GLENN BECK, PLEASE GO AWAY

Three years ago, when I started this blog, I made a conscious decision that I was not going to provide Glenn Beck any more ink than the mass media already had. It had already become, by 2008, journalistically trendy to stir the pot by writing defamatory words about Beck. I tried to honor my commitment to myself not to write about him, no matter how objectionable his rhetoric or disgusting his persona. But casting caution to the wind, here it is – a full lead story on Glenn Beck. Sigh.

He is, after all, the most extreme broadcast character America has seen or heard since Dr. Laura Schlesinger (below, left). Schlesinger, you will recall, unceremoniously ended her own career by indulging in her now infamous “nigger, nigger, nigger” rant, live on air in 2010. Schlesinger resigned soon after. But Beck has been hanging on for quite some time now. It was way back in 2009 when he called President Obama a racist who had “exposed himself as a guy” with a “deep seated hatred of white people.”

This happened on July 28, 2009. By the first week in August, Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble and Progressive Insurance, three of Beck’s major advertisers had pulled out of his show. What followed was the snowballing of cancelled advertisers, which ultimately numbered just under 300. Yet Fox saw fit to retain Beck’s services until this past month, when they finally, and mercifully, deleted him from the airwaves. However, even if his face is no longer visible every afternoon on television, his voice is heard daily on radio. And since losing his television show, the vitriol he espouses on his radio show has hit new lows, even for him.

This week, after the tragic shootings at the youth camp in Norway, Beck saw fit to compare the victims to “Nazi youth.” Listen:

Aside from the obvious poor taste he exhibits here, his unseemly comments are an affront to the families of all of those young people who were assassinated. And that was, without any doubt, Beck’s mission. Now that he no longer has access to millions of viewers every time the little red light blinks on the camera, Beck is desperately amping up his rhetoric on the radio. Essentially, he is begging people to listen to him by saying the most outrageous words he can muster.

What we see when we watch or listen to Beck is a man who craves attention in an almost sociopathic fashion. In February of this year Beck called reformed Judaism “radicalized Islam.” This was also the year that Beck feigned vomiting, on the air, when he saw a public service spot about skin cancer in which Megan McCain was supposedly nude (right). That was just after he encouraged people to leave their churches if the clergyman mentioned the words “social justice.” Just last month Beck warned his audience that Obama is out to “de-develop” America and cut average income to $14,000/year. That was the same program in which he said Obama is more corrupt than Richard Nixon and might kill 10 percent of the U.S. population.

Aside from the obvious extremism and lack of factual material, Beck’s on-air persona has certainly cheapened broadcasting in a way no one else has in recent memory. His audience seems to eat it up. But statistics show he is preaching to the choir. According to Quantcast, a company that measures audience traffic and characteristics, Beck’s audience on Clear Channel Radio is 95 percent white, with the largest contingent over the age of 50. Sixty percent of his listeners are male. Beck’s TV audience had actually been cut in half over the past three years, according to Nielsen, from a high of about 2.8 million viewers to a closing audience of 1.6 million.

As usual, one could surmise the numbers tell the story. But do they? One and a half million people is still a lot of people, and how many more do they influence or represent who were not home in the afternoon to listen to Beck’s inane ranting? The history of the broadcast industries in this country suggests that audiences perceive on-air personalities as powerful. (Remember Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America?”)
Entertainers are seen as powerful in that the audience looks up to them in a socio/cultural fashion. But people like Beck, who present themselves as more journalist than entertainer (although he is clearly not a journalist) are often perceived as knowledgeable, wise and authoritative. That above-mentioned choir that Beck amassed over the years showed up in the thousands last year when Beck summoned them to Washington for his “Restore Honor” rally (above, left). He has followers. And we all know how dangerous it can be when a true extremist has followers. They drink the damn Kool-Aid.

At a minimum, Beck is second only to Ann Coulter in his disrespect for Americans. After all, it is he who said, “You know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims’ families…When I see the families on television, I’m like, oh shut up…I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining.” But at an extreme, Beck’s rhetoric is incendiary at a time in America when masses of unemployed and marginalized citizens are easy prey for a preacher of paranoia and doom. He is an absolute case study in abuse of the First Amendment, and use of the airwaves to promote a personal agenda. His agenda is attention. He lives for it.

Beck’s self- described American hero, Orson Welles (below, right) was in his own way an extremist, but he made it clear he was not political and his mission was drama. Beck, on the other hand, would have you believe his mission is saving America from itself. In the end, Beck is a fraud who needs a spotlight more than he needs clean air to breathe, who craves financial and material wealth to an extreme, who says whatever it takes to force the public to focus on him, rather than the issues, and whose own megalomania will most likely be his undoing. But on the road to that end, he remains inordinately influential in an oversize segment of middle America. It is that audience that seems vulnerable to uninformed rhetoric that assaults the imperfect system that nonetheless offers them the most freedom of any country on earth.

Glenn Beck’s shtick is the stuff of great performance art. Webster’s defines performance art: “A nontraditional art form often with political or topical themes that typically features a live presentation to an audience or onlookers.” Cambridge says this: “A type of theatrical entertainment in which the artist's personality and the way in which they create and develop their ideas form part of the show.” Sounds harmless enough, right? That is, until it becomes propaganda, and until it works to the detriment of those who view it. Glenn Beck’s curtain needs to come down, the sooner the better.

2010: THE YEAR OF POLITICAL WHACK JOBS

In a world where Lisa Rinna’s lip reduction surgery and the Octomom’s home foreclosure are considered news, is it any wonder a whack job like Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell (right) becomes a high profile media figure? Her newest campaign ad begins with the line, “I am not a witch.” Hey, we’re living in a moment when the Governor of Arizona gets legislation enacted that allows a cop to stop a person if he thinks he or she looks like an illegal immigrant. That being the case, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Nevada Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle had the balls to actually call her opponent and suggest he drop out of the race. Let's say this all together now: ANYTHING GOES.

Angle, (left) another big bowl of crazy like O’Donnell, recently had this to say about unemployment in her state: ''People ask me, 'What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?' Well, that's not my job as a U.S. senator.'' I promise you she said that. Out loud. Really.

While all of this craziness is splashed across the headlines, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)(right) comes forward to say he believes unmarried, sexually active women and gays should not be allowed to teach in the public schools. (Apparently sexually active single men do not present a problem). I wonder if he has any idea how many empty classrooms there would be throughout the U.S. if this came to pass. And how many married, heterosexual nut jobs would end up as teachers?

Meanwhile, Rand Paul,(below, left) the Tea Party Senate candidate from Kentucky (who happens to be the current frontrunner) wants to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and give full control of the schools to the states. I can’t help wondering: If that would happen, how would
each of the states make up for the millions of federal dollars that are pumped into their economy for education? I guess the individual states would have to raise taxes – a lot. Paul also once said, "…a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination,even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin." Did he not get the memo that we passed a Civil Rights Act in 1964?

And then there’s good old Joe Miller, (below, right) the GOP Senate candidate from Alaska. Joe, who has been vocal (read: LOUD) about the importance of Federal government bowing out of people’s lives and spending less and less, turns out to be something of a hypocrite. It was widely reported that he accepted farm subsidies from the Federal government in the 1990s, and that his wife received Federal unemployment dollars after she left a job – working for Joe! Miller, it should be noted, is on the record in opposition to Federal unemployment insurance, which he says is not authorized by the Constitution. And still he wins the nomination. Am I missing something here? I don’t think so.

These few examples of the chaotic and often discriminatory mindset of contemporary politicians clearly illustrate the extreme social confusion in our country. Some elements of our culture that we accepted as standard are now being marginalized. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state, for example? Ultra-conservative radio entertainer Glenn Beck (left) is inching closer and closer to preaching when he talks politics. "People aren't recognizing his [Obama’s] version of Christianity," Beck said on "Fox News Sunday." His recent heavily-attended “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington D.C. was described by some as the closest thing to a religious revival they had ever seen. Blogger Dan Riehl interviewed one of the attendees: “He has a spiritual connection to us; you can hear his heart speaking,” said Susan Trevethan, a psychiatric nurse from Milford, Conn. “I believe he has been divinely guided to be here in this place,” she said. “He is doing the research. He is teaching us.”

You know, if Glenn Beck can become Jesus, maybe I can morph into, say, Brad Pitt? Come on.

Guess what other traditional American standard has been marginalized: Civility. It doesn’t really matter, for example, what your political party preference is, when it comes to respect for the office of President of the United States. Even in the worst of times, if Americans were not sold on their chief executive, they moderated their comments and actions in deference to the sanctity of the office. Not now. Now we have people carrying signs at rallies that show President Obama made up to look like Hitler. Just the other day, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called Obama a “jackass” and an “ignoramus” live, on the air. At Tea Party rallies, Obama is routinely referred to as a socialist. That is particularly baffling, since many of the attendees are on Social Security and Medicare, arguably the closest programs we have to real socialism. And those programs have been in place and unquestioned for decades. Let’s review: When we abolish the Department of Education and raise their taxes, should we also eliminate Social Security and Medicare? I’m just sayin.’

The bottom line: The Americans who are sullying the political process, promoting the dissolution of Government agencies and departments, blurring the lines between religion and government, lowering the bar on respect for the presidency and generally questioning American standards without offering viable alternatives are radicals. They may point to others in the society as dangerous and un-American, but the truth is that these people are extremists.

I do not want extremists of any ilk or political affiliation making decisions for me. I do not want to see the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution construed to mean that people can carry guns into churches or schools. I do not want the 1st Amendment to the Constitution twisted to suggest that hate speech and bullying are protected under the law. I do not want to see white-haired, white-skinned male legislators enacting legislation that disallows a woman to have an abortion after she has been raped. I do not want to see a Governor use her power to endorse racial profiling. I do not want to see the widespread dissatisfaction with the flailing American economy become the rallying cry for the deconstruction of almost three centuries of American government.

What about you? What do you want?

TRACKING THE TEARS OF A MEDIA CLOWN

Have we had just about enough of Glenn Beck yet? Really. I have forced myself to watch this guy on FOX several times now. I did that because I am a journalist, and a cultural commentator [read: ‘blogger’], and I need to be up on who’s saying what to whom about what. Glenn Beck is saying not much to a lot of people about nothing.

Interestingly, Beck is not the first of his kind. He is just the latest. Does the name Joe Pyne ring a bell? No, I didn’t imagine it would. Pyne had a television talk show in 1960s in which he was known for insulting not only his guests, but individual audience members who could step up to the mic and comment on the topic at hand. I remember as a kid watching Pyne conduct his TV circus and being strangely drawn to the confrontational moments so common in each episode. Here’s a clip that shows a typical Pyne exchange. This time he was interviewing radical student activist Jerry Rubin:


Pyne died in 1970, but it would only be a historical nanosecond before one Morton Downey, Jr., emerged, also confrontational, and more often than not, offensive. With his ever-present cigarette burning between his fingers, Downey was loud, crass and sometimes uninformed. Like Glenn Beck. One could safely assert that Downey was Rush Limbaugh’s predecessor. Like Limbaugh, Downey was not a journalist, not really terribly well informed about the issues of the day and not prone to civil discourse. To give you an idea of Downey’s politics, one of his favorite and oft-used phrases on his television show as “pablum-puking liberal.” Here’s part of an episode of Downey’s show with guest Pat Buchannan:

What these media clowns had in common was a decidedly right-wing ideology, a lack of decorum and no filter between their brain cells and their speaking voice. What Beck adds to this mix is extreme narcissism. While his predecessors filled their shows with raucous audience participation and guests they could humiliate on air, Beck likes the camera all to himself.

Advertisers left in droves after Beck declared President Obama a racist. No matter. FOX chose to keep him on, because the ratings are through the roof. The ratings excel because the public at large is generally not as aggressive in its communication about major issues. There is some sort of twisted vicarious thrill a lot of people experience through a Glenn Beck. But are his chosen issues major? The other day Beck delivered a 10-minute rant about Obama’s plea for citizens to volunteer their time for worthy causes. Somehow Beck found something bad in that presidential request.

When words do not seem to have the emotional largesse that Beck desires, he resorts to tears. Evidently he can cry on demand. When he cannot cry on demand, such as in a recent publicity photo shoot, the makeup people carefully oil the skin under his eyes to make him appear tearful. When words and tears do not carry the necessary emphasis, Beck interviews someone remotely with their image appearing on a large screen behind him. When the interviewee says something disagreeable to Beck, he looks into Camera 1 and mocks the person by making sarcastic faces.

I envision Glenn Beck going home after work, sitting around in sweat pants and a t-shirt, eating potato chips and onion dip and watching “The Bachelor” or something equally innocuous. In the morning, I suppose he gets up and puts on his “Glenn Beck” disguise and goes back out into the world to simply piss people off for money. Reportedly lots and lots of money. I like what Jon Stewart said of Beck: “Finally a guy who says what people who don’t think are thinking.” That’s Glenn Beck.

So here we have a reformed drug addict and recovering alcoholic, the son of a drug addict/alcoholic divorced mother who killed herself, a college dropout who converted to Mormonism simply because his second wife-to-be said she wouldn’t marry him unless he had a religion. Beck simply knows how to yell a little louder than the rest of us and how to feign passion about issues that he seems rather unclear about. And if you just can’t get home in time for the late afternoon Glenn Beck show, and you don’t have three hours every single day to listen to Beck on the radio, maybe you can catch him on his standup comedy tour. That’s not a joke. He goes on tour and tells funny liberal people jokes. He packs them in, and they love it when he constantly repeats “us conservatives.”

Beck found a schtick that works in a time that was fully ready for a mediocre right-wing stand-up comedian to appear on a news network and belittle people who do not agree with him. Nothing about him is distinctive or original – not his tendency to yell over his guests’ comments, not his lack of solid research on the issues he attacks and certainly not his narcissism. At a time when the average American citizen feels his or her voice is not heard, Beck offers them a voice, even if he says things that in their hearts they know do not live up to their own moral code.
Pyne was a novelty late night guilty pleasure. Downey was a loud mouth, educated lawyer who pretended to be one with the working middle class. But Beck? Beck is a full-blown media superstar right now. So, what makes a tearful, semi-informed extremist into a bonafide superstar these days? See for yourself:

BAD BOYS: SUMMER SLEAZEBAG EDITION

Why do the bad boys always seem to be badder in the summer? (Yes, I know, I said “badder.” Live with it). Who knows, but there seems to be a pattern. This summer has been particularly frisky and mischievous for some of the most high profile bad boys. And don’t get all huffy about the exclusion of uber-bad boys John Edwards, Michael Vick, Rod Blagojeich and Glenn Beck from this piece. They’re still bad. Real bad. It’s just that I have written about all three of them ad nauseum lately, so I chose to focus herein on some of their bad contemporaries.

Plaxico Burress will serve two years in prison, it was reported this week, after pleading guilty to one count of attempted criminal possession of a weapon. But here’s the rub: Burress shot himself in the leg with the gun. Unfortunately, the gun he was carrying was not licensed. So, the married father of one, with another on the way goes to prison, and even when he gets out, it is not a given that the one-time Super Bowl star will be back in the NFL. "This was not an intentional criminal act," attorney Benjamin Brafman said. "In my judgment, a two-year prison sentence is a very severe punishment." So, that would suggest what? That Burress unintentionally carried an unlicensed weapon into a crowded public place? Burress, 32, has a history of unlawful behavior, which the judge probably considered. He’s still charged with smashing into the back of a Broward County, FL woman’s car with his Mercedes. Not only hasn’t he settled anything with her, but he was driving without insurance. And let’s not forget his two separate domestic disturbance instances in 2008, when he was hit with a restraining order in his own home. I hereby charge Plaxico Burress with serial badness.

Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina just will not go gently into that private night. He insists on staying public. This week he addressed a luncheon group and once again apologized for his bad judgment and behavior in carrying on an affair with an Argentinian woman. His wife and kids have already moved out, followed by a September Vogue interview in which Jenny Sanford is not cutting her husband much slack – you know, because he’s bad. Sanford now admits his political career is over, but he insists on finishing out the remaining 16 months of his term. More bad judgment on his part? You be the judge. Here is what a lame duck looks and sounds like:


Dr. Conrad Murray is on track to be charged with manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson, according to a report from Fox News. Murray, who has admitted administering the intravenous anesthetic propofol to help Jackson sleep just hours before his death, says the truth will set him free. Hmmm. Since the truth is that the doctor gave Jackson a drug that virtually everyone in the medical community agrees is for use only in a surgical setting, one wonders how that might free him. So, why manslaughter and not murder? Possibly because there is nothing much in the doc’s background to suggest criminal patterns, except for some unpaid child support. And, it seems clear (so far, anyway) that it was not his intention to kill Jackson.

Senator John Ensign is the next in the long line of legislators who seem to believe that if they just don’t talk about their extra-marital sexual indiscretions, they whole thing will just somehow go away. However, Ensign, who admitted having an affair with the wife of one of his best friends, (both worked for Ensign), now comes forward to say he did nothing legally wrong. No mention of ethics or morals or any of that, just nothing legally wrong. Ensign, who was among the loudest legislators calling for Bill Clinton’s resignation during the Lewinsky affair, says there is a big difference between his situation and Clinton’s. I haven't done anything legally wrong. President Clinton stood right before the American people and he lied to the American people," Ensign said. Still, like Mark Sanford, Ensign keeps apologizing. And like our old friend David Vitter, he’s hoping the whole thing magically disappears.

I could go on – I mean I could talk about Jon Gosselin (oh, God, are we still talking about him?), or former NY Times reporter Jayson Blair. Blair is the guy who ruined his own career and brought down two of the most powerful men in the NY Times newsroom, when he fabricated stories a few years ago. Blair, long considered in journalism circles the worst of all bad boys, has taken on a new profession – life counselor. So Woody Allenish, no? Anyway, I’m not going into any great detail about that because anecdotal evidence suggests that you stop reading after about 700 words on a blog entry – we’re at 811 right now. So I lost many of you somewhere in the John Ensign paragraph. Damn. So much badness to report, and such short attention spans.

PUNDITS BEHAVING BADLY

Before I start bashing some of our most highly rated talking heads, let me just say this: My goal here is not to badmouth right wingers. No, all I’m doing here is pondering: Why are some the most politically conservative on-air personalities so LOUD and over the top? Why is there so much ranting and raving and yelling and talking over each other and verbal mayhem? Have you met the latest of these media darlings? He’s Glenn Beck. He currently has his own talk radio show, as well as one hour, five nights a week on FOX. He yells a lot. He interrupts his interview subjects a lot. He cries real tears routinely. He’s dramatic in a sort of bad dinner theatre way. He makes proclamations about issues he seems to know little about. Two years after Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast, this was his take on the rebuilding of New Orleans:

At various times he has called himself an entertainer, and even a rodeo clown. Call me a dinosaur, but whatever happened to the David Brinkleys and Walter Cronkites and Eric Severeids who once provoked thought among Americans? What happened to good grace and dignity in the public discourse? When did we dumb down American media to a point where a tearful, melodramatic former top 40 DJ interprets the critical issues of the day for the masses? What happened to intellect?

This past week we have heard much about Bill O’Reilly’s eight-year reign at the top of the cable news heap. Scroll down and you can watch O’Reilly and Letterman verbally duke it out on Late Night, even as O’Reilly enjoys the highest ratings in the history of cable news and a book that has sat on the NY Times bestseller list for more than six months. Yet, on-air, in front of his record-breaking audience share, Bill O’Reilly regularly chooses vitriol over decorum, and consistently demonstrates what not to do, if you label yourself a journalist. See for yourself:

This, of course, brings us to Sean Hannity, who in the following clip will say (with a straight, determined face) that the economy’s in pretty good shape and the war is going well. This he said in September, 2008. Hannity’s rants, while sometimes a wee bit better informed than O’Reilly’s, still tend to go extreme when he senses he’s losing an argument, and still often become too loud, too emotional and certainly way too adversarial to qualify as journalism. You be the judge:

To the cable talking heads who seem to believe that the louder and more histrionic their delivery, the more effective they will be, I say this: Your message is getting lost in the mayhem. In creating long-term credibility, often less is more. Understatement causes the listener to tune in, think critically and perhaps even align his or her thoughts with yours. Your objective should be to contribute mightily to the public mix of ideas, but your ideas cannot add up to much if your performance is all that is noticed. Glenn Beck, stop crying – really. Bill O’Reilly, take it down a notch and lose the F word. Every time you tell a guest to “shut up,” you demean yourself as a “journalist.” Sean Hannity, listen more, speak less. And when you do speak, focus on substance.

Substance – now there’s a concept, right?