Right-wing talker Glenn Beck took to his Fox News TV program last Monday night to deliver a rant about how President Obama has compiled something "almost like an enemies list" and how Obama is into "silencing opponents." The president's tool of choice for this censorship? Network neutrality—the principle that ISPs cannot interfere with content.
"We are dealing with people who think they should rebel until they get their little kingdom like Satan did," said Beck. "You know what? Thanks, Mr. President, but I think we're going to keep the Internet the way it is right now. You know—or at least until people who are worshipping Satan, you know, aren't in office."
The mechanism by which net neutrality will silence Beck and those like him remains murky, but the matter is clearly of great concern.
"The FCC also says they are marching forward, marching with a boot on your throat to— announcing plans to make Internet companies a public utility," he said. "Net neutrality—the court shot that one down, but they are going to make it a public utility now."
Or again: "So now, the president wants to regulate the Internet, to help control all the misinformation out there. He is going to do it with net neutrality. Well, the court said no... So, now what they're doing is the FCC is just going to—they're going to make it a public utility. The Internet. Where are you, America, without the Internet?"
The entire segment was driven by a recent Obama speech to graduates in which the president described the challenges of "coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kind of content and exposes us to all kind of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter."
(Beck interjected, "Oh no, let's ban that!" when replaying the clip.)
"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and Playstations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a distraction, a diversion," continued Obama.
Obama's particular remark here might sound noncontroversial, but Beck has always claimed to see the secret truth lying beneath the banal words—in this case, that Obama will use the FCC to shut him down.
It's not often that you hear about the inner workings of the FCC on cable news, especially coming from one of TV's most popular talkers. But Beck has mounted a one-man war on the FCC for the last 18 months, and he is determined to keep the "Marxists" from silencing him.
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