Call for Fox News to drop Glenn Beck

From The Guardian:

A protest was staged against rightwing talkshow host Glenn Beck today, calling for his immediate removal from Fox News. The organisers, Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ), a charity that campaigns for social change, delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures. In the wake of the Tucson shooting, the TV and radio personality has had to defend his record against accusations that he has whipped up hatred within the public discourse. For a media figure who has been variously lambasted as a liar, buffoon, clown, bigot and racist Beck is no stranger to the vitriol that currently passes in America as public debate. In fact, he's built a multimillion dollar empire out of it. So the protest rally that was staged outside the News Corporation headquarters in New York today probably troubled him as much as water flowing off a duck's back.

The petition was part of a groundswell of opinion that when it comes to Beck, arguably the most extreme of America's multitude of rightwing talk hosts, enough is now enough. Amid the billowing criticism, Beck has defended himself by claiming he has “softened” the tone of his monologues over the past couple of years. “Nobody wants to recognise this. Why? Because it hurts their dialogue.” But the evidence belies his claim of moderation. The JFSJ accompanied the petition with a list of 10 of Beck's most egregious comments in 2010 (see below). They include Beck's radio comment on the financier and philanthropist, George Soros, that “here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps”. The remark was made in reference to Soros as a 13-year-old teenager in Hungary, who survived the Holocaust because his father hid their Jewish identity through elaborate forged documents.

More here.