ABC and Glen Beck

Media Matters has a very useful summary of ABC's accelerating spiral down the neoconservative drain. This is somewhat old news, but worth remembering: ABC has recently hired Glenn Beck as a Good Morning America commentator.

Beck was apparently wooed in person by Diane Sawyer, who gushed, "It's nice to watch someone you think you're going to disagree with ... but at least there's some common sense behind it."

Some of Beck's common sense:

"...you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families ... I had such compassion for them, and I really wanted to help them, and I was behind, you know, "Let's give them money, let's get this started." All of this stuff. And I really didn't -- of the 3,000 victims' families, I don't hate all of them. Probably about 10 of them. And when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, "Oh shut up!" I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining..."

"... I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims. These guys -- you know it's really sad. We're not hearing anything about Mississippi. We're not hearing anything about Alabama. We're hearing about the victims in New Orleans. This is a 90,000-square-mile disaster site, New Orleans is 181 square miles. A hundred and -- 0.2 percent of the disaster area is New Orleans! And that's all we're hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones we're seeing on television are the scumbags..."

"MITCH" [caller to Beck's show claiming to be an 'intelligence officer' who has personally tortured detainees]: ... you can use high-water pressure into one ear, and when that first ear drum is broken with, you know, 14 or 15 hundred pounds of water pressure going in, the don't -- they will talk before that second ear drum is broken. ...

BECK: Mitch, I've got to tell you I appreciate your service ... I, you know, I have to assume that, because we wear the white hats that we're not doing this at the drop of a hat.