Glenn Beck compares shooting victims to Hitler Youth

Beck's comments suggest shooting massacre in Norway are dismissible

I didn't have a chance to respond to this story earlier in the week, but I think it's important to get it out there still. The actions of people like Glenn Beck, who believe in their ideals so passionately, need to be addressed, condemned by as many people as possible as just plain wrong, detrimental even to our society.

Glenn Beck recently made a statement on his radio program regarding the bombing in Oslo and the shootings at a youth camp in Norway. What he said actually says so many things in just three short sentences, especially when you dig deeper into the mechanics of his statement:

[The camp] sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever. Who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing.

Let's examine this closer.

Beck is saying that the camp itself is absurd, comparing it to the Hitler Youth camps of Nazi Germany. Political organizations for the young, however, aren't uncommon -- indeed, just last month Scott Walker's own son was elected Governor at Badger Boys State. Beck's 9-12 organization has sponsored several political youth groups as well.

So it's Beck doing what he does best: acting in a hypocritical way. But what's most disturbing of all is Beck's total disregard for what prompted his statement in the first place.

These kids were SHOT AT, some of them KILLED, by a radical conservative lunatic with a vendetta against liberalism. Beck's statement, in ignoring that key point and jumping to criticism of the camp itself, says a lot more about his character than he's probably trying to reveal.

At one level, he's simply overlooking a terrible act so that he can talk about something else -- "this bad thing happened, but isn't this aspect of it weird?" If he can shift focus away from the murderous rampage, then he can point out the absurdity (in his own mind) of a camp for young progressives.

But on a more disturbing level, Beck's criticism suggests that the acts of the gunman are wholly dismissible, perhaps even justifiable, because, after all, these kids were just like the Hitler Youth (which, of course, is utterly untrue). In Beck's own mind, the true crime here wasn't the shooter's actions but rather that Labour Party kids were at a camp that promoted their progressive ideals.

Beck's lows have always been remarkable. But this is low even for him -- or perhaps indicative of just how awful a person he really is.