The Glenn Beck Omnibus of Recent Inanities
Reported by Guest Blogger - October 25, 2010 -
By Aunty Em
The biggest problem with covering Glenn Beck on a regular basis is that he’s so damned ubiquitous: a 3-hour radio show and a 1-hour tee vee show every weekday; regular appearances on the Bill O’Reilly All Spin Zone or the Fox & Friends Curvy Couch; live shows, both with and without his falafel sidekick O’Reilly; semi-religious benedictions to large crowds on the National Mall; best-selling books spit out of his Word Whacker on the average of 2 a year, with all the attendant book signing appearances that implies; not to mention all the video mashups and various articles (both pro- and con-Beck) in various media found all over the innertubes. A writer covering Beck first needs to separate the wheat from the chaff. However, even once you (okay, me actually) decide what’s worth writing about, another appearance by Ben Gleck™, in another venue, makes most of what’s already written in a first draft obsolete, or he spews something so outrageous it becomes the shiny new object to chase. Here are some recent odds & ends that never made it to a full column.
The Glenn Beck Omnibus of Recent Inanities
• The New Yorker magazine, in a long, excellent article called Confounding Fathers, describes the nexus between Glenn Beck, Teabaggery, and the 1950s paranoia that seems to have swept the country since America elected a Black president. One early paragraph summarizes the research and direction of the rest of the article:
Beck’s version of American history relies on lessons from his own acknowledged inspiration, the late right-wing writer W. Cleon Skousen, and also restates charges made by the Birch Society’s founder, Robert Welch. The political universe is, of course, very different today from what it was during the Cold War. Yet the Birchers’ politics and their view of American history—which focussed [sic] more on totalitarian threats at home than on those posed by the Soviet Union and Communist China—has proved remarkably persistent. The pressing historical question is how extremist ideas held at bay for decades inside the Republican Party have exploded anew—and why, this time, Party leaders have done virtually nothing to challenge those ideas, and a great deal to abet them.
There is far too much information and historical perspective in the article to do it any justice by excerpting small portions. It is suggested you read the whole thing.
• Another article worth your time is by Lee Fang at Think Progress. It describes the Cornwall Alliance’s most recent appearance (10-15-10) on the Glenn Beck Show. According to a TP investigation from June, Cornwall is a “corporate front designed to deceive evangelicals into doubting the science underpinning climate change.” More from TP: “Glenn Beck brought on a representative from the group to tout Cornwall’s new DVD, ‘Resisting the Green Dragon,’ which claims the climate change movement is a ‘false religion,’ and a nefarious conspiracy to empower eugenicists and create a ‘global government.’ The DVD, which Cornwall is distributing to evangelical churches around the country, seems to be designed perfectly for Beck’s world view, and unsurprisingly, the Cornwall guest and Beck exchanged bizarre conspiracy theories.”
Yet, with the hypocrisy that has become the hallmark of anything and everything that comes out of his mouth, Glenn Beck has now spent several shows since then excoriating George Soros (I’m still waiting for my cheque, Mr. Soros!) and the Tides Foundation for having the audacity to distribute “The Story of Stuff” to schools and churches in an attempt to brainwash the non-thinking-for-themselves congregations.
Obviously Beck believes that only those who agree with his point of view should be able to disseminate their ideas in the pews and schoolrooms of out nation.
• It’s common knowledge by now that Glenn Beck shills for Goldline on his radio show, tee vee show, and as (seemingly) the only sponsor of his latest vanity project The Blaze, a so-called news site trying to position itself as the anti-HuffPo. This is most often coupled with rhetoric about the upcoming disintegration and total breakdown of society, making this shiny yellow metal seem not just a hedge against inflation, but the only thing that will save you from the hoards trying to break down your front door when the feces hits the rotary air-moving device.
It’s never made much sense to me what your precious gold will buy if all societal systems finally break down. Maybe someone can explain this to me because, in my mind, the baker (which Beck’s father once was) would be far more valuable than the alchemist who can turn dross into gold. [Which, when you think about it, would make a good metaphor for everything Beck does.]
Time Magazine notes that the newest sponsor on the Beck Radio Drama Theater Hour is foodinsurance.com, which sells “Freeze-dried food for the coming Apocalypse,” which actually makes far more sense than gold when the have-nots come with torches and pitchforks to steal from the haves. Time ends its amusing item with “We just like to poke fun at individuals hawking disaster products, who then spend their days preaching about the world's end.”
• On a recent radio show Glenn got into a discussion about evolution. According to Jason Linkins at HuffPo, “Beck went on to say that he didn't know the answer [to how many Americans believe in evolution], because he's ‘not God’ and, consequently, doesn't know ‘how God creates,’ but he thought that it was ‘ridiculous’ to think that we ‘came from monkeys.’ To sum up his profound thinking on the tricky question of evolution Beck claims “I haven't seen a half-monkey, half-person yet.” As Linkin notes, “Let me caution you: you will not be the first person to make a "mirror" joke, so step up your game.”
Also at HuffPo: Edward Murray has a funny take on Other Things That Glenn Neck Has Never Seen.
• Shepard Smith, seemingly the only host at Fox “News” who can actual claim to remove the quotation marks in this sentence, has taken another poke at his colleague Beck. In a totally unrelated discussion of alien contact (of the outer space kind, not the illegal kind usually discussed at Fox) Smith said, “If we get a signal from outer space, do we answer back? Seriously, that would be like, if Glenn Beck's phone rings, does he answer it?”
It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen the red phone that used to be the inanimate mascot of the Glenn Beck Show, so it was a welcome breath of nostalgia to be reminded of the phone that never rings.
As HuffPo tells us, “It's not the first time Smith has needled his Fox News colleague. Smith famously mocked Beck in 2009 in a segment called ‘Glenn Beck Friday.’”
That’s it for this exciting episode of “As the Beck Turns.” Join us next week because you just know he’s going to say something profoundly stupid the next time he opens his mouth.
With all my love,
Aunty Em
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