Glenn Beck, The Most Disturbing Personality on Cable Television

The Most Disturbing Personality on Cable Television

It’s hard to tell how much of what Beck says is sincere and how much is for show. Whatever the case, and even taking into account the entire MSNBC lineup, Glenn Beck has become the most disturbing personality on cable television. One cannot watch him for any length of time without being struck by his affinity for conspiracies and for portraying himself as the great decoder of events. Political movements are not just wrong; they are infiltrated by a web of malevolent forces. Others see the shadows on the wall; Beck alone sees the men casting them. The danger when one paints the world in such conspiratorial terms is that it devalues the rational side of politics. It encourages a cast of mind that looks to expose enemies rather than to engage in arguments. Few things, after all, are as they appear.

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It looks to me like it’s only a matter of time — and I suspect not much time — until he blows apart professionally. If and when that happens, one can only hope that conservatism as a movement will have created enough distance from Beck to mitigate the damage.

Bill Kristol on Glenn Beck: He's Marginalizing Himself

Glenn has cranked up the crazy to new levels this week. I sure wish he would quit calling himself a Libertarian or Conservative, since people assume real Libertarian Conservatives are remotely like Glenn. Even Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard calls Glenn out on his paranoia and conspiracy theories this week.

Now, people are more than entitled to their own opinions of how best to accomplish that democratic end. And it's a sign of health that a political and intellectual movement does not respond to a complicated set of developments with one voice.

But hysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He's marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

Nor is it a sign of health when other American conservatives are so fearful of a popular awakening that they side with the dictator against the democrats. Rather, it's a sign of fearfulness unworthy of Americans, of short-sightedness uncharacteristic of conservatives, of excuse-making for thuggery unworthy of the American conservative tradition.

from Stand for Freedom by William Kristol, The Weekly Standard

Glenn Beck Tactic: Link two unrelated events

Beck has been using this technique more and more. Link two unrelated events and leave out big chunks of the story. There are enough issues with unions tactics, without making shit up and trying to link everything under the sun to Obama. It's so ironic to hear Glenn talking about a Truth Squad.