Please Refrain From Homicidal Rampages

Via Gawker. It's appalling that it has come to this. Boo Fox News. Boo.

We all know that the types of people who watch Glenn Beck on Fox News aren't exactly intellectual leviathans, but what does it say about their collective sanity when Beck has to lecture them on-air about the perils of mass-murder.

• Beck closed his show tonight with a bizarre message to his viewers: don't go messing up all the progress we wingnuts are making at derailing the Obama presidency with obfuscations, distortions and outright lies with any sort of Timothy McVeigh or James Von Brunn-type shit!

  Watching this clip, one is struck by a number of oddities, the most obvious being that Beck is unusually subdued during this segment of his show. His message is delivered in a somewhat somber, straightforward manner. There are none of the typical Barnum-esque theatrics typically employed by Beck to drive his messages through to the wee brains of his followers. Here Glenn Beck is just simply looking into the camera and imploring his audience not to murder innocent people — "Just one lunatic like Timothy McVeigh could ruin everything that everyone has worked so hard for." —nothing unusual about that, is there?

  Well, yes, there is in fact something very unusual about it. One can't help but wonder, "What the hell provoked this?" Was it a demand from the higher-ups at Fox News, and do they know something that we don't about how close certain segments of the right-wing are to acting out violently? Remember when Shep Smith talked about the crazy-ass emails the staff at Fox get from unhinged right-wingers? Could this be tied to that?

  Then again, perhaps Beck's just feeling the heat from his "Obama is a racist" comment and is trying to do something to shine a positive light on himself. Whatever, the clip below is oddly compelling and scary as hell at the same time.