New York Times columnist Charles Blow had set the vitriolic tone during the show's first hour, accusing Beck of "hiding behind a cross" and participating in a "rhetorical assassination" of Pres. Obama.
HOWARD DEAN: You know, I think, it was kind of a Tea Party type of event. You know, 300,000 people is a lot of people to have on the Washington Mall, but in terms of who, how many people vote, it's not a very big crowd. I don't know what, I think that Glenn Beck has got a few things the matter with him, up here, up in the head there. So I just don't know what to make of it. I mean, it's a lot of people.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So, I didn't know. He's a doctor. You're a psychiatrist.And later . . .
DEAN: What I see is, these folks are kind of, and I don't mean this in a mean kind of way, but they're a little like lost souls in the sense that they really do, they're at sea, the country's changed a lot, they don't, they're in the middle of a horrible economic downturn which has probably affected a lot of them personally. So they follow this guy who is like Father Coughlin from the 1930s. He's a racist, he's a hate-monger.And here was Blow earlier . . .
WILLIE GEIST: You had a column Saturday about Mr. Beck's rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of the I Have A Dream speech. You said it incensed you, you called Beck the anti-King. Just lay out your criticism of Glenn Beck.Wonder when Charles ripped the Dissent is Patriotic sticker off his bumper?
CHARLES BLOW: Well Beck is an incredibly divisive figure, and no amount of him wrapping himself in the flag and hiding behind a cross is going to scrub his history of the things he has said and done. And he is part of what I see as a rhetorical assassination of a good man.
