Glenn Beck is a Shell

I’ve been putting this post off for a while, now.

It’s going to be a novel.

You won’t care.

Except for what I have to say about Glenn Beck. You’ll enjoy that. But, otherwise, the things I have to say about El Che, you already know on which side of the fence I’ve landed.

But, well.

Pero, bueno.

Here goes:


CNN’s one and only Republican Glenn Beck wrote an article a few months ago. Within days, I’d received this link from multiple friends stateside. They wanted to know how I would react to it.

The article was about Che Guevara.

It was titled “Commentary: T-shirt depicts ‘pathetic and brutal legacy’”


Now, I’m not going to argue with his article’s expo. El Che has taken on a different meaning these days. Some people don’t quite understand who Guevara was and tend to deify him.

On the other hand, those more on the Glenn Beck side -- those in these 50 nifty United States -- tend to view Guevara as an evil(!), Red(!), bloodthirsty(!) Communist (McCarthy!?! Scratch yourself out of that frozen WI tundra and save us!!!).

And. Yes. That’s Beck’s opinion. Let the man opine.

While we’re on the subject, however:

Let me opine.


Guevara was a complex man. That said, there were many interpretations of who, exactly, he was.


Ever see ‘Motorcycle Diaries?’ It’s a movie about Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. It’s a good flick. You should see it. It’s the story of El Che, as a 20-something, traveling the Americas and gaining a sense of humanity and, most importantly, a sense of the world's injustices.

I can’t really relate.


Here are the quotes from the movie’s preview:

1) “Che Guevara is an inspiration for any human being who loves freedom.”
- Nelson Mandela

2) “Che is fairly intellectual for a Latino.”
- Declassified CIA document

3) “Che is a cultural icon because of his capacity to provoke empathy among the spoiled youth of the affluent West.”
- ‘The American Spectator’

4) “Che was the most complete human being of our age.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre

(sidenote: this movie’s executive producer was Robert Redford)

What a spectrum of opinion!

Wow!

Why am I always so right?!


So, if I had to guess where Mr. Beck landed within the quote boxes, I’d lean towards #3, and maybe #2 -- just because he’s a prick.

But, my god, doesn’t #4 resonate something awful?


Here’s my point: Beck wrote an article. It’s a bad article. It contains many fallacies and stretches of the not-so-worldly imagination in terms of who Guevara really was.

In his article, Beck tries to black the white put forth by the greatest philosopher in decades (Sartre).
Beck fails.
Beck rattles off nonsense.
Beck needs to be checked.


I’m the sexy cat for the job:


- -

To begin with, you often don’t know where to begin when trying to counter-attack the arguments of a complete dolt. I’ll do what I can with this. But I may have to stay within the confines of fact-checking and nothing more.


Glenn: "This is a history of a failure" is how he himself described his efforts in the Congo. He was killed in Bolivia, trying to fire up another failure of a war. Earlier, he even managed to drop his gun and shoot himself in the face.

Kempa: Glenn doesn’t know Spanish. Or he reads from sources who have a light understanding of the language. Or, probably, both. ‘History’ and ‘story’ are the same word in Spanish (as well as a number of other languages). Guevara was saying that his Congo efforts were a story of failure. Dude still lost, but I pull different meaning from the sentence when read in Spanish.

Yes, he did die in Bolivia. Another failure. How’d he do in Cuba?

Never read about him, ever, dropping a gun and shooting himself in the face. Possible, I suppose. I’m no Lex-Nex. But improbable, especially coming from Beck.


Beck: But more important than his incompetence is the fact that the man was a mass killer.

Kempa: And thus is conveyed the lack of perspective of the ultra-nationalist. Too much nationalism is detrimental in any country’s (pardon the German in this context) zeitgeist. Beck is a wonderful example here with his one-sided view of warfare.

To kill is to kill is to kill. We often forget that. Especially when it's okay -- in the name of freedom.

Note that I also don’t hesitate to comment on the irony that Guevara was a humanist who killed human beings. Many writers have tried to rationalize this -- something, to me, that is impossible. Like I said, however, Guevara was a complex man. I am arguing no further than that.


Beck: He described his maniacal lust for war in his writings, saying he savored "the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood of the enemy's death."

Kempa: I enjoy how Glenn only quotes the object of the verb in this sentence. It makes one wonder how he might have doctored the quote.


Beck: When describing the differences in the strife between "Europeans" and "the black," the supposedly progressive-minded Che wrote, "their different attitudes of life separate them completely: the black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead."

Ohhhhh, so the "European" is a hard worker while "the black" is a fanciful drunk. Now I understand the difference.

Kempa: Beck, you divisive douchebag.

Here’s what I can say about this quote, without the context in front of me:

I lived in Argentina for five months. They call blonde-haired, blue-eyed cats ‘gringo,’ and black cats ‘negro,’ as well as fat chicks ‘gorda.’ It’s a disconcertingly un-PC culture. When you try to act offended, however, you find that they cannot, no matter how much you try to explain things, understand that they’ve somehow wronged the ‘gringo’ or ‘the black’ or ‘the fat chick.’ I know. Try growing up in Connecticut in the 90’s and then living in Buenos Aires.

That said, the older Argentineans (40+) tend to make generalizations that would make the PC American feel terribly uncomfortable. They certainly did me. I cannot speak for anyone in this age group and older. What I can say is, the cultural concept of generalization is changing as the generational baton passes hands in Buenos Aires. Just as it happened here. Do not tell me that a majority of adults in the 60s were not allowed to make statements such as Guevara’s without anyone batting an eyelash.



Beck: You shouldn't be wearing an "I heart abortion clinic bombers" T-shirt, and if you have any respect for humanity, you shouldn't be wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, either.

Kempa: How do you reply to this drivel? The most irritating thing about this article is that it's littered with unchecked opinion. I mean, how do you cite 'bloodthirsty killer?' History: Volume III?


I just realized that, in all of this, Beck never mentions that Guevara, Castro, and others overthrew a horrific Batista regime in Cuba. That’s why communism found a foothold in Latin America in the first place. It went from bad to okay. I wonder if Beck knows who Batista was. That said, does he know the history of the Congo or of Bolivia?

I gaurantee he doesn’t.

And neither do I, at least on the Congo front, which leaves most of us in the dark in terms of the implications of Beck’s quote here. Did these guerrilla efforts hurt or help humanity? In Congo? No idea. Bolivia? Well, much of these efforts were to give more power to the people -- in this case the indigenous Incans. So, I mean, he meant well.

And so we ask, was El Che for or, as implied by Beck, against 'humanity?'

Well, this argument can wait for another day.





So that’s Glenn Beck. There’s so much more I would like to cover in reference to this article. But this is a blog (thing). No one has time for these things (blogs).

All I ask is that you recognize Beck as a fallacious dolt. And that you recognize his assertions as vague, fragile shells of truth. One tap of inquiry will shatter them.

In fact, Beck’s shells of truth reflect himself as a man. Beck is a shell. A shell of a man.



Glen Beck-- you're a shell.



You know, why don’t I say it in Ernesto Guevara’s beautiful Argentinean Spanish:



Glenn Beck-- sos una concha.