For I was drench'd with ooze, and torn with briers, . . . And, all one rag, disprinced from head to heel. --Tennyson.
Yes, Tennyson's "disprinced" can certainly be taken as a metaphor for Glenn Beck in all his glory, so the pun was definitely intended by me. It's ironic, though, that Pat Conroy's novel, The Prince of Tides, also deals with dysfunctional people. The Sunday July 18th shoot-out on California's Interstate 580 showed just how much of an effect Glenn Beck has had on those who cannot cope with life.
Byron Williams of Groveland, CA was a convicted felon on parole who lived with his mother far from town. His mother, Janice, was a woman who kept a large stash of high-powered weapons because she thought
(SF Weekly)that armed resistance against our government was inevitable -- but Williams allegedly made off with the stash because he felt that time was now.
Williams had been out of a job for two years since he was released from prison and felt ostracized from everyone - even by his own church. His mother repeatedly told the media that he had railed against
"the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." And that he would sometimes scream at the TV because he watched a lot of news programs.
After
he left his mother's house, a scene on California's I-580 near Oakland
unfolded as it would have in any B-movie: CHP officers noticed the
white Toyota pickup speeding erratically down the highway, followed and
signalled for the driver to pull over. Williams, armed with a small
arsenal and wearing body armor, ,proceeded to shoot at the officers.
Eighteen minutes, 60 rounds, ten officers, and three serious bullet
wounds later (a total of six rounds were fired into the body armor),
Williams was subdued and taken to the hospital where he was reported in
stable condition.
"He's
ruined his life because now he is going back to prison and he's ruined
mine because he is my only son," [Janice] Williams said.
The Righteous Assassination Defense
There
were two targets that Byron Williams had in mind when he said that he
wanted to "cause a revolution": the ACLU and the Tides Foundation. The
ACLU, of course, is widely known and is one of the "demon-spawns" of
the Right wingnuts everywhere. The Tides Foundation, however, is less
notable and has not been focused upon by the mainstream media.
Except Glenn Beck.
wikipedia:
Several political observers have suggested that recent Fox News coverage of the Tides foundation may have provided some of the motive for the attacks. In particular, Glenn Beck mentioned the Tides Foundation in 29 separate episodes of his show, referring to it as "a socialist conspiracy" which was "assembling an army." Other pundits observed that, aside from holding similar political views, there was no evidence that the shooter was acting as a result of watching Beck's show.
