This Saturday is Fox News host Glenn Beck’s highly-anticipated “Restoring Honor” rally, and in recent days, cable new channels from Beck’s Fox to MSNBC have devoted significant air time to the upcoming event. Meanwhile, a Google News search of just the past week delivered over 420 print news articles and blog posts discussing the rally. But Republican National Committee Communications Director Doug Heye apparently missed all this coverage, telling the Washington Post, “I don’t know about any Glenn Beck event:”
“In general, people coming to Washington, being organized and active is a good thing,” said Doug Heye, a spokesman for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele. “But I gotta be honest with you — I don’t know about any Glenn Beck event.”
For someone whose job it is to monitor political news coverage, Heye’s ignorance seems dubious, but it is apparently not unique. “Operatives at virtually every Republican committee in Washington claimed little or no knowledge of the event,” the Post reported. “They might well have cause to be squeamish,” the Post continued, noting the irony of Beck — who called President Obama a “racist” with “a deep-seated hatred of white people” — holding an event on the anniversary of, and in the same location as, Martin Luther King’s bridge-building “I Have A Dream” speech.
Update:
Last night, ThinkProgess Editor-in-Chief Faiz Shakir appeared on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann to discuss the Glenn Beck rally. Watch it: