Glenn Beck's Lady Special: Founding Mothers Were Ugly

By Irin Carmon | July 6, 2010 | 2:00pm

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“Today is kind of like Oprah,” said Glenn Beck on his recent “Founding Mothers” special. True — if Oprah was all about calling Revolution-era women ugly, saying men are better, and blaming the erasure of women’s history on Marxists.

Just in time for the Fourth Of July, Beck devoted his weekly Founders’ Friday to the women of the era, with an all-female audience. As he brags in the intro, he’s already done two specials on black people. Told you Obama’s the real racist!

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What better way to celebrate women’s contributions than to make fun of their looks? “I have to tell you, this one, either the art was really, really bad back then or they just had ugly, ugly people,” he giggles, and suggests, based on another portrait of a female soldier, that its subject didn’t have to do much to pass as a man.

Then he asks, in a rather mind-twisting convergence of Beck’s conspiracy obsessions and principles of women’s history,

Does anybody have an explanation on why we didn’t learn this stuff yet? Does anybody have a theory? Why isn’t this stuff being taught? Is it important stuff or is it just frivolous?

So why is it left out? It could be that – were you going to say something? It’s intentionally left out. It could be for power reasons.

If you thought these “power reasons” had something to do with vested interests — property-holding white men holding on to their power, or that the reason we know anything at all about Abigail Adams and Phyllis Wheatley (cited, approvingly, later in the program) is because of the hard-fought efforts of women’s and African-American studies scholars — well, you’re wrong. Because it all goes back to the Marxists, whose obsession with social transformation required that we think the enlightened Founding Fathers were bad.

Yes, really. This clip is long, but it’s worth it to watch how Beck transitions from his Emma Thompson, Austen-hating imitation — seriously — to listening earnestly as liberals are blamed for erasing the contributions of women and black people from the story of the Revolution.

We may have been there, girls, but don’t get too uppity about it! Boys are still better. Just ask Glenn:

BECK: May I just say – my mother-in-law is in the audience, so close your ears. Sometimes guys pretend to be bad at stuff so then the wife — honey, you are so good at this. You know your husband stinks at wrapping presents so on Christmas eve, you’re wrapping all the presents. Really, we’re better than you.

As long as we know our place. Being decorative, not actually being as good at anything, and assuring Beck that the Marxists are to blame.

Women Of The Revolution [Glenn Beck]