Obama’s speech to soldiers at Elmendorf Air Force base may have been praised by many in the media, but it did not win over Glenn Beck as a fan. Yesterday, Beck’s show was briefly interrupted by the speech. When he returned, he “went off the script” to deliver a stinging rebuke to Obama — and all politicians — who use soldiers as “props.” Wait, Glenn Beck has a script?
In all seriousness, Beck took pains to be even-handed in what could have been yet another anti-Obama screed. Rather than spitting out a one-off about how Obama was such a terrible guy for using soldiers as “props,” he launched into a broader message about Astroturfed diversity being used in photo-ops:
It’s really not for President Obama, it’s for all politicians. Does anybody — when you see a politician speak now, and you see these people standing behind them, does anybody look — and I don’t do it with the soldiers. But I always do it when
regular people are there. I go, OK, there is the Asian, there is the elderly person, there is the African-American, there is the handicapped person …Politicians are using us as props, and I’m sick of it. Especially when it comes to the soldiers. They are not props. As a guy with a soldier that is currently serving in my family, and somebody with honor … they are not props.
As we discussed last month when the New York Post tried to whip up ‘white-coat-gate‘ into a national story (see above photos, from the Post‘s website), it’s really not news when politicians use a little stagecraft to ramp up their photo
Obvious or not, there’s something to be said about the way that the artifice of photo-ops can feel exploitative, and Beck said it loud and clear.