In the January 10/17 issue of The Nation, Frances Fox Piven published an essay calling for a new protest movement in the United States aimed at redressing the situation of the poor and the unemployed. She wrote at one point in the essay:
Local protests have to accumulate and spread—and become more disruptive— to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.
The strikes and riots in Greece ended up destroying a great deal of property and costing lives. In one instance, protesters threw a Molotov cocktail through the front window of Marfin Bank in central Athens. Three people inside died from asphyxiation and four others were badly injured. There were other atrocities. I wrote about the student protests in England here.
Piven is a professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is best known as the co-inventor, with her husband, Richard Cloward (1926-2001,) of a proposal for crippling the welfare state in order to force the adoption of a guaranteed annual income for the poor. Their outline of the idea was first published in The Nation in 1966 as an article titled, “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.” It became known as the “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” and was generalized by some, such as Peter Dreier, as an approach for disrupting the liberal state in a variety of contexts.
Piven has never been entirely out of the spotlight. After her work in welfare reform in the 1960s and 1970s, she and her husband turned their attention to voter registration and became key proponents of “motor voter” and other techniques for increasing minority voter registration. The sometimes openly avowed goal was to create class polarization by baiting Republicans to stand in the way of using welfare offices to register new voters. Motor voter was approved but the hoped-for reaction by Republicans never materialized.
The consistent theme of Piven’s work has been the desire to set Americans against one another in the hope that out of the resulting conflict will come a more organized and energized movement of the poor and disenfranchised. Thus Piven’s recent invocation of riots in Greece and protests in England is nothing especially novel.
Her views have also attracted a fair amount of criticism from both conservatives and liberals. Jim Sleeper, John McWhorter, and Ronald Radosh have over the years faulted her proposals. It was Radosh who drew attention to her recent article in The Nation. One source of the renewed interest in Piven is Stanley Kurtz’s book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, which I commented on here. Kurtz notes that Piven gave the plenary address at the 1983 Cooper Union Socialist Scholars Conference, attended by the young Barack Obama. Later Piven, working through her own organization, HumanServe, to advance the motor-voter cause, partnered with ACORN. Obama was ACORN’s lawyer in a suit aimed at enforcing the motor-voter law. Kurtz doesn’t claim a direct tie between Piven and Obama, but he establishes Piven’s broad influence over the socialist and community-organizing circles Obama traveled in.
But what has pushed Piven much higher in the realm of name recognition is that she has been singled out by the radio and television personality Glenn Beck, who in the last two years has named her as someone who wants “to intentionally collapse our economic system.” Beck’s repeated criticisms of Piven have in turn stirred up a polarized reaction. Some share Beck’s outrage; others are outraged at Beck for his subjecting her to this kind of attention.
This controversy might in principle have remained in the popular press, but it has in fact rather quickly become a topic of academic debate too. The Chronicle reported this week that Cary Nelson, president of the AAUP, issued a statement saying that Piven is the victim of “what nearly amounts to an American Fatwa,” from Beck’s “virulent attacks.” Nelson says, “Amid these relentless tirades, Professor Piven has herself begun to receive threats of violence.” And he concludes by calling for—what else?—civility: “We join others in strongly urging those who are critical of Professor Piven’s writings to advance their positions in ways that foster responsible criticism and debate.”
“Responsible criticism and debate.” These are the cynosures of academic discourse. Who would be opposed?
Actually, it would seem, quite a few, perhaps beginning with Cary Nelson himself, who, by invoking the idea of “an American Fatwa,” indulged in the kind of rhetoric that can hardly be called responsible or conducive to debate. If you imply that someone is seeking to kill his opponents, you have pretty much ruled out the grounds for a respectful airing of differences of opinion.
For the record, I have been unable to locate any instance in which Beck called for Piven’s death or incited violence against her. As many others have pointed out, however, Piven herself has long extolled the value of civil unrest up to and including riots, which would seem to put her own academic discourse in a place other than “responsible criticism and debate.” Her belief in the salutary character of some kinds of violence is, of course, not an isolated case in academe. Frantz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth, long a staple in American college reading lists, luxuriates in the idea of the liberating quality of killing the oppressor. The academy has its share of men and women who theorize on the utility of revolutionary violence—and a few who have actually practiced it. On that scale, Piven is something of a moderate. She is attracted to the idea of violent social disruption but doesn’t apotheosize killing for its own sake.
Nelson is not alone in coming to Piven’s defense. Perhaps most notably, the American Sociological Association issued a statement on January 24 expressing “outrage at the attacks made on Professor Frances Fox Piven by Glenn Beck.” Like Nelson, the ASA folks enunciate their disappointment that disagreement with Piven has not taken a more elevated tone. They write, “Scholars of her caliber, intellectuals of her stature, and especially those who tackle social conflicts and contradictions, mass movements and political action, should stimulate equal levels of serious challenge and creative dialogue.” The ASA statement in turn attracted the attention of University of Wisconsin law professor and blogger Ann Althouse, who “fisked” the document.
Beck’s attention to Piven has driven much of the media interest in the story—but also much of the interest among faculty members, a great deal of which has been overheated. Cary Nelson and the American Sociological Association are no exceptions. They call sanctimoniously for “dialogue,” but ignore the body of scholarly criticism that already exists about Piven’s work. It is hard not to see a flag of convenience in this newfound interest in “serious challenge” and “debate” by those whose usual practice is to ignore those who dissent from progressive orthodoxy.
But what about Beck? Are his comments about Piven fairly characterized as having crossed some line into dangerous irresponsibility? I don’t see it. What Beck does on the air is certainly not scholarship. He isn’t drawing careful distinctions, seeking nuance, or searching for contextual understanding. He is, rather, engaged in polemic. This is, however, a form that requires some mastery of the facts and considerable ability to frame a persuasive argument. He or his assistants have done their research. I doubt that he has factually misrepresented Piven’s statements. He has, however, offered a strong interpretation of what those mean, and his conclusion is that she is a deep source of intellectual mischief in American life.
Those who are culturally or politically more or less on Piven’s side resent this picture of themselves, and some have responded hyperbolically. We are never really lacking in things to get angry about, and, as anger has increasingly become a way for Americans to actualize their identities, an affair like this provides an opportunity to soar on wings of righteous indignation.
I don’t think American life in general has been improved by this too-ready resort to histrionic anger, whether it comes from Glenn Beck or Cary Nelson. It abides on both the left and the right. Whether it abides more on one side than the other is a ticklish question. The left explodes in anger if you suggest it is the more rageful of the two. The right tends to laugh at the idea. But there is clearly enough anger-spiked tea to fill everyone’s cup.
Higher education has no special immunity from the angri-culture. On the contrary, it is a privileged haunt for those who delight in scorn, derision, and wrathful dislike of mainstream American culture. We cite academic freedom as guaranteeing our right to be vitriolic.
I don’t know of any simple remedy for that, but I do think it comes across to most Americans as hypocrisy. To claim academic freedom as a protection of one’s own diatribes while crying “no fair” when someone aims a diatribe back at you requires a clownish degree of self-regard. Unfortunately, what most Americans will take from this affair is that higher education has an abundance of that particular quality.
36 Responses to The Beck-Piven Controversy
chuckkle - February 11, 2011 at 4:33 am
Wood’s sleight of hand here is ignoring that one obvious result of Beck’s rants was Piven receiving death threats. This is what alarmed her defenders, especially in the wake of the recent Tucson shootings.
We don’t seem to find death threats coming from the left aimed at conservative public figures criticized by say, Rachel Maddow. We do seem to find death threats frequently aimed at liberal and left figures highlighted by Beck and other right wing talk personalities.
Why the difference? Peter Wood seems unable to address this, and just looks the other way. Some might call it a double standard.
Chuck Kleinhans
ssaulvolk - February 11, 2011 at 6:42 am
What Wood quite consciously ignores is what we can call the “law of proportionality.” To compare Glenn Beck and Cary Nelson, “right” and “left” as equally trading in “histrionic anger” is to argue that both have the same access to the public square. They don’t. Beck gets to peddle his anger-laced polemic on a daily forum that reaches millions and millions; Nelson is lucky if the press quotes him. (I won’t even mention the truely loony absurdity of Beck’s appointing Fox Piven as a serious threat to the United States.)
Steven Volk
jffoster - February 11, 2011 at 7:14 am
Perhaps if Professor Piven can’t stand the heat, she should get back to the kitchen.
ssaulvolk - February 11, 2011 at 8:02 am
Amazing, jffoster – you’ve not only delivered a gem of a sexist remark, but you’ve managed to argue that people who don’t like to be on the receiving end of death threats should just shut up. Excellent arguments for a democratic society.
Steven Volk
partlydave - February 11, 2011 at 8:13 am
I think Wood’s point is well-taken. Some people have made a morality play of this with Beck as the evil polemicist and Piven as the hapless victim. The reality of it, as an intellectual debate, is more nuanced and complicated. It is the vituperative nature of national debate these days that has given the whole matter this particular cast.
22259152 - February 11, 2011 at 8:57 am
Mr. Wood,
Well said. It seems the article has generated the exact “clownish degree of self-regard” as evidenced by some of the comments above. Comments such as only liberals receive death threats is absurd. It reflects a sheltered existence. Or to suggest that Beck has greater access to the public square thereby spewing his rhetoric to millions is ludicrous. How many millions of young minds have passed through the halls of Academe? Let’s stick to the argument at hand. Beck states Piven’s ideology is dangerous to America. Either prove or disprove his assertion.
11223435 - February 11, 2011 at 9:17 am
The pun “angri-culture” is nice. I hope it catches on!
22067030 - February 11, 2011 at 9:39 am
Getting out my Ouija board and crystal ball to channel Mark Twain, I would suggest to outraged progressives that there might be an opportunity here. Glenn Beck has made Frances Piven into a celebrity, which is to say that she is now in a position to appear on main stream TV talk shows — possibly even Beck’s if she’s up to challenging him to a debate. Of course, the reason why Twain’s ghost would suggest this is that Twain himself is good on his feet, and would make mincemeat out of Beck; if Piven was not up to that, she could (like Charles Darwin) rely on her pen and a good bulldog (as Darwin relied on Thomas Huxley).
At any rate, an opportunity like this one should not be dismissed simply because Beck is demagogue and some of his fans are nuts. Beck has provided her with a soapbox that comes only once in a lifetime.
—–GLMcColm
drspektor - February 11, 2011 at 11:35 am
GLMcColm wrote: “Glenn Beck has made Frances Piven into a celebrity, which is to say that she is now in a position to appear on main stream TV talk shows — possibly even Beck’s if she’s up to challenging him to a debate.”
Oh, that’s rich. Only a fool would go on beck’s show to “debate” him, becuase it is HIS SHOW. You also assume beck understands what a debate is.
The only way Piven should do this would be at a neutral site, with the well-established rules of civil debate in place.
I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that beck would NEVER accept that invitation, becaue he would not be in control of the forum.
chuckkle - February 11, 2011 at 11:39 am
Wood: “He is, rather, engaged in polemic. This is, however, a form that requires some mastery of the facts and considerable ability to frame a persuasive argument.”
Beck: “I denounce violent threats and calls for the destruction of our system – regardless of their underlying ideology – whether they come from the Hutaree Militia or Frances Fox Piven.”
Piven is somehow equivalent to a group who had 9 members arrested in March 2010 for a plot to kill various police officers using firearms and explosives? This is a “persuasive argument”? Let’s ask someone who has pretty good conservative credentials about Beck: Bill Kristol.
“But hysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.”
Chuck Kleinhans
katisumas - February 11, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Franz Fanon was no academic. He was a psychiatrist. His concern was colonialism and the suffering under foreign colonialists of the Algerian people. His concern started when he found out that his patients were suffering mentally from colonialism and he went from there looking at the economic and cultural traumas caused by the violence of colonialism (of course, colonial regimes had to terrorize the native populations in order to keep it under check. We are now more familiar with the psychological aspect of this with PTSD).
So does any of Fanon’s writings ring a bell here? You know, the way our founding fathers took up arms to fight our own colonizers? Where are the Teapartiers when it comes to other people seeking their freedom?
As for Glenn Beck he is documented stating that Piven is the secret puppet master and Obama and his administration are her puppets…. And yes, as other authors and posters have noted, Beck claiming that Piven is trying to destroy the country is akin to a fatwa directly responsible for the death threats against her and will be directly responsible if some unbalanced individual decides to murder her.
Did you, Peter Wood, actually heard of Piven before this controversy? Do you usually read the Nation? I suspect not otherwise you and Beck might have picked on the magazine itself and its other contributors? Or how about the many columnists in the New York Times, the Guardian and other media that expressed sympathy in their opinion columns for the European protesters?
Why, with this wealth of choices, do you suppose Beck singled out this 78 year old academic? Could it be because he thought she’d be too flustered and weak to defend herself? (same resoning as purse snatchers use when selecting their victims)–or was it simply that he picked her name out of a hat containing the names of potential victims that his staff had compiled?
I might go for the diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia myself because I’ve seen him with my own eyes on his TV show claiming that the bas-reliefs at the Rockfeller Center are manifestations of communist ideology and pointing out the telling details… I can’t remember what they were. One of them might have been a figure hoding a sheaf of wheat stalks? It’s like one of those absurd dreams you can’t remember once you wake up because they don’t make any sense in the light of day.
And now that the Egyptian people of all ages and all walks of life and religions (Muslims and Christians have been praying together on Liberation Square) are striving for democracy after 30 years of dictatorship and of being terrorized by their own government, Beck sees this as the beginning of a world wide caliphate (THE CALIPHATE!) which will somehow also involve China invading New Zealand and Australia.
As for Greece (and other European countries), at least the people did protest the theft of their livelihoods and social safety net by global financial system and its new billionaires. Peter Wood’s argument is akin to a psychopath stating to his/her victim: “look what you made me do”.
Unfortunately he doesn’t have to worry about the US. Here the TeaParty took to the streets to actually demand that the government do away with their social security and Medicare, or at least do away with it for their children’s generation. This of course meshes with the notion that anyone unemployed because of the Great Recession is so because he/she is a lazy bum. Exactly the same language as was used during the Great Depression. How sad.
PS: there was a time in the sixties where some extreme leftwing individuals and their followers were as extremist (though I don’t remember they being as ignorant?) as the spokespersons of today’s extreme right. But we don’t even have a left today. What we have is a center and an extreme right that’s become mainstream and claims the center is the left… There’s no equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bachman and Palin in what what used to be known as the Center and what they now call the extreme “left”.
11294480 - February 11, 2011 at 12:35 pm
In the halls of academe, where it is not only politically incorrect, but occupationally incorrect to even feign support of a conservative position, I applaud Peter Wood’s insightful balance. The vitriol that he induces from those who attack his position only proves his point.
katisumas - February 11, 2011 at 12:35 pm
To 22067030:
Darwin: 1809 – 1882
Huxley: 1894 – 1963
So Darwin couldn’t have “relied on Huxley to be his bulldog”. Darwin’s writings are pretty convincing on their own, so they convinced Huxley and all the scientists through the past two centuries and a couple of decades who built on them.
I’m absolutely certain Piven isn’t interested in appearing on TV shows. Beck didn’t do her any favor, even unwittingly. What he did is to turn Piven’s last remaining (she’s 78) golden years into hell.
cwinton - February 11, 2011 at 1:14 pm
This whole controversy is theater of the absurd. On the one hand you have the buffoon Glen Beck and on the other the virtually unknown (at least to the vast majority), near octogenarian Frances Piven, plucked from near obscurity for a manufactured controversy to boost TV ratings. That this ended up in death threats of some sort is a pathetic reflection on how Glen Beck has become a variation of Jerry Springer.
wilman - February 11, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Again, I ask. Where are the facts concerning these death threats? Anonymous threats could come from anyone. Where is the proof that these threats are originating with Beck supporters? Accusations are flying without evidence. Nutjobs can get onto any site and post what they want so who is to say that these are not fake threats that are posted or made by leftwing nutjobs in order to point a finger of blame at Glenn Beck. It has happened before.
Beck continually speaks out against violence or retaliation. Ms Piven speaks and incites violence and riots but is given a pass since she is a professor. If she is indeed just a elderly professor who means no harm then why are people taking her words at face value and rioting? What she is calling for is taking place. Beck is not calling for violence or retaliation but threats are being attributed to his followers. Seems like there is a double standard that most are failing to see.
orthodoc - February 11, 2011 at 2:05 pm
So the fact that Piven is old somehow shields her from being called out as a left-wing idiot?
Sorry, the death threat argument doesn’t wash. The left threatens anyone even mildly right of center all the time.
Palin Death Threats at ‘Unprecedented Level’ US News Jan 2011
White Political Ralliers Call for Lynching of Black Justice Feb 2011
Bush was routinely called Hitler for 8 years, and received innumerable death threats. http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621
And from other media figures – who aren’t simply criticizing but specifically calling for someone to die, usually horribly.
■ “I’m waiting for the day when I pick it up, pick up a newspaper or click on the Internet and find out he’s choked to death on his own throat fat or a great big wad of saliva or something, you know, whatever. Go away, Rush, you make me sick!” — Mike Malloy o January 4, 2010 Mike Malloy Show,
■ “Rush Limbaugh is beginning to look more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet, but we’ll be there to watch.” — Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, October 13, 2009.
■ “So, Michele, slit your wrist! Go ahead! [chuckles] I mean, you know, why not? I mean, if you want to — or, you know, do us all a better thing. Move that knife up about two feet. I mean, start right at the collarbone.” — Montel Williams talking about Representative Michele Bachmann on Air America’s Montel Across America, September 2, 2009.
■ “He is an enemy of the country, in my opinion, Dick Cheney is, he is an enemy of the country…. You know, Lord, take him to the Promised Land, will you? See, I don’t even wish the guy goes to Hell, I just want to get him the hell out of here.” — Ed Schultz, The Ed Schultz Show, May 11, 2009.
■ “I hear about Tony Snow and say to myself, well, stand up every day, lie to the American people at the behest of your dictator-esque boss and well, how could a cancer NOT grow in you. Work for Fox News, spinning the truth in to a billion knots and how can your gut not rot?” — San Francisco radio talk show host Charles Karel Bouley in a March 27, 2007 article at The Huffington Post that was later pulled “at the request of the author.”
■ “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” — Host Bill Maher on his HBO show Real Time, March 2, 2007, discussing how a few commenters at a left-wing blog were upset that an attempt to kill Vice President Cheney in Afghanistan had failed.
■ “Earlier today, a rental truck carried a half a million ballots from Palm Beach to the Florida Supreme Court there in Tallahassee. CNN had live helicopter coverage from the truck making its way up the Florida highway, and for a few brief moments, America held the hope that O.J. Simpson had murdered Katherine Harris.” — Bill Maher on ABC’s Politically Incorrect, November 30, 2000.
■ Host Tina Gulland: “I don’t think I have any Jesse Helms defenders here. Nina?”
NPR’s Nina Totenberg: “Not me. I think he ought to be worried about what’s going on in the Good Lord’s mind, because if there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.” — Exchange on the July 8, 1995 Inside Washington, after Helms said the government spends too much on AIDS.
■ “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease….He is an absolutely reprehensible person.” — USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk show host Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, November 4, 1994 PBS To the Contrary.
■ “Michelle Malkin [is just] a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” October 13, 2009.
I can’t believe anyone would defend this old coot. And I can’t believe anyone on the left has the nerve to complain about lack of “civility” with this history.
josebb - February 11, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Chuck – Death threats – good try but no cigar. If someone receives a serious death threat they go to the police and file a report. Police reports are open public records – why don’t any exist? Furthermore, who do you think has received more death threats – Sarah Palin or Fox-Pivin? Who would be responsible for that – Beck or Olbermaddow?
Shorter Volk: His soapbox is taller than mine so his right to free speech is less than mine. This is too easy (p.s. I agree with your comment on jffoster’s sexist remark).
Katisumas – psychiatrist-> PTSD -> Teapartiers are hypocrites -> Beck -> Fatwa -> Death threats -> the Nation’s poor confused grandma – > wheat stalks -> Caliphate -> evil corporations -> Teapartiers steal from children -> right wing crazies much worse than left wing crazies. Umm… OK
Cwinton – is not our media enshrined in our constitution as a watchdog on big brother? Has not Fox-Piven received funding from government? Why is it wrong for the camel to stick his nose under academia’s tent?
Wilman & orthodoc provide the most coherent comments on this board.
bobtra98 - February 11, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Fortunately for Piven, Freedom of Speech enables her to protest the democracy that provides her with freedom of speech (until she and her comrades achieve Socialist nirvana and destroy America, at which point her ability to criticize the government will cease to exist). In which of the world’s Socialist/Communist regimes are essays from academe welcomed again?
Sorry if taxpayer-funded academia has not provided Piven the liberal protection it used to. Beck never suggested that Piven be killed or even silenced (as most Leftists hope Beck and Fox are).
Free speech includes riot-inducing speech (like Piven’s), stupid speech (like the carbon dioxide that oxygen-producing trees need is a dangerous gas) and conservative speech. Until Frances and her idiotic friends take over anyway.
Good article, Mr. Wood: Fair and balanced.
beggingscholar - February 11, 2011 at 2:47 pm
pinning “angri-culture” down on universities, one should think how come that the universities became about the last and only place to exercise critical thinking (probably a better name for “scorn” and “derision”) in the whole society.
Howsoever harsh Piven’s words about the revolution may seem, they are nowhere near the degree of hatred and violence pouring out from the pages of the forum at Beck’s website. Guns, bullets, ugly face, toilet humor, rabid animal, kill. Why is nobody calling for censorship here?
beggingscholar - February 11, 2011 at 2:47 pm
pinning “angri-culture” down on universities, one should think how come that the universities became about the last and only place to exercise critical thinking (probably a better name for “scorn” and “derision”) in the whole society.
Howsoever harsh Piven’s words about the revolution may seem, they are nowhere near the degree of hatred and violence pouring out from the pages of the forum at Beck’s website. Guns, bullets, ugly face, toilet humor, rabid animal, kill. Double standards indeed
dank48 - February 11, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Katisumas, it’s Thomas Henry Huxley, not Aldous Huxley, for heaven’s sake. The term “Darwin’s Bulldog” is not of recent coinage. This is embarrassing.
josebb - February 11, 2011 at 3:34 pm
beggar – toilet humor indeed. Today Amanda Marcotte accuses republicans of wanting to ban feminine hygiene products for crying out loud
Critical Thinking? Universities the only place for critical thinking? Try NOT being a begging scholar and work outside academia. If your qualified, critical analysis is mostly what you do. (BTW in my view, critical thinking is for people not able to understand formal logic so you have to throw some touchy feely social justice and normative psychobabble drivel to make it sound scholarly).
eryx1959 - February 11, 2011 at 6:07 pm
Wishing that someone would die and suffer in the afterlife is not the same as inciting a poorly-informed and well-armed group of people to go and kill someone.
df1995 - February 11, 2011 at 7:41 pm
If you know Piven, you know she’s perfectly capable of lying about receiving death threats (or concocting them) to further her agenda. Meanwhile she gets $120,000 a year at CUNY even though she hasn’t had an original idea (good or bad) in forty years.
chuckkle - February 11, 2011 at 9:12 pm
df1995 claims “If you know Piven, you know she’s perfectly capable of lying” but hides behind anonymity. Does df1995 know Piven? or is this just another crazy rhetorical flourish with no basis in reality. Reminds me of the KKK wearing hoods while conducting a lynching. No courage of his/her convictions. Pathetic.
Meanwhile josebb, sending a message from an alternative universe, claims there are no death threats. Well, try this:
http://www.progressive.org/mc012111.html
“I got e-mails that said, ‘Die You Cunt,’ and ‘May cancer find you soon,’ ” she tells The Progressive. “And people are posting my address on the Internet with their messages that are really crude and ugly and violent.”
According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, several death threats against her have been posted on Beck’s website.
Here are a few:
“Be very careful what you ask for honey…A few well placed marksmen with high powered rifles…”
“Maybe they should burst through the front door of the arrogant elitist and slit the cow’s throat.”
“Somebody tell Frances I have 5,000 rounds ready.”
“We should blow up Piven’s office and home.”
“Let’s go string her up.”
“Snap her little chicken neck. This pinko filth needs a long dirt nap.”
Should we assume that similar statements directed at Peter Wood would just be laughed off by him? and his family and fellows at the NAS office?
Chuck Kleinhans
campidoctor - February 11, 2011 at 10:35 pm
The comments here confirm my belief in the direct correlation between education and cluelessness. Circle round the wagons boys, were all gonna die.
editrix - February 11, 2011 at 11:22 pm
chuckkle,
That looks roughly like a day’s worth of Michelle Malkin’s nastier e-mail.
rm3_frisker_ftn - February 12, 2011 at 12:15 am
@katisumas – February 11, 2011 at 12:35 pm: “What he did is to turn Piven’s last remaining (she’s 78) golden years into hell.”
There is a Vulcan saying … “Payback is a mother”
It is safe to say that Piven in her youthful professor days (1960s/1970s) made the lives of some folks in their ‘golden years’ into a living hell. Irony? Maybe there was a reason to study Greek Classical Drama after all. Likewise her ACORN associates.
Too bad those living out their ‘golden years’ in the 1960s/1970s are not alive today to see Piven subjected to what she subjected others to.
rm3_frisker_ftn - February 12, 2011 at 12:25 am
@chuckkle – February 11, 2011 at 9:12 pm: claims there were death threats via email
Action Items for Piven & Co given the serious nature of the situation:
(1) Publish all threatening emails, with the full and complete email headers (a savvy computer geek can show you how to reveal the full and complete headers, with each IP address the email traveled through, including origin)
(2) Publish phone bill, with all incoming phone numbers associated with threatening phone calls
(3) Publish the police report that was filed about the threatening communications. Piven signs the line saying “Under penalty of perjury blah blah blah”
(4) Publish an affidavit, with Piven again signing “Under penalty of perjury blah blah blah”
The Vulcans have another saying “Data Talks and Bovine Feces Walks”
chuckkle - February 12, 2011 at 2:38 am
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20110125/cm_thenation/158016
“The right’s propaganda campaign continually accuses the left of conspiracy when in fact the real conspiracies are on the right,” Piven told me. (This was after she carefully parsed the distinction between genuine death threats and people who write her notes saying, “I hope you fucking die you fucking bitch.” The latter, she explained, “Are just people wishing death on me.”)
http://www.thenation.com/article/157900/glenn-beck-targets-frances-fox-piven
what has been written about her by commentators on Glenn Beck’s website, The Blaze, where she’s been the target of a relentless campaign to demonize her—and worse. There, under cover of anonymous handles, scores of people have called for Piven’s murder, even volunteering to do the job with their own hands. “Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas [sic] ready and I’ll give My life to take Our freedom back,” wrote superwrench4. “ONE SHOT…ONE KILL!” proclaimed Jst1425. “The only redistribution I am interested in is that of a precious metal…. LEAD,” declared Patriot1952. Posts like these are interwoven with ripples of misogyny, outbursts of bizarre anti-Semitism and crude insults about Piven’s looks (she’s actually a noted beauty) and age (she’s 78).
……
In fact, commenters seem at liberty to egg one another on: one poster pointedly noted that Piven lives in New York City and teaches at CUNY; another then linked to a website that listed Piven’s home address and phone number. “Why is this woman still alive?” asked capnjack. “Mainly because you haven’t killed her, I imagine. See, someone that really cares and has the courage of their conviction must actually DO SOMETHING,” responded Diamondback. And the calls for assassination are not limited to Piven. As Civilunrestnow put it in a post that perfectly captures the tenor of right-wing eliminationist fantasy, “I say bring it. 90 million legal gun owners with over 220 million legal firearms, MOST in the hands of people who claim to be center RIGHT. I think it’s time to reduce the surplus population of leeches, lay abouts, left wing nut jobs, the main stream media, liberal politicians and MOST defense attorneys.”
Chuck Kleinhans
bobby_b - February 12, 2011 at 5:10 am
Just a couple of quick points and observations:
- Beck gave a relatively calm, fact-intensive talk about Ms. Piven and her workproduct. He expressed no hatred of, or threat to, her. He did not indicate, either explicitly or implicitly, that anyone else should do anything about her, or to her. I’ve only watched him a few times, but I can tell you that the people here who describe him as delivering “rants” have likely never seen him; he is surprisingly calm in his delivery.
- To state that, since Ms. Piven received death threats, Beck must have acted the most wrongfully, simply begs the question at issue: indeed, Piven’s work of which Beck complains was an exhortation to the poor of the world to rise up and enter into violent rebellion. I’m not poor, and so, frankly, what Piven advocates is a direct threat of violence to me. Beck didn’t induce Piven to say such a thing; she said it purposefully and clearly, all on her own. Beck may have shined a light on her advocacy, but it was that advocacy itself that attracted death threats.
When you call for one segment of society to enter into violent conflict with another segment of society, you shouldn’t be surprised when that second segment of society gets peeved at you.
i_callahan - February 12, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Piven actually DOES advocate for inciting violence. She said so herself. Glenn Beck has come out against violence in all of it’s forms. Yet there are people who still want to put the blame of all of this on Glenn Beck? Is the irony lost on the commenters?
Glenn has to spend about $1 million annually just on security for himself, his family, and his staff. At any given moment, there are 15 active threats against his life: fifteen threats that law enforcement take seriously enough to investigate. The FBI makes him wear a flak jacket at book signings and live stage shows.
You really have to be completely in the dark to believe that Beck is completely to blame here and Piven isn’t.
the_invisible_hand - February 12, 2011 at 4:43 pm
Piven is a big fan of uprisings, just not legitimate ones like the Tea Party.
Glenn Beck has done a fascinating job of deconstructing her and explaining the history behind some of the tactics. For example, many know of Edward Bernays and his work on Propaganda. Many also know that his uncle Sigmund Freud had some ideas on behavior. One of which revolved around manipulating people through stimulating the “irrational” part of the brain. Freud identified 4 things tied to irrational decisions: sex, aggression, security, and survival.
So, it is quite amusing to hear Piven babbling about the Tea Party; while randomly connecting dots to sex, security, aggression, and survival in a spectacle of sophistry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVwMMmhstQs&feature=player_embedded
Here’s a dot someone might be curious to connect. When talking about revolution should one consider any history between Obama and Piven? At the recent Tuscon gathering, we saw the branding of the event with the slogan “Together we Thrive”. Now, consider the history of that slogan. It goes back to the days of campaigning and Organizing for America. http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/johnberry_iv/C94H
Within that commentary was a line that many might find curious.
“What I see in Obama is a chance for a revolution.”
Before you dismiss Piven (and those with ties to Obama), ask yourself why? Why would someone see “a chance for a revolution in Obama”? And what does that even mean in America?
bill38 - February 12, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Years ago in the ‘nineties, when people were scared of backwoods militis, a milita member on Ted Koppel’s nightline said the publicity he’d gotten had brought him death threats. Koppel said he received many death threats each week, and that he just bundled them up and sent them to the FBI.
Does anyone who speaks out publically NOT receive death threats. As a previous commenter noted, Beck received plenty. Always to be taken seriously granted, but perhaps not as the cause of such histrionic anxiety as the defenders of Piven have expressed. It strikes me that political opportunism more than real fear is at the root of this.
tarkonfor - February 12, 2011 at 8:37 pm
Peaceful pursuit to advocating for the poor is very essential. The power of the media should be objectively used to inform the citizenary. The wind of social change is blowing and in this information age the prophecy of J.F. Kennedy is seeing its fulfillment. “You can fool some of the people for some of the time and you cannot fool all the people al the time.”
not4nothin - April 13, 2011 at 10:02 am
Gosh, those youngsters sure look like they’re having fun bouncing around the library and pitching paper plates in the stadium…
And here I am, stranded in Brooklyn, a short walk and a subway ride away from everything the best city in the world can offer.
I’m jealous. Wish I was anyone of them. ;-(