Beck apologizes for calling Obama a 'racist', did not start civil rights movement

By Robert "Rob" Redding Jr.

Editor & Publisher

Updated Aug. 28, 2010, 10 a.m. - Talk host Glenn Beck yesterday said he made a "stupid comment" when he called President Barack Obama a "racist" during an interview last year.

It was "an ignorant comment," Beck said. "Because now that I really understand how he grew up, where he grew up, what his influences were, it is more of a liberation theology kind of attitude that he has that I immediately interpreted, because I did not understand him. I think his attitude is more like Bill Ayers, that America is an oppressor, and I just didn't understand it."

It was Beck's first apology since July of last year, when he accused the nation's half-white president of being a bigot on "On Fox & Friends" - Beck was discussing the Henry Louis Gates arrest.

"This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," Beck said. "I don't know what it is."

The next day, Beck restated the remarks: "I think the president is a racist."