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Glenn Beck took another ride on the race train tonight when on his Fox News program he claimed that President Obama won’t meet with BP CEO Tony Hayward because he is white. Beck said, “What is it that the crazy guy in Iran has in the credibility have that the CEO doesn’t have?…He’s a white CEO. Maybe that’s it.”

Here is the video courtesy of Media Matters:

Beck asked, “What is it that Barack Obama knows that he won’t even bother to meet with the guy to hear him out, well you know until he changed his mind a couple of days later. What is it that the dictator of Iran, the crazy guy in Iran has in the credibility department that the CEO of BP doesn’t have? What is it? Tell me, I’d like to know. Does the fact that BP’s CEO is a capitalist, is that what does it? You know when I meet with those capitalists. He’s a white CEO, maybe that’s it. He’s a white CEO.

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Beck then played a 15 year old clip of Obama talking about corporate responsibility as his “evidence.” Obama said, “And I really want to emphasize the word responsibility. I think that whether you are a white executive living out in the suburbs who doesn’t want to pay taxes to inner-city children to — for them to go to school.”

Glenn than used this as evidence that Obama is a racist, “I know. Man, all those white executives, what racists they are. They’re all alike, you know. Oh, they just hate those inner-city kids. Wow. Inner-city kids — that’s not code language, is it? And gee, all those white executives that don’t want to pay their taxes, have to go to — that sounds an awful lot like profiling…It’s almost like he’s generalizing, profiling, and stereotyping.”

The problem is that Beck played a heavily edited audio clip. Here is the full quote courtesy of Media Matters, “Right. And I think that is going to be happening, and we can’t ignore it. I think whether or not my children or your children will have to struggle with these same issues depends on what we do and whether we take some mutual responsibility for bridging the divisions that exist right now. And I really want to emphasize the word “responsibility.” I think that whether you are a white executive living out in the suburbs who doesn’t want to pay taxes to inner-city children to — for them to go to school or you are a inner-city child who doesn’t want to take responsibility for keeping your street safe and clean, both of those groups have to take some responsibility if we’re going to get beyond the kinds of divisions that we face right now.”

Imagine that, when you read the whole transcript you discover that Obama wasn’t singling out white CEOs at all. He was discussing the divisions that the country faces and the need to get past them. When you see the whole text, it becomes clear who the real racist is, and it isn’t President Barack Obama. Once again, Glenn Beck jumps head first into the cesspool that is race based politics, and he hopes that his audience and the rest of America is too dumb to notice his obvious distortions. His desperate cry for attention today is even more evidence that his show is sinking fast and that Beck is now truly desperate.