The message? Financier and philanthropist George Soros is a “puppet master” secretly at the center of a vast conspiracy that aims to destroy our economy and take over the nation through deceit. The proof? A lot of selectively edited quotes, wild innuendo and the fact that Soros “collapsed regimes” in “four other countries.”

Beck knows full well that Soros dedicated his life to promoting democracy in Communist nations, which an avowed anti-socialist like Beck should theoretically be championing him for. But Soros is a progressive, and in the Beck world, progressives are socialists are Maoists are Communists are totalitarians, so any enemy of Soros is a friend of Glenn Beck’s. Insanity makes strange bedfellows. Look who Beck quotes to support his argument that Soros is one of the secret rulers of the world:

He’s known as the man who broke the bank of England. The Prime Minister of Malaysia called Soros an unscrupulous profiteer. In Thailand, he was branded the “economic war criminal.” They also said that he “sucks the blood from people.”

The prime minister of Malaysia went on to say: “We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews, but in reality it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge, and coincidentally Soros is a Jew.” (The other quote, about how Soros is a bloodsucking something-or-other, speaks for itself.)

I don’t think people who read secondhand accounts of the specials — or even those who read the transcripts — can grasp how weird and shameless the entire spectacle was. There were puppets strewn about the set. The camera always watches Beck watching whatever we’re supposed to be watching. Beck blatantly flirted with classic anti-Semitic tropes, knowing he’d be called on it but confident his friends would have his back. His taunting response to criticism: If he’s a lying anti-Semite, why would Rupert Murdoch allow him on the air?

But the craziest bit of the entire thing came when Glenn Beck accused Soros — a 14-year-old Jew in Budapest attempting, during the war, to survive the Holocaust — of collaborating with the Nazis and “helping send the Jews to the death camps.” Yes, that happened. Repeatedly.

Even Beck’s allies in the Anti-Defamation League seemed taken aback by this — though they affirmed that they still supported Beck the following day.

The fact that, for reasons of partisan convenience, half the media and the Anti-Defamation League ignore or pretend to not see fairly blatant repurposing of ancient anti-Semitic propaganda on a major cable news network by a prominent pundit? That makes me feel like this week’s craziest person.

Someday, when historians of the 21st century are writing their hover-textbooks, they will note, gravely, that the darkest moment of its first decade involved Mike Myers, but it wasn’t “The Cat in the Hat.”

Yes, a weird, off-script moment of Kanye West awkwardly speaking his mind on live TV apparently defined Bush’s presidency as much as the exact same thing would later define a Taylor Swift song. And in Kanye’s defense, the idea that his ad-libbed response to the horror that was the response to Hurricane Katrina was worse than the actual destruction and death that resulted from the botched response to Hurricane Katrina is significantly crazier than thinking Beyoncé’s video was better than Taylor’s.

Former President Bush did not call it the worst part of that month. Or that year. Bush says Kanye’s remarks were the worst moment of a presidency that included 9/11. It was more upsetting to hear that a rapper thought he didn’t care about black people than it was to hear any number of more serious critics say that thousands of Americans died in order for his rich friends to make a profit.

Bush has even twisted the incident in his memory to make it sound much worse than it did — Kanye did not say “he’s a racist.” Kanye said he just didn’t care. The genius of Kanye’s remark was always in the phrasing. George W. Bush doesn’t hate black people. But he never demonstrated that he was particularly concerned with the plight of black people outside of his social and professional sphere.

Of course, Bush’s response is just a symptom of a sort of mass delusion. As Adam Serwer writes: “Many white Americans have settled on the idea that calling someone a racist is actually the worst thing you can ever say about someone.”

Bush wasn’t actively racist, Serwer adds. “The response to Hurricane Katrina was a reflection of basic administrative incompetence and cronyism, not active racial animus.” But, as Amanda Marcotte said in a wonderful piece on Kanye as tragic Greek prophet: “His accusation was that Bush’s animus wasn’t active, but passive. He ‘doesn’t care.’”

But, Bush told us this week, he does care. He cares a lot. Not about the dead and neglected of New Orleans. He cares about people accusing him of not caring.

(In case you haven’t seen this yet, it’s not very pleasant.)

The victim is 23-year-old Lauren Valle, a MoveOn.org activist who was attending Monday’s Senate debate to confront Paul for his fealty to corporations. Paul’s supporters, apparently, thought that made her a threat, and so they threw a slight 23-year-old woman to the curb and stepped on her neck and head, to restrain her from … briefly annoying Rand Paul. Valle suffered sprains and a concussion.

(Conservative bloggers quickly called Valle various horrible things and even hyped a second video that totally proved that Valle … was thrown to the ground because she tried to bother Rand Paul on his way into a debate.)

The stomper was rather quickly revealed to be Profitt. He admitted as much to the Associated Press by Tuesday, which was probably a mistake, because that’s basically admitting to criminal assault.

Profitt immediately chose option “make things worse” once he realized that he was now known as “the guy who stomped on a woman’s head.” He apologized — if the tape made it look bad. Because, he said, it totally wasn’t! It was a gentle grinding of a woman’s head into the pavement, with a shoe.

Then Profitt took things one step crazier: He declared, on local TV, that he was owed an apology from Valle.

Yep: “I would like for her to apologize to me, to be honest with you.” Profitt did not want to appear on camera, because that cat isn’t out of the bag.

Valle, for the record, did not apologize. Instead, she wrote Profitt a letter. It is, uh, classy.

Mr. Profitt, You have asked that I apologize to you. Perhaps this is not the apology that you are looking for, but I do have some things to say.

I have been called a progressive, a liberal, a professional agitator. You have been called a conservative, a Republican, a member of the Tea Party movement. Fundamentally and most importantly, you and I are both human beings. We are also both American citizens. These two facts, to me, are far more meaningful than the multitude of labels that we carry. And if these two facts are true then it means we are on the same team.

I have not been for one moment angry with you and your actions. Instead I feel thoroughly devastated. It is evident that your physical assault on me is symptomatic of the crisis that this country is struggling through. And it seems that I will heal from my injuries long before this country can work through our separation. Only when we decide let go of our hate, our violence and our aggression will we be able to communicate to each other about the issues that divide us. Right now, we are not communicating, we are stomping on each other. No one can ever win, no one can ever be heard, with violence.

You and I, as fellow citizens, and we, as a country, have a choice. Either we choose to continue the cycle of inflicting violence upon each other, screaming at each other, insulting each other and putting one another down or we and find a way to sit down and start listening to each other. We’ll see how far we get. We are all viciously and vociferously feeding a fire that will only burn us down together. We must reach inside ourselves and make space for each other. We must forgive each other. We must believe in our capacity for transformation. The moment we choose compassion and reconciliation is the moment that we will begin to move toward freedom. There is no other way.

I believe that you should be held accountable for your actions but I also recognize the incredibly negative impact that the consequences must be having on your life, and I wish you all the best as you yourself heal from this. Violence hurts everyone.

Profitt has not yet responded. He’s probably consulting with Ginni Thomas on the best time to leave Valle a voice mail.

Gawker immediately concluded that Ginni had been drunk. Jezebel theorized that maybe she’s just stupid.

Or, you know, maybe she’s crazy. Most people seem to be going with crazy.

Mary Elizabeth Williams suggested that the time had now come for Rodney King to finally apologize to the LAPD, and for Monica Lewinsky to apologize to Linda Tripp.

Vanity Fair’s Juli Weiner ranks the worst voice mails of our time and finds that Ginni’s early-morning surprise does not hold a candle to the works of Alec Baldwin or Mel Gibson.

Andy Borowitz offered this advice for people dealing with an unexpected phone call from Ginni Thomas:

When she says, “This is Virginia Thomas,” reply, “No, this is Virginia Thomas. Who’s calling? Wait a minute — is that you, Anita Hill?” When she denies being Anita Hill (and she will), say, “There you go again, with your infernal lies. This is like Clarence’s confirmation hearings all over again. You disgust me, Anita Hill.” With any luck, accusing her of being Anita Hill will disorient her long enough for you to summon help.

Slate‘s Tom Scocca offered his own voice mail for Ginni to listen to:

Pray about this, and your desire to make a public spectacle of it again, and about the bitterness and anger you share with your husband. And ask yourself, about this and so many other things: if so many people consistently refuse to see the world your way — on matters of justice and policy and politics and history and fact — is it because they are selfish and perverse and willfully ignorant? Or might it be because they are right and you are wrong? OK, have a good day.

If, as some people suggest, Ginni Thomas hoped to put this dark incident behind her, she failed. A whole new generation had not been introduced to her husband through the words of Hill and the various other women who’ve since come forward to confirm Hill’s version of those long-ago events.

All those women, by the way, should begin screening their calls. Especially early Saturday mornings. That, apparently, is Ginni time.

The wealthy Buffalo developer, addressing Orthodox Jewish leaders last weekend, made an interesting argument: While we shouldn’t necessarily violently attack gay people, we should make sure that everyone knows that we hate them.

We must stop pandering to the pornographers and the perverts, who seek to target our children and destroy their lives. I didn’t march in the gay parade parade this year — the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did. And that’s not the example that we should be showing our children, certainly not in our schools. And don’t misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way; that would be a dastardly lie. My approach is live and let live. I just think my children, and your children, will be much better off, and much more successful getting married and raising a family. And I don’t want them to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option. It isn’t.

The prepared remarks included a deleted line (not written or spoken by Paladino) about how a “dysfunctional homosexual” has nothing to be proud of.

It soon came out that Paladino was once the landlord for two Buffalo gay bars. And he has a gay 23-year-old nephew. Who works for his campaign. And so Paladino issued one of those classic non-apology apologies (which lost him the support of Rabbi Yehuda Levin).

As if desperate to provide local news with one more embarrassing video this week, Paladino also announced that he’ll say “fuck him” to Attorney General Eric Holder should Holder move forward with terrorist trials in Paladino’s New York.)

This barely scratches the surface of Paladino’s deep weirdness. He thinks the best way to deflect attention from his acknowledged daughter with a woman who is not his wife is to repeatedly insinuate, without evidence, that his opponent Andrew Cuomo had an affair. Before he won the nomination he was already known as the guy who sent incredibly racist and — despite his proclaimed opposition to perverts — pornographic e-mails to dozens of people. A brand-new series of pornographic e-mails from Paladino was released this week — it’s hard to keep up with this guy’s crazy.

Paladino has almost no shot at winning this race, to the general disappointment of most New York political reporters.