The theme of Beck’s segment seemed to be “faith, hope, and charity”– the cornerstones of the 9/12 movement, and his mission to get Sharpton to agree that all of those values, however one defines them, is they key to restoring America. Sharpton was polite enough not to challenge the claim that America needed restoring, but found his hands tied when he tried to make any non-philosophical argument. When noting that he believed “some need more charity than others,” Beck was quick to return to the central theme that charity was, indeed, a positive value. To say it isn’t exactly Crossfire would be an understatement, though there is an awkward moment where Beck suggests Sharpton is Dr. King’s contemporary, when the former was 13 when King was murdered.

Peace and harmony with the most controversial figures of the left is not exactly what people tune into Beck to hear, but it’s precisely the kind of behavior that defies shallow claims on the left that Beck is a madman, a showman, and a partisan stooge. Glenn Beck the Media Matters villain isn’t supposed to be capable of polite conversation with Al Sharpton, though credit where credit is due: Al Sharpton the RedState villain isn’t supposed to be anywhere near Glenn Beck, either.

Watch Beck and Sharpton talk about faith, hope, and charity below:

Media Matters was the first to post the video on Friday evening, followed by DailyKos, and now the Huffington Post has posted a more extensive view of the scene and confirmed the name of the producer.

“The employee is a young, relatively inexperienced associate producer who realizes she made a mistake and has been disciplined,” FNC Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton told HuffPo.

At first glance, Noonan’s ‘pump up the volume’ gestures to the crowd seem innocuous. But when you consider FNC’s whole “Fair and Balanced” credo, the interaction between producer and crowd is completely out of bounds. It’s the same problem that newspapers face when they are caught altering photographs to seem more brilliant in print: when somebody comes to you, as a journalist, for information and allows you to control their field of vision, it’s expected that you’ll turn your lens on the truth. Not an augmented or altered version of the truth.

And, given that Fox expressed disgust that other networks weren’t devoting more coverage to an event of such magnitude, one wonders why at least one Fox producer thought the scene needed help getting ready for the camera.

See the video for yourself here (from Media Matters):

The scene as it appeared on Fox News:

The piece, entitled “Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck’s life,” takes writer Alexander Zaitchi inside the latest conservative uprising — dubbed the 9/12 movement — which marched on Washington, D.C. last weekend under Beck’s leadership and guidance. Beck’s ire directed at the government appears to stem from the teachings of Skousen, a “once-famous anti-communist ‘historian’” who was “too extreme” even for his early ’80s conservative contemporaries. To Beck’s followers, Skousen is no stranger:

Anyone who has followed Beck will recognize the book’s title. Beck has been furiously promoting “The 5,000 Year Leap” for the past year, a push that peaked in March when … a new edition of “The 5,000 Year Leap,” complete with a laudatory new foreword by none other than Glenn Beck, came out of nowhere to hit No. 1 on Amazon. It remained in the top 15 all summer, holding the No. 1 spot in the government category for months. At one 912 meet-up I attended in Florida, copies were stacked high on a table against the back wall, available for the 912 nice price of $15. “Don’t bother trying to get it at the library,” one 912er told me. “The wait list is 40 deep.”

The entire Salon article is well worth a read, but for those without the time or patience for the whole 4,000+ piece, we’ve run down a few of the most revealing, juicy bits below. Notice any similarities with Beck? Sound off in the comments.

• Skousen’s The 5,000 Year Leap interprets American history “through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology” and is required reading at religious schools such as George Wythe University in Utah.
• The FBI kept a 2,000 page report on Skousen.
• The rest of Skousen’s oeuvre includes pamphlets and books on “the Red Menace, New World Order conspiracy, Christian child rearing, and Mormon end-times prophecy.”
• Per the FBI file: “During the past year or so, Skousen has affiliated himself with the extreme right-wing ‘professional communists’ who are promoting their own anticommunism for obvious financial purposes.”
• Critics charged Beck Skousen with “inventing fantastic ideas and making inferences that go far beyond the bounds of honest commentary.”
• Applying Skousen’s attacks on communism to today, Beck has listed the new enemy as “liberals, special-interest groups, [and] the ACLU,” according to his first book The Real Truth.
• “Over my book or anything else, get The 5,000 Year Leap,” said Beck. “It is the principle.”
• Another book being passed around at 9/12 “seminars” is Skousen’s Making of America, which describes “America’s religious Founders and their happy slaves.”

What is it that they say about the stakes of understanding and repeating history? It’s something about being doomed.