On Saturday, March 27, the first of Glenn Beck's much-anticipated American Revival events took place at the UCF Arena in Orlando, Florida. For many of the attendees, the highlight of this all-day event seems to have been a several-minute pause in the program when an elderly woman in the audience needed medical attention. Here, Mr. Beck showed his true humanity and Christian character, halting the show and raising the house lights so that medical personnel could get to the woman. (A communist, fascist, Marxist, socialist liberal would, of course, have just ignored the situation and let the old broad croak.) And to make the moment even more special, Beck began softly humming "Amazing Grace," with the audience spontaneously joining in.
Joining Mr. Beck for his American Revival event were Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano and David Buckner, the guy best known for actually passing out on Beck's show (a medical situation that did not prompt any hymn-humming from Beck).
The third featured speaker at the event was none other than the star of the "Texas Textbook Massacre," Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton.
For those unfamiliar with Barton, he is the most popular of all the Christian nationalist history revisionists and a former vice-chair of the Texas Republican Party who was used by the GOP in recent elections to travel the country stumping for their "family values" candidates. He is very well connected with the far-right members of Congress. In 2005 Time Magazine named him one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. But outside evangelical Christian circles and those of us who fight the religious right, few people are aware of who he is or just how dangerous he is. That, however, is now changing. Because of his role in the Texas textbook lunacy, and now, even more, because of his hooking up with Glenn Beck, people who never paid attention to Barton before are suddenly curious about who the hell this guy is. And this may be his downfall. He is no longer flying under a radar, where he was only visible to his blind followers.
Enough videos of Barton's performance at Beck's American Revival have now been posted online for me to be sure that Barton is still using the same presentation that I witnessed at a church here in New Jersey a few years ago. As I wrote in another post a few months ago, back in October 2008 I attended a presentation given by Barton and approached him after his presentation to give him a copy of my book, Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, a book debunking many of his lies, as well as those of a number of his fellow revisionists.
On January 16, 2009, I became the subject of a segment on Barton's WallBuilders LIVE! radio show, in which he lied about me, my book, and our encounter at his presentation. In response, I decided to make a little video that addresses not just the lies Barton told about me on his show but also the lies he told in the presentation that I attended.
Unlike Barton, I don't have the resources to produce and distribute a plethora of slick videos. All I have is the camera on my laptop, a rudimentary knowledge of iMovie, and YouTube. The only advantage I have over Barton is that I'm telling the truth -- about both him and American history. Hopefully, at some point, I'll be able to make a higher quality video, but for now, my homemade effort will have to do.
I've posted this video before, but since Barton is still using the same presentation, I'm still using the same video to respond to it. There's some stuff at the beginning about what Barton said about me on his radio show last year, but, other than that, my video is still current because Barton hasn't changed his presentation.