By Ron Beasley
Beck: McCain Would've Been Worse
Controversial Fox News host Glenn Beck tells Katie Couric he thinks GOP
nominee John McCain would have been worse for the country than Hillary
Clinton or Pres. Barack Obama.
Don't believe it - watch:
By Ron Beasley
Controversial Fox News host Glenn Beck tells Katie Couric he thinks GOP
nominee John McCain would have been worse for the country than Hillary
Clinton or Pres. Barack Obama.
Don't believe it - watch:
At some level this reminds me of yesterday's NY Times piece by Frank Rich, Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20rich.html
He makes the point that Beck appeals to a more historic populism than modern Southern bigotry. His appeal is more agrarian than urban.
...there is a national conversation we must have right now � the one about what, in addition to race, is driving this anger and what can be done about it. We are kidding ourselves if we think it�s only about bigotry, or health care, or even Obama. The growing minority that feels disenfranchised by Washington can�t be so easily ghettoized and dismissed.
Many of those Americans may hate Obama, but they don�t love the Republican establishment either. Michael Steele, who was declared persona non grata at one of the mad �tea parties� in April, was not invited to that right-wing 9/12 March on Washington last weekend. There were no public encomiums for McCain or Bush. No Senate leader spoke to the gathering, and perhaps only Palin and Ron Paul would have been welcome from the ranks of what passes for G.O.P. presidential timber. If there was a real hero to this crowd, it was the protest�s most prominent promoter, the radio and TV talker Glenn Beck.
Though Beck�s daily Fox News show is in the sleepy slot of 5 p.m., his ratings are increasingly neck and neck with the prime-time tag team of Bill O�Reilly and Sean Hannity, and he has beaten them in the prized 25-to-54 demographic. It�s not just because he is younger (45). This self-described �rodeo clown,� who wells up with tears for dramatic effect, doesn�t come across as cranky or pompous, like Limbaugh and O�Reilly. A fervent Mormon convert and proselytizer, he is untainted by association with the old Dobson-Robertson-Reed religious right. Unlike Limbaugh, he bonds with his fallible listeners by openly and repeatedly owning up to his own mistakes, including his history of drug and alcohol abuse. Unlike Hannity, he is not a Republican apparatchik.
Beck has notoriously defamed Obama as a �racist,� but the race card is just one in his deck. His ideology, if it can be called that, mixes idolatrous Ayn Rand libertarianism with bumper-sticker slogans about �freedom,� self-help homilies and lunatic conspiracy theories. (He fanned Internet rumors that FEMA was establishing concentration camps before tardily beating a retreat.) It�s the same crazy-quilt cosmology that could be found in last weekend�s Washington protest, where the marchers variously called Obama a fascist, a communist and a socialist, likening him to Hitler, Stalin, Castro and Pol Pot. They may not know that some of these libels are mutually exclusive. But what they do know is that they need a scapegoat for what ails them, and there is no one handier than a liberal, all-powerful president (who just happens to be black).
...This is right-wing populism in the classic American style, as inchoate and paranoid as that hawked by Father Coughlin during the Great Depression and George Wallace in the late 1960s. Wallace is most remembered for his racism, but he, like Beck, also played on the class and cultural resentment of those sharing his view that there wasn�t �a dime�s worth of difference� between the two parties.
Democrat strategists would love to see card-carrying racists and Palin followers capture the GOP. When those groups act stupid they aren't pretending. But Beck, for all his silliness, seems to be cut from different cloth. He's like a stand-up comedian making fun of his wife. He pretends and makes up a lot of shit for effect. Through the giggles, sneers and tears he's as formidable as a rattlesnake.
Beck's job and income depend on keeping the conversation about him and his views. Jerking people around, playing mind games, lying, manipulating, saying the unexpected... it's how the game's played, how the man makes his money. He doesn't need to care what anyone says as long as they start with "Beck said..."
ReplyDeleteSo you take his existence and his idiot followers seriously, because they're a high-risk element... but paying attention to WHAT he says, as though it meant something... nah. There's no there there.
Don't think Beck's risking too much in terms of alienating many of his most ardent viewers. They don't have that much love for McCain anyway.
ReplyDelete