Now why does this not surprise me one bit?
During his much-ballyhooed “Restoring Honor” rally on Saturday, Glenn Beck told a whopper involving the founding father who was supposedly unable to tell a lie: George Washington.
Speechifying at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, the controversial Fox News host highlighted the legacy of the nation’s first president to drive home his claim that encouraging honesty and integrity was a main aim of the event. Beck even told attendees that “the next George Washington” was “in this crowd. He may be 8 years old, but this is the moment. This is the moment that he dedicates his life, that he sees giants around him. And 25 years from now, he will come not to this stair, but to those stairs. And he can proclaim, ‘I have a new dream.'”
Beck also invoked Washington while describing the inspiring experience of visiting famous tourist destinations around the nation’s capital. “I have been going to Mt. Vernon,” he explained. Holding out his hands for emphasis, he declared with emotion, “I went to the National Archives, and I held the first inaugural address written in his own hand by George Washington.”
It was an eyebrow-raising revelation and certainly an original image: Beck cradling the actual words of the first president. But would the persnickety gatekeepers of the nation’s historical legacy at the National Archives allow some talk show bombthrower to put his mitts on a rare (and fragile) artifact? The answer, it turns out, is no way. Beck was not telling the truth.
Beck did receive a special VIP tour of the archives, arranged by an as-yet unidentified member of Congress. During that tour, he did get a peek inside the “legislative vault,” which isn’t open to ordinary visitors. But Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper insists that Beck didn’t lay a finger on any precious documents, much less George Washington’s inaugural address. That would be a major violation of policy. “Those kinds of treasures are only handled by specially trained archival staff,” she explains. Cooper acknowledges that someone at the archives did show the document to Beck, but that was the extent of it. Regarding Beck’s claim that he held the document, Cooper says that seeing such documents for the first time can be a very emotional experience. “I’m certain it was a figure of speech,” she says.
Before anyone says it; yes, I know that this is a liberal source. It goes on to really give Glenn Beck a good fisking. I also realize that Glenn Beck is a showman, more than anyone else. I also realize that Glenn Beck is all about creating hype and also a great deal of money.
However, it is worth mention and pointing out, that Glenn Beck should have known that if he told this sort of “whopper” as it is called in this piece; that someone somewhere would point out that he was stretching the truth a bit. You would think that someone like Glenn Beck, with all that staff and advisers; would have been smart than to allow him to let loose such little thing like that.
Before anyone tries to say it; I do like Glenn Beck. I do not watch his show every day, mainly because he does tend to repeat himself…. a whole bunch. However, I do know he does mean well and I do like what it is what he is trying to in educating those in the history of the progressive and communist movements and how they affect America.