Glenn Beck is worried that people are being replaced by robots. Really.

[ck4829]

Perhaps you have heard about the encounter some Time Magazine reporters had with an oddly robotic saleswoman who was trying to sell them health insurance and refused to answer the question "are you a robot?" when asked repeatedly, simply responding with a laugh each time that she was "a real person."

Over the course of the next hour, several TIME reporters called her back, working to uncover the mystery of her bona fides. Her name, she said, was Samantha West, and she was definitely a robot, given the pitch perfect repetition of her answers. Her goal was to ask a series of questions about health coverage—”Are you on Medicare?” etc.—and then transfer the potential customer to a real person, who could close the sale.

Glenn Beck seized on this story today on his radio broadcast because not only does it play into his fear about the coming "singularity," but also because he wanted to falsely blame it on the Obama administration.

Even though Beck's own "The Blaze" reported that these calls came from a company called Premier Health Plans Inc., and Beck acknowledged that the calls came from a "private health company," he somehow managed to blame the entire thing on the Obama administration.

"Is there anything about Obamacare that's real?" Beck asked. "Is there anything that's real, that's honest? Anything? I haven't found it yet ... They now have literal robots calling people for Obamacare ... This administration has - garbage in, garbage out - has programmed it to lie. What a surprise!":

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/glenn-beck-blames-obama-administration-lying-robot-telemarketer

Private businesses are replacing people with robots, and it's all Obama's fault!!!1!!!1ONE1!

[randome]

1. Hey, if it has anything to do with health...it's Obama.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Can we replace Glenn Beck with a robot? Please?

And then remove his batteries so he'll STFU?

[zbdent]

4. Here's a "robot" which would make about as much sense as G.B. ...

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Methinks they already did

Programmed with the fear protocol

[zbdent]

3. Where was his concern when the companies replaced human operators with recordings and the

system where you have to push buttons all the time?

Oh, wait ... his outrage there was on the "press 1 for english" ... not the fact that a human being was replaced by a machine ...

[11 Bravo]

6. Beautiful! A guy who has an inflatable love doll named "Babette" is worried that ...

human beings may get factored out of the equation.

[pampango]

7. GB know not of what he speaks. Unbeknownst to him manufacturing output has gone up for 60 years but

employment has consistently gone down dramatically. Manufacturing employment peaked in about 1950. Productivity is the main reason. "Robots" play some role in that but such facts rarely show up in GB's fear-based rants.



http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/nuclear-wars-and-earthquakes-increase-economic-problems/

[shenmue]

8. I'm worried that his brain was replaced by those foam peanutes you get in boxes

Dude is full-blown wackadoodle.

[Initech]

9. Um yeah Glenn, "The World's End" was not a documentary.