Holy shit. Did Glenn Beck just kill a poor little frog, on national teevee? Yes! Or...no, maybe it was faked! Or maybe it was real, and Beck is now having to pretend he faked it? Or not! WHO KNOWS. This is what you get with Glenn Beck, fighting the phantom "OLIGARHY" with his wacky "morning Zoo" stunts of yesteryear!
This afternoon, Glenn Beck had been fulminating on topics, varied and sundry, including how awful John McCain is, for liking Theodore Roosevelt. He was building to some sort of point, decrying Republicans and Democrats, saying, "You can support Democrats, who are basically socialists, or you can support Republicans, who are basically old Democrats." No, I wasn't really able to make sense of that either. But then Beck's attention turned to the old frogs-in-boiling-water metaphor.
"You know the old saying, if you put a frog into boiling water, he's going to jump right out, because he's scalding hot, but if you place the frog in lukewarm water and gradually raise the temperature, it won't realize what's happening and die?"
Yes! I have heard that old saying, because I, too, have encountered homeless paranoiacs at the Port Authority Bus Terminal!
Anyway, that's when Beck apparently palmed a rubber frog, and began building to his crescendo:
Barack Obama has galvanized the country, because of the sheer size of the bills he's proposed, and the number of the bills, the urgency he's placing on the bills. He's forced us to think! And get involved! We have -- not like John McCain, been boiled slowly -- we have been tossed quickly into boiling water, and don't forget what happens! What happens when you throw 'em in! When you throw 'em in, frogs into boiling water!
[throws frog in, nothing happens]
Okay...forget the frog. [pause] I swear I thought they jumped right out. But they don't.
What just happened? By all appearances, Glenn Beck had murdered a frog. But he quickly offered, "Forget about the Republicans, because most of them are fake. Forget about the Democrats, because most of them are fake. And forget about the frog, because it was fake!" Oh! Okay! So the only thing that was murdered was Beck's metaphor, in which his hyper-informed viewers were capable of jumping out of boiling water.
In case you were wondering, everything you have heard about the frogs-in-boiling-water fable is biologically and zoologically incorrect:
Professor Doug Melton, Harvard University Biology Department, says, "If you put a frog in boiling water, it won't jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot -- they don't sit still for you."
So do not try this at home. Do not try anything you see on the Glenn Beck show at home.
[CORRECTION: I accidentally mistranscribed this quote, "Forget about the Republicans, because most of them are fake. Forget about the Democrats, because most of them are fake," leaving the word "Republicans" in both clauses. I imagine that didn't make much sense! The fault was mine, and it has been duly corrected.]
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