'America Is Better Than Glenn Beck'

Protesters also hold rallies against Voter ID laws

(NEWSER) - Martin Luther King day inspired an Occupy march on New York and more traditional remembrances across the US today. Among the events:

• Hundreds of Occupiers staged an "Occupy the Dream" march on Manhattan, stopping to chant, "The banks got bailed out, we got sold out." At least two protesters were arrested, MSNBC reports. "Dr. King dedicated the last months of his life to planning a campaign for the right of all to a decent-paying job," Occupy said in a statement.

Rising income inequality is cementing class system: Paul Krugman

(NEWSER) - If Martin Luther King were to see today's America, would he be proud? Paul Krugman thinks not. King dreamed his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Today, we've become "a nation that judges people not by the color of their skin—or at least not as much as in the past—but by the size of their paychecks," Krugman notes in the New York Times . And these days, your parents' paychecks look pretty similar to yours. "Goodbye Jim Crow, hello class system." More»

Park Service has 30 days to get it right

(NEWSER) - A truncated quote etched onto the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in DC that critics say makes King sound like an "arrogant twit" ( Maya Angelou's words ) will be fixed, the Washington Post reports. Interior chief Ken Salazar tells the Post's Rachel Manteuffel (who raised the issue five months ago in a column) that he has given the National Park Service 30 days to consult with all involved and find an alternative. More»

'Independence USA' looks like pretty much what you'd expect

(NEWSER) - Finally, a GBTV series that is an absolute "Beck-gasm," "exactly what you’d expect a Glenn Beck-produced reality series to be," gushes Jon Bershad at Mediaite . Other shows have had their Beck-inspired moments, but not until now have we had one that "completely embodies everything [Beck] represents and distills it into a narrative chunk." That show is Independence USA, the press release for which starts out, "Concerned that the economy could collapse? Or that a natural disaster could wipe out our infrastructure? So is Frank, and he is doing something about it!" More»

Now he says he didn't really mean it, and just wanted to get 'people to think'

(NEWSER) - Glenn Beck is back in the news, this time over comments that are rankling plenty of conservatives. On Friday, Beck made a bold statement: That Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama are basically the same progressive guy, so if you're a member of the Tea Party and support Gingrich, there's only one explanation: You must be racist. "If you’ve got a big government progressive [in Gingrich] or a big government progressive in Obama, one in Newt Gingrich, one in Obama, ask yourself this, Tea Party: Is it about Obama’s race? Because that’s what it appears to be to me," he told Fox News. More»