Media Matters Manufactures Another Glenn Beck 'Outrage'

Pity the poor soul at the far-left hack operation Media Matters whose job it is to sit around watching or listening to Glenn Beck, hanging on his every word waiting to pounce on some perceived offense. Or worse, you could be some schmo at the New York Daily News posing as a reporter sitting around waiting for the latest Media Matters post so you have some way to justify your salary.

Well, it must be another slow news day.

Glenn Beck may have stepped in it again.

Sort of.

The radio host and Fox News Channel commentator has folks in a minor uproar for even questioning the term African-American on his syndicated radio show Thursday.

“African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term,” Beck said, in a discussion about the new Census forms.

“That is not a race. Your ancestry is from Africa, and now you live in America. Okay, so you were brought over, either your family was brought over in the slave trade, or you were born here and your family immigrated here, or whatever. But that is not a race.”

Beck’s on-air guests agreed, noting the frequent misuse of African-American as a label, using, for instance, the term incorrectly applied to someone from Jamaica. Also, it’s not used to describe South African-born Charlize Theron, who is white and now a U.S. citizen.

The conversation stemmed from the new Census documents that give respondents three boxes from which to chose from: Black, African-American or Negro.

The watchdog group Media Matters picked up on the conversation and posted a clip on its Web site as has Thinkprogress.org.

“Negro used to be — is it still — not acceptable, is that still the clinical term, I don’t know,” Beck said. “It has negative connotations in this country. But what I’m asking is: what are the clinical categories?”

Not surprising, the clip, now circulating in the blogosphere, has generated a load of anti-Beck comments.

Of course these people seem to have short-term memory problems. It was just 20 years ago when Jesse Jackson made the push to put the term into popular use and the lapdog media quickly rushed to comply. I figure the twerps at Media Matters were probably still in diapers back then.

A movement led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call blacks African-Americans has met with both rousing approval and deep-seated skepticism in a debate that is coming to symbolize the role and history of blacks in this country.

The term, used for years in intellectual circles, is gaining currency among many other blacks, who say its use is a sign that they are accepting their difficult past and resolving a long ambivalence toward Africa.

So when Glenn Beck, or anyone else, says "African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term," what exactly is incorrect about that?

As for the drones at Media Matters, I hope they've seen this.