Glenn Beck

RE THE July 20 op-ed by Fatimah Ali: It's clear she doesn't get Glenn Beck. Mr. Beck purposely close Aug. 28, the anniversary of the '63 March on Washington, for his rally at the Lincoln Memorial. If the author watched Mr. Beck's program on a regular basis, she'd know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is highly revered by Glenn Beck. And, for the record, Mr. Obama isn't clearing up anyone's mess. He is, along with his administration, actually making everything far worse. We must all pray we can survive until he's mercifully voted out of office in two years.

SURPRISE! Fatimah Ali attacks Glenn Beck. As she points out, class divisions in our country are widening, our economy is in a downward spiral and there's anger and turmoil. Who does she blame? Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, the tea party and oh, yeah, the favorite black person's scapegoat, George Bush. But all this is going on while your guy Obama is supposedly running the show. As a white man, unprotected by civil-rights law, I'm calling for our elected officials to step up and fight for the civil rights of white people, too!

RESTORING honor? Speak for yourself! As I watched news updates of Glenn Beck's preposterous "Restoring Honor" rally this weekend, I was outraged. The U.S. has its problems to be sure, but a lack of honor is not one of them. Don't include me in that honor restoration program, because I have not lost mine and neither has my country. Despite political divisions and seemingly intractable problems, our Constitution is as strong as it has ever been - and the principles of our Founding Fathers will not steer us wrong, especially now when we need them most.

Talk-radio host Glenn Beck took a shot at Philadelphia on the air Tuesday, calling the area around Independence Hall "the killing streets" and proclaiming that the city was "not a place you want to be. " The remarks irked city officials. Mayor Nutter's spokesman told The Inquirer that Beck was suffering from a case of "verb-arrhea. " Philadelphia Police Lt. Ray Evers called Beck "misinformed. " The historic district, Evers said, "is actually one of the safest parts of the city, if not the country, with the number of law enforcement.

RE GLENN Beck's fit after his show was dumped here: I'm thoroughly convinced of just how much of a horse's behind he truly is. How blowhards like him and Rush Limbaugh have such huge followings shakes my faith in the intelligence of the American people. Jeffrey C. Branch, Philadelphia

WATCH OUT, Philadelphia. You are not safe downtown. There are gunmen hiding in the Liberty Bell, and that Betsy Ross impersonator might take you for everything you've got. At least, that's the fantasy world inhabited by right-wing radio host Glenn Beck, who declared on his show earlier this week that "Philadelphia sucks. " It's easy to laugh at Glenn Beck (boy, is it easy!). However, it's less amusing to think how his rhetoric might affect how others view Philadelphia. After all, Beck's program is carried by 22 affiliates across the state.

A few words about who "we" is. "This is a moment," said Glenn Beck three months ago on his radio program, "... that I think we 'reclaim' the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down. ... We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place!" Beck was promoting his "Restoring Honor" rally, held this weekend at the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously spoke there.

IT'S APPARENT from the dripping sarcasm that Elmer Smith holds a very low opinion of Glenn Beck and his religiously conservative views, particularly as opposed to those of Martin Luther King Jr., whose views were iterated some 47 years ago at the same location in Washington. I don't care for Beck either. However, it seems to me that Beck and King are pretty much "peas from the same pod. " Both represent vocal minorities (King the black and underprivileged, Beck the white and religiously conservative)

AS A RECENT visitor to Philadelphia, I was disappointed when I read about Glenn Beck's negative assessment of the city. I brought a group of students from Albany, N.Y., for a couple of days, and we enjoyed a very safe and enriching experience. From touring Eastern State Penitentiary to Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia's rich offerings on our nation's civic foundations are unparalleled. We walked downtown at night, lunched at Reading Terminal Market and stayed at Chamounix Mansion in Fairmount Park, and not once did we feel unsafe.

An event that organizers are billing as a pro-America demonstration, not a pro-war rally, will be held Sunday on the grounds of a nonprofit group in Valley Forge. Freedoms Foundation, which is dedicated to teaching history, constitutional rights and citizenship, has offered to allow the rally at its 105-acre campus next to Valley Forge National Historical Park. Glenn Beck, a syndicated radio talk show host based in Philadelphia, will lead the rally. His program airs locally on WPHT-AM (1210)

Could Sgt. Scott Moore , that sweet, smooth-pated Marine, possibly have imagined that his fantasy movie star babe would actually say yes to a date? That'd be Black Swan star Mila Kunis , who has accepted Moore's invitation to accompany him to the Marine Corps Ball on Nov. 18 in Greenville, N.C. Moore taped his YouTube invite in Musa Qala, Afghanistan, where he is serving with the Third Battalion Second Marines. "Hi, Mila, I just want to take a moment out of my day to invite you to the Marine Corps Ball with yours truly," he said.

Keith Olbermann's still preaching liberal gloom and doom to the choir, but the church pews have emptied. The commentator's Countdown audience, in the show's new home on the little Current cable network, is about one-third of what he averaged on MSNBC. But one man's decline can be another's stunning success. Since Olbermann arrived June 20, the audience weeknights at 8 p.m. on Current has increased fifteenfold, moving the network, founded six years ago by Democratic stalwarts Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, from total obscurity into cable's lower middle class.

I achieved a personal goal a week ago. But to the extent he had a similar aspiration, David Carr did not. We both appeared as panelists on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher . The program is televised in front of a live audience in Hollywood and rebroadcast over and over on subsequent days. The crowd is boisterous, the host can be acerbic, and the subject matter includes anything currently in the public realm. Which explains my goal in working without my radio show's customary seven-second delay: Create no YouTube moments.

CNN anchor Don Lemon , who spent several years as a reporter and weekend anchor at Philly's NBC10, writes in his new book, Transparent , that he is a gay American man. "Today I chose to step out on faith and begin openly living my own truth," Lemon said Monday in a statement. The journo tells the New York Times that his vocation demands that he be frank with his audience. "I abhor hypocrisy," he says. Us, too. "I think if you're going to be in the business of news, and telling people the truth, of trying to shed light in dark places, then you've got to be honest.

Glenn Beck is leaving his Fox News talk show, says Business Insider. Beck wants to "transition away later this year," according to his website The Blaze. A joint Beck/Fox news release says his production company, Mercury Radio Arts, will work with Fox News to develop and produce TV projects and digital content. For quite a while, The Glenn Beck Program was the third-highest-rated show in all cable news, behind two other Fox stalwarts, Bill O'Reilly 's O'Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity 's Hannity . But rumors said Fox was eagerly inviting Beck to transition, in light of ratings that (while still big for cable)

If you bought Monday's Groupon "Deal of the Day" offering of $30 worth of food for $15 at Franco's Trattoria on Ridge Avenue in East Falls, be advised that the restaurant closed for good over the weekend. Before the deal was pulled from Groupon's website Monday afternoon, 105 offers had been sold. A Groupon rep said purchases would be refunded. Building owner Mark Sherman said he was looking for a new operator to run the restaurant, which is off Kelly Drive beneath the twin bridges.

ILOVED the op-ed "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Brotherhood?" by Sarah Salwen, who manages an entire article on the Muslim Brotherhood and its role in Egypt's future, yet somehow manages to avoid the subject of sharia law, the very root of the Brotherhood's ideology. Salwen also believes they want free and fair elections, an end to violence and a democratic process. Actually, they want none of this. The Brotherhood is the Taliban. The Brotherhood is al Qaeda. The Brotherhood is the cornerstone of a worldwide agenda to bring sharia to every part of the globe.

AS A RECENT visitor to Philadelphia, I was disappointed when I read about Glenn Beck's negative assessment of the city. I brought a group of students from Albany, N.Y., for a couple of days, and we enjoyed a very safe and enriching experience. From touring Eastern State Penitentiary to Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia's rich offerings on our nation's civic foundations are unparalleled. We walked downtown at night, lunched at Reading Terminal Market and stayed at Chamounix Mansion in Fairmount Park, and not once did we feel unsafe.

RE THE op-ed "Massacre Triggered an Insane Reaction": Christine Flowers is correct when she says that attempts to link Jared Loughner's alleged actions to tea-party people or right-wing pundits amount to irresponsible and opportunistic grandstanding. But she's disingenuous when she compares the Tucson, Ariz., shooting to the assassination of George Tiller. Assassin Scott Roeder was a member of several organizations that shared his extremist views on abortion. In the 1990s, he authored contributions to Prayer & Action News, a magazine that supports the belief that the murder of abortion providers is justifiable.

Independence Hall is one of the safest areas in Philadelphia, and many Philadelphians were quick to counter Glenn Beck 's talk-radio rant last week in which he suggested otherwise. To dramatize the safety, WMGK-FM's John DeBella affixed $48 in bills to his clothing and set out to walk around the block for an hour in the dark at 6 p.m. Wednesday, trying to get mugged, while station promotion director Dan Fein videotaped him. When no crooks took the bait, the morning man walked up to people, stuck a microphone in their faces, and asked for their impressions of their personal safety.