Glenn Beck, in a segment explaining why, despite his being a staunch critic of Barack Obama’s, he thinks John McCain would have been worse for the country if he had won the 2008 election, used a decidedly controversial visual aid: He tossed a frog into a boiling pot of water on his set.
The stunt was not only an effective attention grabber (had me on the edge of my seat when I watched it at home) but a clever illustration to the warning not to believe everything you hear. Beck was debunking the anecdote that “if you put a frog in boiling water, it will notice the danger and jump out, but if you put it in room temperature water and slowly boil it, it won’t notice and will die”. So Beck goes to a little childrens case of tiny pet frogs and throws one in, expecting it to jump right out and it doesn’t – to which Beck reacts by telling you to “forget about the Republicans, because most of them are fake. forget about the Democrats, because most of THEM are fake. and forget about the frog, because IT was fake”. Then after a commercial break, he fished the plastic frog out of the pot and verified that no animals were harmed during the segment.
Okay. weird. interesting. kinda cute. right?
F*ck no. There was shock and outrage – OUTRAGE I SAY!! – over Beck murdering one of these tiny little spitwads. And these are not vegan sources, thus making their outrage more than a lot hypocritical since, uh – what exactly makes killing an amphibian to illustrate a political point servicing millions of viewers worse than killing a mammal to eat or wear in service to 1? dumbdumbs…
Most of these blogs were relying on an edited youtube video of the segment that cut out Beck stating that the frog was fake. tsk tsk bloggers… Beck gladly accepted the win on his show today:
Charles Johnson of LittleGreenFootballs.com was unhappy about getting the attention over his dubious headline titled “Glenn Beck: Frog Killer” and responded to Beck showing this oops-post of his on air with an impossibly worse/more embarrassing claim: “Beck Lies about LGF“… oy… the “lie” being that Beck didn’t include that Johnson had mentioned in the LGF post that falsely call Beck a “Frog Killer” that there was a possibility that it was a trick. Charles seems to be going through a tough time in his online life as his former admirers start piling on him as he goes through a recent change of calling former colleagues and like-minds racists, liars, kooks, and more and I feel kinda bad for him but… dude… it’s not a “lie” to show that you made a false claim based on edited video you didn’t bother investigating. Ya, it would have been nice for Beck to bail Johnson out a tad and include that Johnson, after stating the false claim as fact, also showed his openness to the possibility that it was a gag, but Johnson has no reason to expect such a pass.
Wtf is wrong with this world when its right-wing leaning bloggers that erroneously freak out over animal cruelty that didn’t take place and PETA is the sane voice of calmness and reason?… yikes.