Salt Lake Tribune Blood Libels Glenn Beck

With a headline like “Commentary: Glenn Beck’s Nazi Exhibit,” do you think the pro-Obama Salt Lake Tribune has it in for Beck, or what?

If they’re simply whoring for hits, they’ve succeeded, as both Twitchy and Glenn Beck’s The Blaze have picked up on the story. As Erica Ritz notes at the latter Website, “some members of Glenn Beck’s staff [are] so disgusted that they say they’d be happy if he took legal action”:

The Salt Lake Tribune published an opinion piece on July 27 by an “art historian and educator” named Alexandra Karl that has some members of Glenn Beck’s staff so disgusted that they say they’d be happy if he took legal action.

Titled “Karl: Glenn Beck’s Nazi Exhibit,” the op-ed is both riddled with factual inaccuracies and filled with horrific implications about Beck’s character.

“Beyond plain unadulterated stupidity,” is how Beck’s co-host Pat Gray described it on radio Tuesday. “That’s character assassination and defamation territory.”

The opinion piece begins by getting the name and location of Beck’s “Man in the Moon” event wrong (it has been updated to correct the location as of this article’s writing, but not the name), before claiming certain items at the “Independence Through History” museum Beck created for the event came from his “personal collection,” though he doesn’t actually own them.

But far more offensive was the implication, Gray said, that Beck is a “Nazi sympathizer.”

Twitchy collects some amusing cheat and retreat tweets from the paper in defense of running the article, from which we’ve learned that “Opinion editor Vern Anderson evaluates all reader submissions” — and apparently runs the zaniest stuff he can get his hands on. And that the paper has the chutzpah to tweet Beck and ask him, “Are you willing to speak with one of our reporters about the response to a recent op-ed about you in The Salt Lake Tribune?” Because after smearing you, we’d love some quotes from you as well to pour more gasoline on the fire. And along the way, approves running the article because it explores “tea party sensibilities and personal values.”

Because yeah, a small government tea party libertarian such as Beck is a crypto-Nazi, who has brilliantly disguised his sympathies by reminding his viewers of the enormity of the blood that was shed during the 20th century by both National and International Socialism on his show:

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Update: Keep digging: “My original title was ‘on Glenn Beck, the Tea Party and neo-Nazism.’ I understand the need to edit for space.”