Glenn Beck: Facebook Meeting Felt ‘Like Affirmative Action for Conservatives’

The conservative summit at Facebook disturbed Glenn Beck in an unexpected way.

The political commentator was one of 16 Republican pundits and politicians who met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and other senior staff at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Wednesday. According to The New York Times, Facebook’s highest-ranking Republican, Joel Kaplan, vice president for global public policy, organized the meeting to discuss accusations of conservative news bias against the social media platform.

Beck wrote about the experience on Medium. He believes “Facebook is behaving appropriately” and trusts that Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be an open platform.

The bigger concern for Beck is the path of American conservatism.

From his post on Medium:

I sat through a meeting that, to me, felt like I was attending a Rainbow Coalition meeting, that people (not me) had come with a list of demands.

I looked around the room, I heard the complaints, I listened to the perspectives, and not a single person in the room shared evidence of any wrongdoing. Maybe they had some, but it wasn’t shared. …

I sat there looking around and heard things like:

1) Facebook has a very liberal workforce. Has Facebook considered diversity in their hiring practice? The country is 2% Mormon. Maybe Facebook’s company should better reflect that reality.

2) Maybe Facebook should consider a six-month training program to help their biased and liberal workforce understand and respect conservative opinions and values.

3) We need to see strong and specific steps to right this wrong.

It was like affirmative action for conservatives. When did conservatives start demanding quotas AND diversity training AND less people from Ivy League Colleges.

I sat there, looking around the room at ‘our side’ wondering, ‘Who are we?’ Who am I? I want to be very clear—I am not referring to every person in the room. There were probably 25–30 people and a number of them, I believe, felt like I did. But the overall tenor, to me, felt like the Salem Witch Trial: ‘Facebook, you must admit that you are screwing us, because if not, it proves you are screwing us.’

What happened to us? When did we become them? When did we become the people who demand the Oscars add black actors based on race?

When Glenn Beck is comparing conservatives to liberals, you know we are living in strange times.

Read Beck’s whole take on Medium here. Read his initial take on Facebook before the meeting here.

—Posted by Eric Ortiz