Glenn Beck and Grandma

Mama was home late yesterday after taking Chase to meet a piano teacher. I don’t remember where they stopped for Chase to interview but it was a restaurant in Amarillo that had just hired two of the girls that Chase goes to school with. The owner told Chase that he would have to wait a couple weeks until he had hired a couple of people who could work on Sunday’s because if he honored his word to the girls he had just hired and did not schedule them for Sunday’s, he was going to end up short handed on the weekends if he hired more employees with the same request of schedule.


As I was waiting on Mama, Grandma and Grandpa came over. I was watching Fox News so they sat down and began watching with me, which is not too bad in and of itself. What makes it difficult is trying to listen to those who probably know what they are talking about, while Grandma comments non-stop on things she thinks they said.

Mostly she agrees with them. In the times that she does not, I am never sure the source of her information. While the people on TV are relying on eye witness reports, interviews with people on the scene and known experts on a given topic, Grandma seems to draw on an endless supply of events and conversations in which she has been involved. To give her credit, she is mostly right in her assessments. When her opinions disagree with the reports – I hesitate to say “facts” because I cannot be absolutely certain – it is difficult to understand her argument and impossible to correct.

Enter Glenn Beck. We started to replay his segment from yesterday and when Grandma agreed with him, he was one of the wisest and bravest men on the face of the earth; when she did not agree, not so much. To his credit, she agreed in large part, with things as stated, but there were several divergent conversations and additional proofs which Grandpa had to quiet down so we could hear Glenn Beck.

One point on which there was some discussion was when Glenn Beck said, “After the death of Hitler..” To Grandma’s recollection, Hitler had just disappeared. For many years after the fall of Germany, that was the prevailing thought. The Soviet army had captured the bunker where Hitler had made his last stand and they were fearful of releasing information about what they found there. That was in April, 1945. Although papers reported in May 1945 on his death, mystery surrounded the event until late in 1969 when the Soviets released the autopsy reports.

I thought it was an interesting point. Certainly not one worth arguing at the time, but it shows how we can get things wrong and then set them so firmly in our memories that the facts, to us, are indisputable. I had to do my homework to find the facts, which is what Glenn Beck stresses.

It made me ask myself if there are any forty two year old ideas in my head that need correcting. I doubt there are very many, because every time I am wrong, Mama lets me know right away. Although I rarely reciprocate, that pattern of correction has remained in effect for almost thirty years.

As the saying goes, “Behind every good man there is a woman correcting his every mistake.” – something like that.