I have been struggling and failing to find an appropriate way to respond to Glenn Beck’s latest insanity. MediaMatters has the video and the almost unbelievable quotes, which about 1.2 billion people are likely to deem to be offensive and tasteless, from a recent Beck broadcast:
For those not able to stomach watching the actual video, the choice quotes are as follows:
And also, in our research that it took us, oh about 40 seconds, we figured out that some of that money here in America winds up in the pocket of a skilled doctor that helps off-set the 20 years of schooling that he endured and the loans he took out. And – you’re not going to believe this one, Karlyn – some of that money seems to go to the 1 million SEIU workers in the healthcare industry that make slightly more here than in India. Because, you know, they have an American lifestyle, maybe a couple of cars, great union benefits, and homes with something that we in America like to call flush toilets. (link)
Quite separately from the nasty slur about India in this quote, Beck’s logic completely escapes me. If anyone can actually make sense of what he is trying to say, I would be curious to hear it. I think this is an elaborate way of saying Americans shouldn’t do medical tourism in India, but rather pay premium rates for procedures not covered by insurance, because some of the money they might be giving a surgeon will somehow go to SEIU workers? (But what’s all this about loans and so on? Is he aware that Indian students bring millions upon millions of dollars into American higher education?)
But of course, the real stunner in this ‘bit’ from Beck is the following:
I don’t want a discounted doctor. I don’t want discounted wages. I don’t want any of this stuff. If I wanted to live in India, I’d live in India. I want not the Indian lifestyle, I want the American lifestyle. I’m sure, no offense to India, I’m sure it’s beautiful and everything. I’ve heard especially this time of year, especially by the – you know that one big river they have there that sounds like a disease? Come on, it does. I mean, if somebody said, ‘I’m sorry, you have a really bad case of Ganges,’ you’d want Cipro.” (link)
While the earlier rant directed at medical tourism, incoherent as it was, had some salience to the health care debate, this bit of assholery is just utterly gratuitous.
I’m looking forward to the day this guy falls back into obscurity. A few months ago, left-leaning activists launched a campaign to get Beck’s advertisers to pull back from his show. While they were successful, it hasn’t done anything to slow him down. Beck’s provocations are working: his rating continue to be high, no matter how many times he’s mocked by comedians and spat at by bloggers. It’s hard for me personally to get newly outraged when this guy has been, for months, comparing President Obama to Hitler and the like.
Still, the level of offense these statements could provoke in India itself, if the comments end up being covered in the Indian media (hint hint), could make things interesting for Beck. (Here’s a tip for any Indian journalists reading this: Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, also owns Star TV… Hmm…)
Well, I’m sure he’s an @$$hole, but the sad truth is that Ganga Ma is an open sewer these days.
Sai, maybe so but actually it’s Glenn Beck — he doesn’t know that.
He’s only making fun of the sound of the name “Ganges”; that’s all he knows about it. It would actually be a less potentially offensive comment if he were to say, “Have you actually seen the Ganges River? It’s filthy!”
What he also doesn’t know is that the Ganga has religious significance to millions of Hindus.
Maybe I’m wrong, and Indians, when they hear of this, will merely shrug it off. But it’s seemed to me that in recent years smaller and smaller things have been prone to cause widespread offense in India. Think of the uproar caused by Shashi Tharoor’s “cattle class” comment, for instance, just a few weeks ago…
What do I know–I’m a DBCD–but–I think (those few) Indians who pay attention to the US are happy enough with the nuclear deal (and embarrassed enough about the true state of Ganga Ma) to let this roll off their backs, except for a few professional grievance-mongers. But, I might well be wrong–we shall see.
Totally rooting for the RSS to get its knickers in a twist over this. Can you imagine the headlines? head asplodes
So Beck points out that:
hospital procedures are cheaper in India because the per capita income per year of indians is a measly $1000, which is a tiny fraction of american per capita income
flush toilets are a rarity in India
the Ganges is an extremely filthy river
that the american lifestyle is preferable to living in a place like India
What exactly is false in what he said?
Glenn Beck or any other US radio personality is small-fry as far as Indians in India are concerned. So this would not be an issue in India. Indian-Americans, especially the liberal democratic types, on the other hand could get pissed off, but they won’t be the first to be pissed-off by Beck!
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Well-said, Amardeep. It was totally uncalled for.
Beck’s logic completely escapes me. If anyone can actually make sense of what he is trying to say, I would be curious to hear it.
Some guy in some newspaper made the point some time ago (helpful I know) that Beck is unique in that his MO isn’t to come up with some half baked argument or ‘research’ like Limbaugh etc. He eschews all coherence and just starts fighting, figuring out what he’s fighting about on the way. It’s purely emotive. “India has cheaper healthcare? Oh yeah?! Well India sucks!”
The problem with the left is they earnestly start explaining why India doesn’t suck, when they really should be going “If somebody told me, ‘I’m sorry, you have a really bad case of Ganges,’ your mom would need Cipro”
Since when did the right wing “India Shining” BJP hindutvadis become leftists?
I was talking about the American left
Brilliant! The problem with Indian politics as analyzed in the USA, is that nobody cares. So, strangely, the Amrikan left, which “likes’ the “Islamists” because they “hate” “America” wind up allied against the “Hindus” because they don’t like the “Islamists.” So, South-Asian politics is really weirdly anti-Hindu (which also means, in effect, anti-Jain, anti-Sikh and anti-Buddhist) in the USA because some Jewish academic at Columbia is trying to suck up to some Muslim because s/he feels bad about the Israelis bombing the sh!t out of Gaza.
Amardeep, Your analysis is spot on. When is comes from a man who compares President Obama to Hitler, you know it’s bigotry. He is an ignorant, classless fool, and it pains me, literally, that he’s allowed his own show where he can spew venom and spread his ignorance.
Can you say more about what kind of “class” you want him to exhibit? Do you really mean “caste”? Sorry if I am a “backward” caste.
Thank you for posting this. I was beyond outraged. All he did was to exhibit his ignorance with his senseless statistics and over enactment of everything.
@Hamit – Don’t put words in my mouth. As you may well know, the term is loosely used to describe a person who ill-mannered. Don’t try to create a controversy where none exists.
Thank you Amardeep for posting this. Regardless of where one falls in the political debate, these types of comments by Beck (and plenty of other Americans as I have personally heard) is rooted in ignorance coupled with arrogance. He recently had several Indian doctors on his show for a health care debate. You would think he knows better, apparently not.
Beck is an idiot. I don’t think anyone in India watches or follows the stupidity that flows out of the fox channel.
Health-care is definitely cheaper in India. I had a full checkup done(blood,urine, MRI, x-ray, and consultation etc) for Rs 1800/- ($45?) at a local hospital in Bangalore. It was a lot more detailed than any yearly checkup I’ve done in the US, and a lot cheaper.
Pills cost a lot less. Why? They’re made by the same companies and I’d doubt that “standards/quality” is really the difference (try Canada). Why are Americans paying for the R&D costs for the world’s Pharma companies, and why does R&D cost so much (if that’s the excuse those companies use).
Anyways, the republicans are always in denial. The biggest thing holding this country back from true greatness, is the republicans.
Perhaps the name of the river would not sound like a disease to Mr. Beck if he used the Indian name “Ganga” rather than the western name “Ganges“.
Therein lies your problem. Logic is not valued here – this is pure and simple propaganda.
I only read the excerpts, but generally speaking, Beck is not relying on logic – he relying on stories that are largely false and emotive appeal. That combined with his populist nationalist and vicious politics makes his style of speech along the lines of ‘fascist’ though I don’t know what the right word for it is.
Appropriate responses include: satirising it, speaking to people receptive to it about actual issues, supporting trade unions taht provide alternative messages that can appeal on a populist front and without nearly as much racism, putting out alternative messages like ‘health care good, racism bad’, and other ways.
Or we can watch while the 20% of the electorate that are committed palin republicans gradually go more and more insane, kill abortion doctors, and eventually do something so horrific that they are finally discredited – even to themselves.
how appropriate that this comment is on a glenn beck thread.
What’s wrong with what he’s said? Sure, maybe he could have delivered it in a better way, but he’s always sarcastic and arrogant. But he’s right about wanting an AMERICAN lifestyle and not an INDIAN one. As far as I know, it’s pretty much one way traffic with Indians desperate to escape India and live in the USA and not the other way around.
Yes. Clearly Glenn Beck was offering a well-researched, well-intentioned critique of India and not attempting to score points in the healthcare debate by playing the “HURRR DURRR FOREIGNERS STINK AND THEY NAME THEIR RIVERS FUNNY” card.
Nikhil wrote:
It’s wrong because it’ll stir up ethnocentric chauvinism among white Americans, which will have definite negative consequences for Indians and other minorities.
Nikhil wrote:
So? I don’t see any white Americans clamoring to go back to their homelands in Europe.
Sai wrote:
And the best way to do this is by giving the clownish attention-whore exactly what he craves?
I think there may be a disconnect between Indians in America and Indians in India, I really don’t think most Indians in India will care. Sashi Tharoor analogy doesn’t work in my opinion is because he is an MP.
I mean people of Indian origin in America
It doesn’t work because the “cattle class” comment was just India’s vacuous chatteratti trying to find an excuse to grind their axe against him.
I mean, I have reasons for not liking Tharoor that much myself. But only because he’s like the Indian Tom Friedman where he comes up with one way of looking at things and by Crom he’s going to shoe-horn anything and everything into that box. So it’s a legitimate reason.
Glenn Beck, though, is just a no-talent assclown.
Am I the only one who watches Glenn Beck occasionally? He acts stupidly sometimes but he also does a lot of original investigative reporting (or his hired staffers do the work, who knows). I don’t really care too much on what he says on India, I’m just too tired of “macaca”ing everyone who says anything offensive. Words don’t matter anymore, action does.
The people who listen/watch to Beck are basically Reagan Dems–working class (mainly or even exclusively) white people with very socially conservative values. These people have seen their wages and earning power, decrease, and costs of living increase during the past 30 years under both Democratic and Republican administrations. He knows their anger, prejudices, fears, etc., and taps into them.
This is one such instance. He’s telling his audience your lives may suck here due to 30 years of policies that never benefited them (top-rate tax cuts, anyone?), but it’s worse in India. Beck’s making his angry, down-in-the-dumps audience feel a tiny bit better about themselves. If he uses bigotry or insensitivity to do, all the better for his audience. I’m sure that’s what they come to expect from him, and like about him.
Beck also knows that these people are the only ones in the entire world who will shell out $20 to see his Christmas movie, when a regular movie ticket averages like $10. He also knows that PT Barnum’s maxim is the gospel truth.
“Or we can watch while the 20% of the electorate that are committed palin republicans gradually go more and more insane, kill abortion doctors, and eventually do something so horrific that they are finally discredited – even to themselves.”
Now there’s a comment that’s almost as logical as Beck’s!
I can’t help but think the love of Palin is mostly just a love of all things that piss liberals off.
I can’t blame them for that really. Every now and then I too just want to stick it to the PC nuts, but I catch myself, recognizing that biting your nose to spite your face is generally a stupid idea.
Why are we all surprised ? This is Beck …. He was an idiot before this and he will be an idiot after this. It amazes me that Rush , Beck continue to surprise and offend the left (media matters, Thinkprogress) .
Please stop complaining or he will cry .
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-13-2009/glenn-beck-s-operation
You should watch this if you have not done before.
Thats because they are not too welcome back there. Remember how Amanda Knox got “rail roaded” (as per CNN) into a conviction. Also, during the reign of King George (Bush), the hostility, even in Britain (a “coalition partner”), was palpable if they figured you for an American.
Did you not get the memo Expat? Those of us who travelled were supposed to say we hailed from the South side of Canada.
As far as you know. Not the end of the road.
@truth hurts fake pride: there was this quote that Amardeep left out: “The best I can figure is all that money goes to high-tech hospitals and doctors who studied at Harvard rather than Gajra Raja medical school.”
Which is really amazing considering how many American doctors were educated India. There’s probably a 30% chance that the $44,000 American procedure would be performed by a doctor who went to medical school in India and did their residency here.
I hope India ignores the guy – just to show how powerless he truly is. Only Jon Stewart and Colbert give him the attention he truly deserves.
Which is really amazing considering how many American doctors were educated India. There’s probably a 30% chance that the $44,000 American procedure would be performed by a doctor who went to medical school in India and did their residency here.
Yes, and how well they do. My dad in our small community is considered exemplary in his work and in the nearest medical school hospital, where many of his patients are referred, the professors have such respect for him. It’s funny how much America was begging these Indian doctors to come to the US at that crucial time in the 70s when they faced such shortage not only in doctors, but scientist and engineers. Funny I don’t think there was a problem with the Indian graduates then….My mother reflects how EASY it was to come to US for us b/c of my father’s qualifications. There are difficult exams that all doctors that come to practice in the US have to take; for my dad that wasn’t a problem and the US gave him every incentive to come. Beck is an idiot and ignoramus.
also, just to clarify what the anti-hindutva, american left finds objectionable is Beck’s incorrect conclusion that labor costs account for the price difference between the two procedures. Beck would be correct if medial services functioned like most other goods. But the medical services market is extremely dysfunctional, due to a number of legal and institutional problems that have nothing to do with labor costs.
Is that really something to boast about considering that India had and still has a FAR greater shortage of doctors than America? Your father got educated in India so why isn’t he serving indians who are in far greater need of his service than americans?
Glenn Beck does have a point about the low quality of India’s educational system. You can find fault with his mocking contempt of India but the facts are on his side.
Has anyone who is opining about Beck actually watched his show? I’m curious. I have admitted to watching him sometimes but I don’t get how Beck is confining himself to Reagan Republicans? Isn’t he a libertarian with a small ‘l’?
“Isn’t he a libertarian with a small ‘l’?”
No, he isn’t. “libertarians” are Republicans who are ashamed to call themselves that.
Have you by any chance seen SNL’s 2012? That was a genuinely funny clip.
“Glenn Beck does have a point about the low quality of India’s educational system. You can find fault with his mocking contempt of India but the facts are on his side.”
From wikipedia:
“In 1996, while working for a New Haven-area radio station, Beck was admitted to Yale University through a special program for non-traditional students. One of his recommendations for admittance came from Senator Joe Lieberman.[citation needed] Beck took one theology class, “Early Christology,” and then dropped out.[16][17]”
Not sure this high school graduate should be so contemptuous of others. Jon Stewart is right to skewer him.
Libertarians overlap with Republicans but you can’t conflate the two. Have you not seen Beck’s numerous ‘pox on both your houses’ speeches where he asks people to ally with the conservative candidate, damn the party? Thats his major difference with Rush who is arguably more Republican than Beck.
P.S: Not that high school graduates without a college education can’t be brilliant or worldly, but Beck clearly isn’t. What knowledge he does have doesn’t seem to have done him much good.
Well, they’re Republicans who enjoy sodomy and marijuana. If they were actual libertarians they wouldn’t make such a big stink about Mexicans crossing the border. Glenn Beck’s “libertarianism” is what Atrios calls “glibertarianism” which is basically naked all-against-all Republicanism freed from all the burdensome moral strictures demanded by the fundie wing.
Nope. Will have to check it out.
Right, real libertarians are part of the open borders crowd. Beck’s “Messicans stay out of ‘Merka” message is popular with the populist right. Though these same people often forget that St. Ronnie signed a major amnesty bill in 1986. Who cares about details like that, anyway?
I think Beck’s fundie religiosity also puts him at odds with most secular-minded libertarians.
He can call himself whatever. He’s a huckster.
He is rich, famous, hugely successful at what he does, and he looks like he is having a lot of fun. How about you?