Eugene Robinson got me thinking this morning with his Washington Post column about the Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

A lot of people are upset about the rally, since it's being held on the very day, at the very spot, that Martin Luther King gave his "I Had a Dream" speech in 1963. Beck has said he is holding the rally to help Americans "reclaim the civil rights movement."

But Robinson says it's just an "all-about-me" event, designed to bring more attention to this publicity lover.

"He just likes to set off little rhetorical firebombs that grab attention - and boost the ratings for his television and radio shows," Robinson writes.

Why, then, asks Robinson, should he even waste his breath writing about it?

In justifying his own focus on the rally, Robinson worries, for example, about the Beck enthusiasts who have legitimate concerns about the economy and their future. "Instead," Robinson writes, "their anxieties are exploited by hucksters who see fear and anger as marketing tools."

So: does media attention to events like Beck's simply bolster the efforts of those hucksters?

Not if we do a good job talking about both the rally-goers' concerns and the hucksters' proposed solutions.

As Robinson says, the concerns are real, and they're based on real problems. It shouldn't be hard to expose the flaws and the lies in Beck-type solutions. Right-wing politicians and pundits will succeed in peddling tax cuts for the rich and trying to reverse health-care reform only if they're allowed to outshout reason.

Nor should we let Beck get away with garbage such as his claim that the civil rights movement has been distorted. Martin Luther King Jr. was clear about the depths of the disease of racism in the United States, and about what he meant when he talked about "equality."

Let Beck shout out his lies, and let the media cover his rally. And then those of us who are deeply troubled by his words need to keep speaking out against them.