CNN's "Cordial" Hire

CNN's "Cordial" Hire: "CNN's 'Cordial' Hire
Headline News picks would-be killer Glenn Beck as host

1/18/06

CNN’s Headline News has hired radio talkshow host Glenn Beck to host a one-hour primetime show, according to a Daily Variety report (1/17/06). Variety quotes CNN Headline News president Ken Jautz's description of Beck: 'Glenn’s style is self-deprecating, cordial; he says he'd like to be able to disagree with guests and part as friends. It's conversational, not confrontational.'

But Glenn Beck’s hateful rhetoric tells a different story.

Beck, best known for setting up Clear Channel's pro-war Rallies for America shortly before the Iraq War, once described how much he loathed anti-war presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (WABC-AM, 3/16/03): 'Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames.'

In 2004, Beck called Michael Berg, whose son had been beheaded in Iraq, 'despicable' and a 'scumbag' because the elder Berg criticized George W. Bush in the wake of his son’s death (Mediamatters.org, 5/17/04).

On May 17, 2005, Beck fantasized about murdering anti-war filmmaker Michael Moore (Mediamatters.org, 5/18/05):

I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out--is this wrong?


Beck also accused Moore of 'taking help and money from Hezbollah.'

He wasn’t much more charitable to victims of Hurricane Katrina, some of whom he called 'scumbags.' On September 9, Beck said that Katrina victims caused a 'near riot' when ATM cards were distributed to the displaced (Mediamatters.org, 9/9/05):

When you are rioting for these tickets, or these ATM cards, the second thing that came to mind was--and this is horrible to say, and I wonder if I'm alone in this--you know it took me about a year to start hating the "