Keven Bacon, but not without evidence and that’s what it really comes down to with people who don’t like/hate Beck because of his political views: they can’t prove him wrong so they say he is silly, insult him, or my new favorite from one of the ‘smart’ people: in an alternate universe.

Telling us he is crazy for asking these things.. is so old now.

While I am no beck fan, I think his analysis is based on an interview that John Lennon gave to Tariq Ali
for the Red Mole, which can be found here: http://www.marxsite.com/Lennon%20interview.htm

From that interview, Lennon had this to say:

[
"Ah, sure, 'Revolution' .There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'. The original version which ends up on the LP said 'count me in' too; I put in both because I wasn't sure...

On the version released as a single I said 'when you talk about destruction you can count me out'. I didn't want to get killed. I didn't really know that much about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed to be so few and yet they painted themselves green and stood in front of the police waiting to get picked off. I just thought it was unsubtle, you know. I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn't go around shouting about it. That was how I felt - I was really asking a question...

At one time I was so much involved in the religious bull-sh*t that I used to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion is legalised madness...

After the revolution you have the problem of keeping things going, of sorting out all the different views. It's quite natural that revolutionaries should have different solutions, that they should split into different groups and then reform, that's the dialectic, isn't it - but at the same time they need to be united against the enemy, to solidify a new order. I don't know what the answer is; obviously Mao is aware of this problem and keeps the ball moving...

How do you keep everything going and keep up revolutionary fervour after you've achieved what you set out to achieve? Of course Mao has kept them up to it in China, but what happens after Mao goes? Also he uses a personality cult. Perhaps that's necessary; like I said, everybody seems to need a father figure."
]

While there is really nothing new or ground-breaking from beck’s analysis of “Revolution,” as this interview is from 1971, & has probably been made widely available for several years due to the widespread nature of the internet, I understand at least in part what he is saying. Though, I don’t really get the impression that he gets from the song alone; this is why I believe his interpretation is based on Lennon’s actual words describing the song.

The problem with beck, as far as I can tell from the limited exposure that I have (again, I don’t watch him), is that he acts as if he finds these “exclusives,” or that, based on his research, he has come to find some connection that no one else has thought of.

If I was beck’s professor & he submitted to me his above conclusions solely on the lyrics, without crediting the interview that I sourced above, I would either think a) that he made a giant (& unlikely) leap of logic from premise to conclusion, or b) that he is essentially basing his conclusion on Lennon’s own words from that 1971 interview (without due credit).

For those of us that are more than casual Beatles listeners, we’ve known for quite some time that our beloved Lennon was a misguided believer in communism (whose success, as Lennon admits, was due to “playing the capitalist game”). Lennon was an unapologetic communist/socialist. I base this on his own words. I attribute his positions to the times in which he lived & to the people he was surrounded by for the last decade or so of his life. But, just like beck cannot, no one can truly determine the meaning behind the lyrics of a song unless the writer explicitly describes that meaning.

Here we have (in the interview) the writer defining the meaning of the lyrics, which for the purposes of “Revolution” alone, allow for the conclusion that beck gives. I do not think, however, that one can reach that very same conclusion without reading Lennon’s interview, which beck seems to do.

While there is no real point to this comment other than to demonstrate that many of us have already known the true meaning of “Revolution,” I think that those comments above, either automatically assuming beck’s correctness or automatically assuming beck’s ignorance, have no foundation.

While I think beck’s particular analysis here is correct (based on Lennon’s own words), manufacturing a conclusion in the manner that he does, without the evidence needed, is improper. As I said before generally, beck either a) jumped to an unrealistic conclusion based on the premise he gave, or b) his conclusion was based on credible evidence, but he decided to leave out that very evidence, to appear to have come up with some “scoop” that many of us Beatles fans were already aware of.

Either way, calling beck the prophet of the fools, or accepting his conclusions as true, with only the information provided in the videos above, is both wrong & premature. Taking either stance, to those of us with a brain, is to simply expose the ignorance of your pre-determined agenda.

No matter whether I read the comments of a liberal or conservative site, people just don’t seem to get it. Commenting, without facts, in the direction that the site leans, is only preaching to the choir. If you truly want to inform people, add some evidence to your statements, rather than to just state that someone is a “wingnut” or “moonbat,” without telling the intelligent reader why. Yes, people in the public arena state or argue things that you do not agree with all the time – but simply dismissing their statements/arguments without a valid reason as to why you do, only exposes your ignorance & single-mindedness.

@jrjr1414: Glenn Beck is like that kid who dropped acid for the first time, the summer he decided to stay on campus and not return to the farm. He routinely “discovers” things everybody knows or have considered, stuff written in books, public speeches and apparently he dabbles in art history.

It’s up to us to “disprove” him, even though a lot of the time, he goes way around some kind of convoluted path to get back to what should have been obvious with the naked eye.

It’s becoming more apparent that Glenn Beck’s goal is to become and dissiminate more stupid each and every day. Fractured history, illogical logic, incomprehensible metaphors and Soupy Sales props. Heckuva job.

Focusing on the Beatles angle seems to distract from the central part of his special. I have long questioned how the Russian revolutions had not been elevated to Nazi Germany levels of scorn with their genocide. From what I heard (couldn’t see the show) he raised a point that is valid, which is anyone slightly accepting of a communist agenda has to gloss over the fact that everywhere it has been installed extermination of people has followed, including Cuba with the fashionable Che.

Glen(n) has reminded us why he is considered the most unstable personality on the air. And, once again, he had made an utter and complete fool of himself. This is even sillier, with thinner content than the utterly ridiculous Rockefeller Communist art exposition/diatribe. Well, he does provide some balance to FOX. Glen(n) makes Geraldo seem deep and rational.

Glenn Beck is my hero. If I could talk absolute nonsense five days a week and attract massive polar attention that slingshots me into getting headlines EVERY DAY for my antics…it’s like, where do I sign up? It could be at FOX News or MSNBC. I’d take either gig.

The fact that there are at least two dozen more blowhards like him making almost as much money as him makes me ask if there’s not room for one more. I’ll have to get a lot less coherent and lose any remaining inhibitions that would make me maintain a sense of tact, but most of my tact is already gone, and a little Maker’s Mark will clear the rest right up.

I seem to have wandered a bit. Beatles? Commies? Sure, why not? After all, like any good collectivists, the Beatles redistributed all of their monetary wealth to those less fortunate and loved giving away tax earnings to their benevolent government, right? I think they wrote a song about it.

Beck isn’t the first insane person to try to interpret Revolution. Charlie Manson did it too. He thought the Beatles were telling him to start Helter Skelter thru the lyrics. Whatever happens, don’t play “Sympathy For The Devil” to Beck.

I wish Glen(n) would interpret “MacArthur Park” for us. What was the cake? Was it a metaphor for pie? Is the cake for pie the Gross National Product? Why green icing? What flavor is the green icing? Is the green meant to symbolize capitalism? Is the song about the end of capitalism? Why is it raining in a place where, according to song and legend, it doesn’t rain? And, what is the rain? The tears of our Founding Fathers at the state of our Republic? What’s warm? The weather or the wine? If the weather, is this some sort of endorsement of the global warming hoax? If the wine, is it Glüwein? Why would they be drinking Glüwein in Southern California? Is this suppose to be some sort of commentary on the balance of trade deficit? Why did Richard Harris use the singular possessive (MacArthur’s Park) and Donna Summers did not? Was Harris disparaging private ownership> Was Summers reflect Reagan Era Me-Ism? These are questions we need Glen(n) to answer!

Real Royal King, thanks for laugh!!

Yes, the Real Fake Royal King plays dumb so thoroughly that he might not be acting…

Evidently, it’s not enough to simply believe that Beck’s points are hyperbolic or occasionally an example of reductio ad absurdum. You must act as though they are COMPLETELY unconnected to anything in the world.

And so, instead engaging in a refutation, you merely pretend there was never a 1960′s, and that there was never a New Left that still influences the baby boomer new New Left.

Not as sticky a conversation that way.

O, my dearest Cecelia. Never a 1960′s? America wouldn’t be Amerika but for the 1960′s. To be sure, I have great memories of the most personal nature, including the woman who turned a boy into a man; Iron Butterfly; Cuba Libres, Harvey Wallbangers and Mateus in blue haze-tinged rooms; Che posters; long discussions about Critique de la Raison Dialectique and Harper Lee. But for America as a nation, a long march to open seating on buses and in lunch counters, the first tenative discussions about America being a nation of and at peace (despite some future Bush League deviations). In short, the start of a long labor leading, at some point to a rebirth at long last casting off Hooverism, Nixonian “pragmatism” and the anachronistic-at-the-gate Reaganism. Scoff if you will, bemoan an inclusive and free America, but never doubt that what began in lunch counters, Midwestern college campuses and the streets of virtually every burg in our nation at long last put into action the wondrous philosophical work of our Founders two centuries earlier.

What? No accompanying bombast by Sousa?

And no southern democrats, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Vietnam?

A convenient memory is no better than a conveniently lost one.

It isn’t Tom Hayden who’s credited with tearing down that wall, but then that’s not really the point, it’s just your usual pretend discussion riff, coming out of the side of your mouth, as you stare transfixed into your mirror.

Uh … can someone point out to me something Glenn said in this segment that was incorrect?

Or do we just have a bunch of people here calling him names because it makes them feel good about themselves.

Now I watched the show, and I found the segment painfully over-labored by actually playing the song…. he could have just put the lyrics up on the screen — but … he’s absolutely right. The man is far better read, I’d wager, than the majority of people who comment on these forums.

Hhe never said the Beatles were secret Maoists. Headline says it. He didn’t. Go back. Watch the segment. Ten times. Never said it. Never even really suggested it. He said that the lyrics spell out how progressives operate. If you read Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” — the Progressives’ Operations Manual, basically — you would know that his analyisis is spot on.

The Beatles also did “Run For Your Life” — and we can talk about what those lyrics mean, but that doesn’t mean we’re calling the Beatles mysogonistic, abusive girlfriend killers. Get a grip, people.