09/26/2009 09:55 PM

Glenn Beck and his merry musings are fooling no one.

The hysterical denunciations of the other side are taken straight from the play book of the "Know Nothings" the racist group that tried to drive the Irish out of the U.S. after they landed here during the Great Famine.

Calling Obama a racist against whites, making Acorn,a group that enrolls blacks to vote a punching bag, taking every extreme statement by the other side and portraying it as official Democratic Party policy is the same demonizing tactic the Know Nothings used when they portrayed out Irish ancestors as ape and mocked our religion as superstitions.

Alas, the murder of a census worker in rural Kentucky is part of the inevitable outcome of whipping up such passions.

William Sparkman was a 51-year-old single father who had gone back to college in his mid-40s to earn a degree. He was looking for a teaching job when he took a temporary position as a census worker. Now he is dead, hanged and tied with the word 'fed' scrawled across his chest.

Did Glenn Beck kill him ? No. Did he help provide the rope that hung him? Maybe. His obsessive anti-government ranting was probably taken seriously by some ignorant "Deliverance" backwoodsmen who picked on a poor single father.

Sadly at the moment Beck is winning. His cover story in Time magazine means he has arrived but it is a one way journey for him. Like all the other racists cloaked in 'reasonable' discourse he can only outdo himself by becoming even more outrageous until his words begin to lack significance and he becomes full of sound and fury signifying nothing. I give him two more years max.

Compared to Beck, Bill O'Reilly is a principled conservative,someone I can disagree with but who knows where the line is between advocacy and hate speech. O'Reilly, perhaps mindful of his own ethnic history, would never stoop to the levels of Beck when railing against those he disagrees with.

O'Reilly always saves a slot for the other side, Sometimes he goes close to the edge but never too far. He is a professional who realizes the impact of his words on his millions of supporters.

In contrast Glenn Beck will do anything for a cheap headline and a rating point. He is one of the main reason there is such a poisonous political atmosphere in America today.