Beck Thinks He's Connected Obama To The Racist New Black Panthers. But He's Not Even Close

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Someday, Glenn Beck's chalkboard conspiracy theorizing is going to land him in serious legal trouble. Yesterday's show was a prime example: He spent the entire hour of his Fox News program trying to connect President Obama to the racist New Black Panther Party.

His main connection is a Harvard prof and NAACP lawyer named Charles Ogletree, who in his youth was an avid supporter of the original Black Panthers and radical Angela Davis. Yet even Beck admits that the New Black Panthers have nothing to do with the original Black Panthers, who have in fact forcefully denounced the fringe group as a racist ripoff.

In other words, he tried to connect not just Obama but Ogletree with a racist hate group. That sort of thing can actually be the grounds for a multimillion-dollar libel suit, especially when the reckless-disregard-for-the-truth standard is so clearly in play.

And isn't it interesting that Beck wants to make this connection, when in fact the connections of various Republican politicians in Arizona -- several of whom appear regularly on Fox -- to actual white-supremacist racists is very real and substantial?

Beck has been working for a long time building the case that President Obama is indeed a black racist radical who hates white people and "white culture." That's why he never apologized for the remark -- even his "sorry" to Katie Couric made clear he really meant it.