Glenn Beck Meets The Real Haters In New York City

Although I pretty much agree with everything that Fox conservative talk show host Glenn Beck says I'm not what you might call a real fan. I tend to find him too sentimental and dramatic for my taste however the man does present his opinion backed by thorough research. Recently he was with his family watching an outdoor film in Bryant Park and claimed on his TV show that they were assaulted by a hateful crowd and someone threw wine at his wife. I did not see his tearful account of the episode but immediately the media depicted it as overblown and fake.

Gawker.com, a decidedly liberal site, posted an excerpt from a woman who said she sat behind Beck and it was an accident for which apologies were made and accepted. I expected that the liberals felt that would end the matter except that we're in the age of the World Wide Web where nothing is private anymore and that's when the fun began.

A little digging by bloggers with brains dug up some tweets by this woman, Lindsey Piscitell, who had sanitized the event in a missive to New York Magazine. These tweets clearly showed her and her companions to be the hateful, malicious toads that give my city a bad reputation.

Ms. Piscitell tried to erase these tweets but nothing posted disappears forever. Blaze.com uncovered tweets she sent with pictures of the Beck family with these remarks: "F***ing a**hole glenbeck siting next to me at Bryant park movie night. Get the f*** out of my city."

Blaze.com also uncovered a response to her tweet from a friend, Marissa Barker, who suggested: "Ew, can you "accidentally" spill something on him? Or "accidentally" kick him in the mouth?"

The comments to her tweet illuminated the mindset of the Piscitells and Barkers of NYC. One that stood out was by an AnneV6 who wrote: "I'm confused as to why we, the East Coast Liberal Elite, have allowed Glenn Beck to inhabit our city for this long. Why has he not been chased onto the Staten Island Ferry by a screaming mob with torches and pitchforks? We are all failures."

I guess the meaning of the word "liberal" escapes AnneV6 and the others who have deleted their Tweeter accounts to cover up their injudicious remarks. She and her cohorts also have to look up the meaning of the words racism, hate and hate speech.

These nouns have been hurled at tea party attendees because they espouse a different viewpoint. This "Elite" obviously have no knowledge of the racist history of the Democrat Party to whom they swear their allegiance.

On the other hand violence by leftists has erupted at political events harming innocent participants but these incidents are ignored by the mainstream media. Kenneth Gladney was an African-American conservative beaten up and hospitalized by SEIU thugs and William Rice was the 65 year old conservative who had his finger bitten off by a Moveon.org individual at a health care rally.

I have a hard time understanding this level of animosity in so-called civilized and educated people and if they live in Manhattan in those possessing healthy incomes. I was born in Manhattan when it was populated by hard working salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar, white collar, aristocrats and peons who respected one another's right to exist. Go ahead and mock Staten Island, AnneV6, but that's where I live now and where that population still co-exists.

There is no such thing as enlightened debate when discussing hot button issues such as abortion or gay marriage and the angry heat incurred is almost always generated by the left. A number of years ago I attended a prayer march down Madison Avenue with Cardinal John O'Connor saying the rosary on the way to the first abortion clinic opened in Manhattan. As we filed along the avenue I watched the protesters screaming curses and invectives at the marchers. One screaming man's face was beet red and he looked as if he wanted to kill us. Women in the windows of apartments bared their breasts and made rude gestures and I couldn't help but wonder if this is what the Selma civil rights marchers encountered.

The only explanation I can come up with for this level of hatred is the fear factor and the successful demonization of religion by the Marxist academia in Ivy League and other universities. One of the tenets of the Communist manifesto is according to Engels, "All religions which have existed hitherto were expressions of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is that stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and supersedes them." Thus humanism, a system of thought that is based on the values, characteristics, and behavior that are believed to be best in human beings, rather than on any supernatural authority, replaces religion.

Religious people who believe in God are thus deemed relics of the past - a past that worked a heck of a lot better than now but that's just my opinion which I am still entitled to. So entitled are those Glenn Beck haters but surely discourse and civility can co-exist or is that just wishful thinking?

Recently I saw a staged reading of a new play by Mike Bencivenga called Summer of Fire. Normally I avoid stage readings but one of the actors was Nick Searcy who is in a favorite TV show of mine - FX's Justified. The plot centers on a Labor Day weekend on Fire Island where a group of people from polarized political views are stuck together at the home of a conservative talk show host a la Glenn Beck/Bill O'Reilly genre. The dialogue is witty and the situations oft hilarious reminiscent of a Noel Coward farce. It was written by a liberal playwright who wrote it: "to hopefully get folks to see beyond the labels and make choices based on what they believe and want. To think for themselves. Not be lead or pressured to think what your party or the pontificators would want you to think." This conservative writer loved it and found Nick Searcy's performance perfect. Here's hoping an angel puts this show into full production so that we all can learn to get along. Write Mr. Bencivenga at summeronfireplay@gmail.com.

I especially loved how the main character described himself as not conservative but a traditionalist. I like that classification better than right wing nut as my critics usually call me. In fact it would be better for all if we stop the name calling and see each other as just humans living on the same planet for a very short time so why don't we stop the hate that shortens it even further?

Alicia Colon resides in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com