"I am a bigot, and proud of it!" Fox News Anchor Glenn Beck
There is no doubt that Fox News anchor Glenn Beck has to be the biggest wart on the face of the Universe. It’s bad enough that one has to endure his nonsensical rants about liberal values, but one has to live through his mug on the best-seller list and a clip that has made it to the top of “top thousand videos that make you want to be a roach and not a human”
So now, as if pissing off decent humans in the United States is not enough, Beck has cast his net far and wide, criticizing India – and it’s health care system in particular.
Thanks to John V. Santore’s post on mediamatters.org (posted in full below), here is Glenn Beck with his new class – How to be a bigot 101.
John V. Santore writes:
In support of health care reform, SEIU’s website recently highlighted the case of Karlyn Zimbelman, an American who received successful medical treatment abroad because she couldn’t foot the $40,000 bill for hip replacement surgery she would have been forced to pay in the United States.
And so, she went to India, where the surgery and 13 days of medical care cost her $12,500 — $16,500 with travel and other costs.
Beck ran parts of a video testimonial from Ms. Zimbelman, who had the audacity to say the following: “I think the American health care system is excellent, but I just think it’s so expensive.
Where’s the money going?” Beck then offered the following explanation of the cost differential (emphasis added):
The best I can figure is all that money goes to high-tech hospitals and doctors who studied at Harvard rather than Gajra Raja medical school. Oh sure, yeah, you know, it’s weird. You can buy a Gucci bag on any New York street corner for like four bucks. No different than the 3,000 dollar real thing. They’re identical!
But he wasn’t finished.
Beck continued (emphasis added):
And also, in our research that it took us, oh about 40 seconds, we figured out that some of that money here in America winds up in the pocket of a skilled doctor that helps off-set the 20 years of schooling that he endured and the loans he took out. And – you’re not going to believe this one, Karlyn – some of that money seems to go to the 1 million SEIU workers in the healthcare industry that make slightly more here than in India. Because, you know, they have an American lifestyle, maybe a couple of cars, great union benefits, and homes with something that we in America like to call flush toilets.
And finally (emphasis added)
I don’t want a discounted doctor. I don’t want discounted wages. I don’t want any of this stuff. If I wanted to live in India, I’d live in India. I want not the Indian lifestyle, I want the American lifestyle. I’m sure, no offense to India, I’m sure it’s beautiful and everything. I’ve heard especially this time of year, especially by the – you know that one big river they have there that sounds like a disease? Come on, it does. I mean, if somebody said, ‘I’m sorry, you have a really bad case of Ganges,’ you’d want Cipro.”
Thus, within the span of a few minutes, Beck implied that there are no quality medical schools in India; implied that medical care in India is a shoddy imitation of real health care; implied that the entire nation is an undeveloped backwater without even so much as indoor plumbing; and compared the Ganges River, a holy body of water for one of the world’s oldest and largest religions, to a disease.
What does this say about Beck’s respect for the millions of Indian-Americans living in the United States, let alone the Indian people? What does it say about his respect for the faith traditions of others? What does it say about his views on the tens of thousands of doctors who graduate Indian medical schools every year in the hopes of serving the world’s second largest nation? Or on the tens of thousands of doctors who studied medicine in India but now practice it in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia?
John Santore concludes, why does Beck feel that ignorant, bigoted rants like these are funny? Or does he simply have so little respect for his viewers that he thinks he must resort to this kind of xenophobia in order to maintain his ratings?
Oh man! We at indiejourno think it’s embarrassing to watch Beck continually brandishing his ignorance like a sword made of indestructible material.
It’s obvious he is unaware that a lot of the world class hospitals in India are set up by U.S educated doctors.
Even the ones who go to med school in India are highly trained. I am not sure if Mr.Beck knows this, but each year, India manages to save millions of people – from coughs and colds, garden variety brain tumors, complicated open heart surgeries, messy accident victims and the like.
And unlike America, where corporate greed and capitalism supersedes humanism, India manages to dish out healthcare for its richest and the poorest alike.
Maybe Beck should step out of his air-conditioned TV studio to see how the rest of the world actually lives. The other half of normal, sane, and actual god-fearing people.
Watch Beck’s bile-inducing rants here.
