Is Glenn Beck Crazy Or Is He Just Pretending? And What Does That Say About His Audience?
Reported by Priscilla - February 15, 2009 -
There should be no doubt about Glenn Beck’s demographics as shown by his totally biased smear of Obama’s nominee for Deputy Attorney General. David Ogden is now the target of the Christian right; so, obviously Beck was doing his sacred duty in communicating to his congregation that he’s on their side. Judging from another interview he had earlier this week, it appears that this congregation includes conservative Christians who believe in the “end times” (probably a lot of folks in the area that Bill O’Reilly disparaged!). What made it even stranger was that Beck appeared to agree with Jew for Jesus and Armageddon author Joel Rosenberg – truly a trip to the Twilight Zone. But here’s the thing, Beck is really a radio personality and his show reeks of all the tired goofy schtick,sarcasm, and feigned outrage of the right wing radio crowd – in other words, anything to get ratings. Is he really goofing on this stuff or does he really believe – cuz if he does believe it, then Houston, we have a problem!
Monday night’s (February 9th) interview with Joel Rosenberg was the stuff of bizarro world. Beck began the segment by musing that the recent launch of an Iranian telecommunication satellite “wasn’t good.” It was a story that made him want to “go to the mountains” with a “snuggle bear.” He introduced Joel Rosenberg (Jew who converted to evangelical Christianity) as someone who could tell him “exactly what it means.” He described Rosenberg as a former aide to Benjamin Netanyahu and the author of a “great book, Epicenter 2.0” (Comment: As I am a fan of Indiana Jones archeological action adventure novels, particularly Henry Rollins, I was suckered in by the cover of Rosenberg’s “The Copper Scroll.” After reading about three pages, I realized that it was the same kind of Christian “end time” genre as the “Left Behind” series so into the recycle bin it went!) Along with being a hand gun instructor, Rosenberg’s articles are featured on (right wing) National Review where he defended the homo erotic snuff flick, The Passion of the Christ, from accusations of anti-Semiticism.
So Rosenberg explained it all for us. He said that “there is a lot of evidence” that we are living in the end of days. He asserted that Iranian President Ahmadinejad was “a politician using religion.” (And Bush wasn’t?!) He told us that the 12th Imam, whose return the Shia consider the beginning of the end times is really the anti-Christ. (Wait a minute, I thought that was Barack Obama!) When Beck mentioned the return of Jesus, Rosenberg emphasized that the 12th Imam is an Islamic messiah so any similarity between Jesus and the Imam is not valid. And get this, the two stages of the telecommunications rocket have two names which are translated as “hope” and “change.” (not so subliminal message here). Beck ended the interview by admonishing his audience “to be very afraid.”
Comment: What can I say. What’s nuttier, the end time stuff or Beck’s seeming agreement with it? I find this whole end of days eschatology so ironic because that’s exactly the impetus behind Rev. John Hagee’s advocacy of a war with Iran – so that it can hasten the arrival of the intergalactic Jesus. Hagee’s book “Jerusalem Countdown” is all about this coming cosmic struggle and it would be amusing were it not for all the saber rattling against Iran done by the Bush administration which had less than six degrees of separation from the radical religious right. As noted by Bill Berkowitz, of Israel News, Rosenberg has ties to end time Christians who think that Jews will be destroyed unless they convert. (Huge sigh of relief that one of these radical Christians isn’t living in the US Naval Observatory!) Hopefully, Rosenberg and his pals will get raptured and leave the rest of us heathens alone. But if that’s not part of the deal for Mormons, Beck will still be here. Warner Brothers has looney tunes. Fox News has Glenn Beck!
