More on this later. First I have to somehow process that this actually happened:
Via Popwatch:
“This is a great day in the war on terror. But as I watched all the celebrations taking place on the streets of America, all over America, you may have — and maybe I’m alone — had a strange feeling,” Beck said. “You may have seen students jumping into the lake in Ohio and rushing to the White House bearing signs and smoking cigars. As I watched these things happen last night, I couldn’t help but be reminded of when the Palestinians danced in the streets and passed out candy after the 9/11 attacks, when they danced in the streets over the killing of five American students and the slaughter of a Jewish family. All of these things, you know and I know, were offensive. All of those victims were innocent. America, we are better than this. We are better than jumping into lakes and holding signs and cigars. I think we’re better than that. I mean, why hand out candy… when you can have cookies, and confetti, and a marching band, huh?” Cue the entrance of the Soul Tigers marching band drum line and Beck dancing around the studio while holding a plate of cookies and confetti dropped.
When the song ended, he spoke again. “That was tasteless and offensive…. My apologies for the marching [band]. No, I’m not gonna apologize for that,” he said. “I actually felt really kind of bad today about some of the grotesque displays, and then I thought, you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Later in the hour, Beck referenced his opening again. “Every time I think that, ‘Oh, I don’t know if we could do the cookies or the confetti or whatever,’ I see that it’s not marching in the streets for innocent victims. It is celebrating in the streets for a journey that has been and hard and been fought valiantly with honor. And people have tried to do the right thing. And this guy was certainly not innocent….”