COLUMN: Getting knowledge from the gut
It has been a mystery to me for some time why anyone would credit Glenn Beck as an actual source of information. He admits that he is nothing more than a clown for entertainment. Yet, people will listen to what he says as if he is reporting facts. He does not report facts … at least not facts that you can verify anywhere but your gut.
And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe too many people rely on their gut to tell them what is right. I know George W. Bush did that. And it was probably his gut that told him that he was a dissenting voice in the war in Iraq. However, that doesn’t make it true.
I know that Stephen Colbert mentioned that he relied on his gut to tell him facts. Here is what Colbert said:
“We go straight from the gut … that’s where the truth lies. Right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than in your head? You can look it up. Now I know some of you are going to say ‘I did look it up, and that’s not true.’ That’s because you looked it up in a book. Next time look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works.”
Maybe it is checking his gut that led Glenn Beck to once again mention his belief that of all of the Muslims in the world, he believes 10 percent of them are terrorists.
Were this a slip of the tongue, or even an impassioned speech, I may have been able to forgive Beck for his asinine comment. But, as the Huffington Post points out, Beck made a similar statement in his 2003 book “The Real America.” In his book he mentions that, after much “reading and prayer” (and I’m sure gut checking) while ninety percent of the people of Islam are peaceful, ten percent “want to see us dead.”
Now, I understand that while writing a book, especially while trying to make outlandish statements, it is hard to bother finding facts. After all, what is the use of fact finding? If Beck wishes to believe that the world is flat, what are facts to correct him? After all, it is his right as an American citizen to be as ignorant as he wishes.
It takes a true man to stand up for what is ‘right’ without fear of small details like ‘facts’.
Yet, I wonder if any of this is really Beck’s fault. If more people in the world check for facts, outside of their own gut, Beck may not be in such an influential place. The facts are available.
Muslims, according to a 2005 FBI database, only account for six percent of terrorist attacks on American soil. This puts them below all but one other group, including Jews who swing in at seven percent. The only other group that had less attacks on American soil were communists (this is also rather ironic since in the same speech about Muslims, Beck asserted that the communist party in America has a strong desire for a violent revolution, and then proceeded to get angry at the media-at-large for not reporting on this huge threat).
Since Islam is the second-biggest religion in the world, I would imagine that if 10 percent of them really wanted “us dead” as Beck suggests, they would account for more than the six percent of the attacks.
And still, I can’t decide what is more disturbing: (a) the fact that Glenn Beck repeatedly makes outlandish claims that 10 percent of all Muslims are terrorists, or (b) that people still listen to him and, worse yet, think he is a credible source of information.
Ben Zaritsky is a senior majoring in journalism and communications. He can be reached at ben.zaritsky@aggiemail.usu.edu