Glenn Beck's creative storytelling

On his program today, Glenn Beck told the life story of scientist Stephen Hawking (a recent recepient of the Presidential Medal Of Freedom) from an interesting perspective. In Beck's version of history, Hawking dealt with his illness (ALS) without any handouts, pulling himself up via his own bootstraps and apparently without the sort of health care system Beck claimed was a form of goose-stepping.

Beck's version of history is disputed by... Stephen Hawking, however, who recently gave credit to the maligned (by conservatives) British National Health System (NHS):

The British physisist spoke out after Republican politicians lambasted the NHS as “evil” in their effort to stop President Barack Obama's reforms of US health care which will widen availability of treatment but at a cost to higher earners who will pay higher insurance premiums.

“I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS,” he said. “I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”

Recent attacks on the integrity of the NHS were protested via a campaign by British users of Twitter.

Previously:

Beck links health care reform to Nazis, suggests reform would kill elderly and newborns

Beck: Health care reform is “good old socialism ... raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor”