Glenn Beck rally reflects angry ‘Howard Beale’ voters

Jennifer Marsico
In the 1976 Oscar-winning movie “Network,” over-the-hill TV news anchor Howard Beale reinvented himself in the face of declining ratings and regained his audience by articulating their frustrations and tapping into their anger with political and cultural elites who ignored or even disdained them. In perhaps the film’s most memorable scene, he urged his viewers to get up from their chairs, open a window, and yell that they were “mad as hell” and wouldn’t take it anymore.

The huge success of Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally is just the latest example that 2010 may turn out to be the year of the “Howard Beale voter.” A large part of Beck’s appeal is his ability to tap into many Americans’ feelings of discontent with the country’s political and cultural state of affairs.

Beck has been compared to Beale; in fact, Beck has said he identifies with Beale. For example, Beck’s TV show can be melodramatic, with the host prone to crying on the air. But the existence of a real live Howard Beale figure like Beck would not be possible if there were not disaffected voters responsive to his message.

Many Americans distance themselves from Beck and his politics, but they share his frustration that government is broken and needs to be fixed. As in “Network,” economic and cultural concerns are on Americans’ minds, and a television personality has struck a chord with the public by voicing their dissatisfaction with the status quo. Even though “Network” is meant to be a satire of the baseness of the modern media, it also reflects the sense of powerlessness many Americans currently feel in their relationship with government.

Read the original article Chicago Tribune

School aims to re-teach civics with focus on faith

By JEFFREY McMURRAY

GEORGETOWN, Ky. (AP) – Call it vacation Bible school, Glenn Beck-style.

Some three dozen kids ages 10 to 15 are spending five nights this week learning what organizers – some with tea party ties – say they won’t hear in school about the Constitution, the founding fathers and the role of faith in the birth of the United States.

“If we’re going to take our country back, we’ve got to remember where we came from – not only as adults, but we need to teach our children,” said Tim Fairfield, one of the teachers, who wore a three-cornered hat at the opening class of Vacation Liberty School. It’s held in a church basement in Georgetown, a city just north of Lexington that is the site of a major Toyota assembly plant.

The curriculum includes lessons like “equal rights, not equal results,”"recognize men don’t create rights – only God,” and “understanding falsehoods of separation of church and state.”

And organizers say the program has drawn interest from people looking to start new chapters in Ohio, Colorado, New York, Florida and other communities in Kentucky.

It’s is an offshoot of the 9/12 Project, inspired by Beck, the conservative commentator, who had no direct role in the planning of the Kentucky school. Beck declined comment.

The project, which seeks to unify Americans around nine values – including honesty, hope and sincerity – and 12 principles, was behind some of the raucous protests at health care forums around the country last summer.

On Monday, the first night of Vacation Liberty School, the basement of Gano Baptist church was converted into a tyrannical kingdom meant to resemble colonial England where students were told they must suppress their laughter, sit apart from their friends and flawlessly recite “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Against the urgings of a mock king’s representative, the brave ones ventured through the rugged terrain of a maze of upside-down tables discovered an adjoining room with all the luxuries of the New World. There they could play basketball, toss beanbags and ride a teeter-totter while being showered with confetti as Neil Diamond’s “Coming To America” blared over the speakers.

Some parents showed up early to quiz the organizers about the curriculum. Others said they wouldn’t mind a conservative slant to balance out what they say is a liberal influence in the public school system.

“Other people are trying to put their viewpoints out there, so I don’t see any reason why we can’t put our viewpoints out there,” said John Cravens, the father of two children who attended.

Eric Wilson, head of the Kentucky 9/12 Project, acknowledges he and many others behind the school are strong supporters of the conservative tea party movement, which claims Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul as one of its highest-profile members. But he says the curriculum was carefully planned to make sure politics didn’t creep in.

“We may be playing in the same sandbox,” Wilson said. “But in the 9/12 Project, we’re going to tell you where the sand came from while the tea party is telling you what sand to buy.”

Joe Conn, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, isn’t so sure. A news release announcing the school referenced the tea party, leading him to believe that if Vacation Liberty School isn’t crossing the line into politics, it’s coming close.

“All Americans want kids to learn about the government and political system,” he said. “It’s something quite different when kids are being indoctrinated in church in one political tradition. That’s quite different from learning objectively and academically about civics.”

He cautions Gano Baptist could risk losing its tax-exempt status if explicit political lessons are being taught in a church setting.

But the Rev. Wayne Lipscomb, the pastor there, says he had no political motivations for allowing the classes to be held without a rental fee. Tickets were distributed online for free.

“I think our kids need to know about the founding fathers and they need to understand the connection between God and the founding fathers,” he said. “They don’t need to hear the revisionists’ stories of history.”

With such weighty topics swirling, 13-year-old Matthew Porter seemed to get some of them jumbled.

“I didn’t know faith, hope and charity were parts of the Constitution,” he said. “I thought they made it as laws, nothing to do with church.”

Although there was no talk of Democrats or Republicans during Monday’s session, there was an activity geared toward teaching children the dangers of communism.

Given pistols to shoot soap bubbles out of the air, the students quickly learned they could do it far more easily by refilling from their own buckets of water rather than having to share a communal one.

Fairfield told the class the lesson is that while secular communism sounds good in theory, free enterprise works far better in practice.

Later in the week, the economic teachings would extend to lessons on debt and inflation. As more money is printed, the costs of candy and toys at the school’s canteen will skyrocket.

Even in the New World it’s not all fun and games, the children learned. When told it was time to clean up, 10-year-old Taylor Lopez responded with a quip.

“Now we have to clean up America?” she asked.

Read the original article APNews

Glenn Beck: Financial bill = crap sandwich

July 15, 2010 Transcript

GLENN: All right. So… read the bill. I read the bill.

Now we have this financial reform bill, and here’s the great thing about it. It gives the president the opportunity to take over businesses that the president or the treasury believes are too big to fail. It doesn’t define that, other than it could be a threat to the nation, to the financial stability of the nation. Well, there’s a lot of things that could be — I mean, couldn’t Weiner have made that case against gold companies? Mark my words. They will. Couldn’t somebody make that against Fox News? Because they’re talking down the economy. They’re saying these things won’t work. Of course it won’t work, if everybody says it won’t work. It’s a threat to the economy.

Now, I know those are extreme cases, but when do you stop thinking, well, that will never happen. At what point does this country start waking up and going, well, now, wait a minute, some really crazy things that we said would never happen here are happening! Probably about the time that you start thinking, man, I really hope there’s a lake of unquenchable fire that burns for all eternity but does not consume.

PAT: I thought we had gotten past that particular issue.

STU: Why are you just trying to antagonize the media? Why do you do this? You just antagonize them.

GLENN: Antagonize?

STU: Just to taunt them and I don’t know that that’s necessary.

GLENN: Because they’re so easy.

STU: To get fired up? It is true.

PAT: That’s true.

STU: You make a good point and it is —

GLENN: It’s so easy. It’s my only pleasure in life. It really is.

STU: But to intentionally try to fire them up, I mean, is that really what you should be doing? This may be a larger philosophical question or potentially —

GLENN: Maybe the media would be all fired up, they could all get together and pretend that they are a lake of unquenchable fire.

STU: You are doing it again.

GLENN: Are you telling me the newsrooms — you walk through newsrooms. You are telling me they are not already in hell?

STU: They don’t look —

GLENN: They are in hell.

STU: They don’t look happy typically.

GLENN: No, they are not.

STU: It doesn’t look like a warm and inviting environment.

GLENN: No, you know what is a warm environment? Hell! Where there’s a lake of unquenchable fire that burns but does not consume.

So anyway, the president has this authority to just take over businesses. Okay. But in Section 112 they set up a council. Like this. And this will all be put together by our new regulatory czar. And there’s a council, and the duties and purposes of this council in Section 112(B), to promote market discipline by eliminating expectations on the part of shareholders, creditors and counterparties of such companies that the government will shield them from losses in the event of failure.

So we’ve already taken over General Motors, we’ve already taken over the biggest insurance company, AIG, we’ve already taken over the financial sector. What else have we — what else have we deemed?

PAT: Healthcare.

GLENN: What?

PAT: Healthcare.

GLENN: Healthcare. Now we have all of these things, but how this is going to work. We are giving the president more power to take companies over if they’re too big to fail. We don’t have to go through congress anymore. They can just do it. But there’s also a council in the same bill that gives the president authority that says we’re setting up a council to tell people that that is not going to happen.

Are these people, are they schizophrenic? Are they insane? Or are they from a lake of fire that burns forever but does not consume? Because consuming things is bad.

Read the original transcript GlennBeck

Beck:Puerto Rican Statehood Ahead?

 Glenn Beck

I want to talk to you about the fundamental transformation of America. It could happen tomorrow.

But first, you have to understand progressives. What is it that progressives believe?

• Big government, power and control: It’s not about Democrats or Republicans, people. It’s power and control. You can’t choose for yourself. You’re too dumb, so progressives will choose and regulate everything for you

• Democratic elections: This is important to progressives. You’ll hear it “democratically elected” to refer to leaders like Hitler, Chavez and Castro — all democratically elected

• Social justice: Collective redemption through the government: Call it socialism, Marxism, whatever — it’s all about the redistribution of wealth

Now, I want to talk to you about Puerto Rico. Understand: This is not about Hispanics. It’s not about freedom. It’s about power and control.

Puerto Rico is a self-governing commonwealth, but is subject to U.S. jurisdiction and sovereignty. It’s been a U.S. territory since after the Spanish-American War of 1898. They’re not an independent country. It’s similar to Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa. Some people like it, others don’t; they get to enjoy many of the benefits of America — like protection — and they don’t have to pay any taxes. That’s a pretty sweet deal.

So it’s no wonder “the people” have consistently voted against becoming America’s 51st state; three times since 1967 — the latest in 1998. It’s always been the same question: Do you want to be a state?

Now, let’s take you to Washington, where there’s important vote happening: HR 2499 — it’s called “The Puerto Rico Democracy Act.” Gosh darn it, who could be against that? The bill is a non-binding resolution, supposedly to support Puerto Rico’s “self-determination” on if they want to be a state or not.

That’s so cute. Wait, I thought they already had a right to vote? They do. So I’m left with the question: Why do they need a non-binding resolution to support their self-determination? Is there something going on that I’m not aware of that is so important that we need to take attention away from the economy or immigration?

We’ve asked some of the Republicans in Congress who are supporting this bill and here are some of the answers:

“This is a vote about freedom.”

“This vote does not grant Puerto Rico statehood, it simply gives Puerto Ricans the right to determine if statehood is something they want for themselves.”

See, I thought they already had that. Three times they voted on that. It’s almost like something else is going on. But remember, they keep telling me it’s “non-binding.”

If I just trusted progressives. With progressives, democratic elections always comes with a trick. For instance, Hitler was democratically elected. But as the chancellor, not the furor. Whether it be through parliamentary tricks or corruption, it’s important to progressives to have the appearance of “the republic.” Remember: They went through the democratic process for health care.

So what’s the trick?

HR 2499 — if it passes — would force a yes or no vote in Puerto Rico on whether Puerto Rico should maintain the “current status” of the island. Wait, that’s not a vote on statehood. That’s a vote on do you want to “maintain the status quo.”

Let me ask you this: Do you want to maintain the status quo of America? ACORN’s Bertha Lewis would agree with me and say no, I don’t want our current direction. But we would disagree on the reasons why.

See the trick?

In the past, statehood fails because some people like the status quo, some want to be a state and some want to be independent. There are too many choices, too many options. They need to unite people. Do you want to maintain the status quo unites them, not on the answer but on the question.

See, the folks that like the status quo are more likely to vote for statehood than independence.

In 1998, there were five options on the ballot: Limited self-government; free association; statehood; sovereignty and none of the above. Which one won? None of the above.

But now, the vote is going to happen in two stages. The first stage: Do you want to maintain the status quo? Then a chair is removed. The second vote leaves you with three choices: statehood; full independence or modified commonwealth.

Remember, full independence and modified commonwealth historically get less than 3 percent of the vote. So those options will be the only thing standing in the way of Puerto Rico becoming a state.

But Glenn, it’s non-binding. Big deal!

True, but here’s where if you don’t know history, you are destined to repeat it. Let me introduce something to you called the Tennessee Plan. (This is probably going to sound like a conspiracy theory, but I have one thing the conspiracy theories never have.)

OK — so the Tennessee Plan, you’ve probably never heard of it unless you are from Tennessee or Alaska. Apparently, some of those who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution haven’t heard of it either. When Tennessee first came to the Union, it had a different name; it was first called “Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio.” It was a U.S. territory, just like Puerto Rico is now.

But instead of waiting for Congress to decide if they wanted to make the territory a state, they took a different, bold route: They forced the issue themselves:

• They elected delegates for Congress

• They voted on statehood

• They drafted a state constitution

• And applied for statehood

• Then, when Congress dragged their feet, they went to the Capitol and demanded to be seated

Congress was unsure of how to proceed; this was the first territory going for statehood. They relented and Tennessee became America’s 16th state. Alaska did many of the same things.

Again, the Tennessee plan in a nutshell:

• Unsuccessfully petitioning Congress for admission

• Drafting a state constitution without prior congressional intervention

• Holding state elections for state officers, U.S. senators and representatives

• In some cases, sending the entire congressional delegation to Washington to demand statehood and claim their seats

• Finally, Congress has little choice but to admit a new state through the passage of a simple act of admission

Congressmen, voting for HR 2499 are like sheep being led to slaughter. They’ll say the people of Puerto Rico have a right to vote for themselves. They’ll vote yes. The progressives will then present a false choice to the people. Instead of saying “do you want to be a state?”it’s “Do you want the status quo?” If voters vote no, the next vote removes the status quo from the ballot, leaving statehood against two far less popular options. They’ll vote yes for statehood. Then they’ll elect their congressman and senators, they’ll demand to be seated and a 51st star will be attached to the flag.

How could this happen? Look at the immigration debate. What are Arizona and Texas being called? Racists. Anyone opposing Puerto Rico as state 51 would be called a hatemonger. Why do you hate Puerto Ricans so much? Why do you hate freedom?

This is not about Hispanics or freedom or sovereignty. It’s about power and control. If progressives convince Hispanics that everyone besides progressives are racist, you’ll have their vote for 60 years. But it’s more than that.

Why are Democrats and Republicans for this? Because it’s not about Republicans and Democrats. The progressives in our country know that this is the moment they’ve been waiting for; every Marxist daydream they’ve ever had, now is their time to get it done. They are not going to let it pass.

That’s what’s happening: The fundamental transformation of America. And this is only the beginning.

I told that this sounds like a conspiracy theory. But who is orchestrating this effort in Puerto Rico? Lo and behold, the New Progressive Party; from their own party platform:

“The New Progressive Party adopts the Tennessee Plan as an additional strategy for the decolonization and the claim for the admission of Puerto Rico as the 51st State of the United States of America.”

And: “This shall be done through legislation which will establish a process for the adoption and ratification of the Constitution of the State of Puerto Rico, and the election of two senators and six federal congresspersons to appear before Congress in Washington D.C. to claim their seats and the admission of Puerto Rico as the 51st State of the United States of America.”

They’re going to paint this as a vote for freedom, but Puerto Rico has already voted and they’ve already spoken. When they send the delegates to Washington, if you stand against this you’ll be labeled a racist.

Read the original article FOXNews

Townhall: Glenn Beck Storms CPAC

Meredith Jessup

Conservative TV and radio host Glenn Beck didn’t disappoint tonight with his remarks which closed the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference.  Beck’s message was one of warning and hope; a history lesson and sermon all rolled into one. 

“People are losing the fundamental belief that things are going to be better tomorrow.  But it is still morning in America… it just happens to be a kind of head-pounding, hungover morning,” Beck told the massive audience gathered for the final event. 

What’s ailing America?  Progressivism.  “Progressivism is the cancer of America and it’s eating away at our Constitution. It was designed to do that,” Beck said.  And to demonstrate this point as only Glenn Beck can, a blackboard was rolled in from offstage, greeted with a standing ovation and roaring applause.  “It’s sick when the chalkboard gets a standing ovation,” he joked.

Beck also took time to criticize the Republican Party, saying today’s GOP is offering many of the same options as progressives. ”Progressivism is not our founders idea of America–big govt, a socialist utopia… We need to address it like it is a cancer–you don’t cure cancer by accepting small bits of it–you must eradicate it.”

In a surprise CPAC appearance earlier this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney predicted this year would be a good one for conservative ideas.  Beck said Cheney’s assumptions were probably true, “but it’s not enough just to not suck as much as the other side.” 

Beck recalled his time in Alcoholics Anonymous for a remedy for the GOP: “The first step in getting redemption is admitting you’ve got a problem,” he said.  “They’ve got to recognize they have a problem.”

“Hello, my name is the Republican Party and I have a problem.  I’m addicted to spending and big government.” 
Beck also talked about the importance of free enterprise in America–a cornerstone of the conservative movement.  “We have a right to fail.  this is a God-given right.  Without failure there is no growth.”  Every time the size of government grows, he said, “they raise the price of the American dream.  We are destroying our childrens’ future.  We are pricing ourselves out of the American dream.”

On Obama’s and progressives’ affinity for European ideals, Beck noted: “Americans don’t need to be taught how to give, how to take care of each other.  Americans per capita give [to charity] 10 times the amount per capita as France–don’t tell me we need to be more like Europe.  Europe needs to be more like America!”

This unabashed pride in our country continues to be the defining theme of CPAC and the conservative movement in America.  As Glenn Beck stressed today, one of the most important aspects of conservatism is a health appreciation for America’s exceptional history.  It’s America’s history that provides us with lessons from our past and promise for our future.
Read the original article TownHall

Glenn Beck Gets More Political

Fox News Host Glenn Beck is launching plans for a major political organizing effort that will feature cross-country seminars, conventions and political rallies that focus on educating voters on conservative issues and leading libertarian speakers.

Beck told The New York Times that he would promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of seven conventions across the country featuring what he described as libertarian speakers.

In Florida on Saturday he held a rally in The Villages in Florida, north of Orlando, in which he promoted his recently released book, “Arguing With Idiots.” He also announced another book to come next August filled with conservative policy proposals gathered from the conventions.

The new conventions would resemble educational seminars, and while many speakers will endorse positions he supports, Beck told the Times he would not endorse them for political office. He would not say whether particular candidates for office in the 2010 midterm elections would be invited to speak at the conventions or the August rally.

“You’re going to learn about finance,” Beck told the crowd Saturday. “You’re going to learn about community organizing. You’re going to learn everything we need to know if you want to be a politician.”

Beck said that now that he as used his television and radio shows to lay out his list of the country’s impending problems — deficit spending, health care legislation that will “destroy” the economy, a dearth of “personal responsibility” — he wants to also provide solutions.

Already, Mr. Beck’s page on FoxNews.com features what it calls “In or Out 2010,” a “simple challenge” for lawmakers. It includes a pledge to back a freeze in government spending; oppose all tax increases “until our economy has rebounded”; and support stricter immigration enforcement.

Read the original article © 2009 Newsmax

Glenn Beck’s Experimental Melodrama

The Fox News star terrifies America with his realistic news theater.

Greg Beato from the December 2009 issue

In late September, President Barack Obama conducted a series of five one-on-one White House interviews with reporters from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and Univision. For some reason—perhaps he’s housing a secret civilian security force in the Roosevelt Room and doesn’t want any fair and balanced reporters snooping around—the president didn’t invite Fox to participate. For Glenn Beck, the host of the hottest show on cable news, this Oval Office slight offered an opportunity to provide some trenchant perspective. “Does the president consider Fox some sort of enemy?” he exclaimed, chortling with amiable resentment. “I mean, no, it can’t be that, because, no, he’ll sit down with our enemies. He’s even offered to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And that guy, I mean, you call me nuts?”

The bit was Beck at his best: shrewdly self-marginalizing, bitingly funny, and executed with perfect timing. A radio veteran who got his first job in the business at the age of 13, Beck, it turns out, is also a TV showman on par with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But while America’s favorite fake newsmen have clear-cut identities as comedians, the question of how to categorize Beck is more perplexing.

When Beck was 8 years old, his mother gave him a record of old radio programs that included Orson Welles’ famous performance of War of the Worlds. Apparently the fictionalized news report of an alien invasion became a foundational text for him, an archetypal example of how you could create crazy, vivid, apocalyptic drama out of mere words. To pay tribute to Welles’ work, Beck starred in a live version of War of the Worlds that aired on his syndicated radio show on Halloween night in 2002. Shortly thereafter, an heir of the radio play’s author sued Beck and his producers for copyright infringement and won an injunction that prevents Beck from ever performing the play again.

The injunction, however, doesn’t prevent Beck from spinning his own doomsday visions every day. In January he jumped from CNN Headline News to the Fox News Channel and began experimenting in earnest. Comedy Central’s The Daily Show had paved the way by showing you didn’t have to stick to the same old tried-and-true conventions when presenting the news. Anchormen could be more expressive. You could use music and graphics and video clips more creatively. And if you could do so in pursuit of comedy, why not also in pursuit of melodrama?

In February, while discussing what it’s like to be angry and enfranchised in America, legislated to the edge of Armageddon, Beck introduced a new visual technique: His image appeared simultaneously in two windows on the screen, one a typical headshot, the other a close-up of his eyes, the better to showcase his distressed but strong sincerity. On April Fool’s Day, as Beck kicked off a segment on America’s drift toward fascism, his image started shrinking until he was just a tiny torso at the bottom of the screen, looking over his shoulder at World War II footage of marching Nazis. “Enough!” Mini-Beck shouted. Then the screen went black behind him, dramatically framing his shrunken head and body as he continued his soliloquy. It was news commentary as expressionist theater.

Beck’s subjects became equally avant garde. On one show, experts tutored the host on how to survive the kind of financial meltdown in which shopping centers were ghost malls and streets were crawling with functionally illiterate meth-heads. A week later, he started investigating the rumor that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was building concentration camps around the country. When that didn’t pan out, he set about exposing the secret communist artwork adorning Rockefeller Plaza and other buildings in New York.

Whatever the subject of any given episode, a common theme always unites it with every other installment of the show: Something isn’t right with America. The country is changing somehow, subtly but surely, right under our very noses, and hardly anyone else is noticing.

In August, Beck turned his attention to the mysterious entities—alien invaders, you might say—who had infiltrated the White House with barely any scrutiny at all: Obama’s czars. Van Jones, Obama’s adviser on green business initiatives, was a former member of a communist group and a self-described revolutionary, Beck reported. Next, he aired video footage of Mark Lloyd, diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, praising Hugo Chavez’s “incredible revolution” in Venezuela. The Van Jones episode garnered Beck’s highest rating in weeks, attracting nearly 800,000 more viewers than his previous show had. The Mark Lloyd episode, boosted by an endorsement from Sarah Palin to her Facebook followers, did even better, attracting slightly more than 3 million viewers, according to the Nielsen Company.

It was the first time Beck’s program had broken the 3 million barrier, an incredible achievement for a cable news show airing at 5 p.m. After Beck unveiled more information about Jones, including the fact that the adviser had signed a petition that suggested high-level Bush administration officials may have deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, Jones resigned from his position at the White House. Beck followed up with revelations about a National Endowment for the Arts conference call in which artists were encouraged to create works promoting President Obama’s political agenda, and suddenly it seemed as if the crusading New Canaan populist might single-handedly save America from the attacking hordes of progressive pod people armed to the teeth with stimulus dollars.

Not everyone gives Beck’s efforts positive reviews, even on the right. New York Times columnist David Brooks accused him of “race-baiting” after Beck said Obama is “racist” toward white people. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum called one of Beck’s many vettings of a White House appointee (Cass Sunstein in this case) “beyond sloppy, beyond ignorant, proceeding straight toward the deceptive.” “How on earth did this crackpot get a national TV show?” asked Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher.

In Dreher’s question we have what is perhaps the most concise history yet of media in the Internet era. With every new technological breakthrough, it gets easier and easier to push unregulated information into the national discourse, potentially exposing millions to misinformation masquerading as news. As President Obama exclaimed in a September interview with the Toledo Blade, it sometimes seems as if we’re moving toward a future where there’s “no serious fact checking” and “no serious attempts to put stories in context.”

In theory, a charismatic paranoiac like Beck is the poster boy for this dystopian future. He’s got a very loud megaphone. His communication skills are world-class. He’s ideologically driven (even if no one can quite figure out what that ideology is). And he’s willing to entertain some pretty dubious notions. But look at his track record so far. He couldn’t sell FEMA death camps because the facts weren’t there to back the story up. His exposé of communist art at Rockefeller Plaza went nowhere because even Beck’s viewers realize an old relief of a naked farmer holding some wheat isn’t much of a threat. The Van Jones story had legs, by contrast, because most of its facts were solid. With a change in background music and a few minor edits, in fact, Beck’s first long piece on Jones could have served as an advertisement for the activist’s achievements—in part because its script closely followed a 2005 newspaper article that was written as a positive portrait of Jones.

Context, meanwhile, is Beck’s forte. He is constantly urging his viewers to connect the dots and look at the big picture, even when the picture exists only in his head. He is forever advising them to consider stories not as transient, random, isolated phenomena, as most newscasts do, but as parts of a larger, ongoing narrative that grows more and more meaningful (and menacing) the longer you study it. In a fractured, distracting mediascape, where thousands of outlets vie for our attention, it’s a smart approach that others are sure to copy. Legally barred from re-enacting Orson Welles, Beck may have to settle for being the 21st century’s answer to Edward R. Murrow.

Read the original article and listen to audio at Reason.com

A LOVE LETTER (To Glenn Beck)

by Victoria Jackson

I’m getting my fake fingernails put on and I’m thinking of you. I have a pitch meeting at Pie Town tomorrow and I chewed all my real fingernails off last night watching Anita Dunn express her admiration for Mao Tse Tung.  Thank you for exposing yet another enemy of our freedom.  You are so passionate and curious and smart and real.  Sigh.  I look at my Vietnamese manicurist and pedicurist and smile.  I ask them their names.  Katie.  Kathy.  Hmm.  I glance around the nail salon.  The decor is Greek columns with 1920’s lamps in between. There is a 1970’s Disco Bar in the middle of the room with a 1930’s Art Deco Chandelier in the center.  There is a Faux Greek Mural and then Post Modern New Age Sterile Minimalist Lights sprinkled in between.  It’s “Psychedelic International.”  Just like the New America.  I ask Katie and Kathy what their real names are.  They look at me suspiciously. Hang and Gnoc.  Okay. 

The woman next to me is speaking Armenian into her cell phone.  I can’t really discuss politics with Katie and Kathy, language barrier, so I glance at the TIME magazine next to my arm.  Some liberal, Joe Klein is trying to tell the truth about ObamaCare, but not quite pulling it off.  Then, he attacks my Rush and my Beck and my heart speeds up. My cheeks turn red.  He writes, “…it is also possible that the Limbaugh and Glenn Beck – inspired poison will spread from right-wing nutters to moderates and independents…”  Poison?  Poison?  (more…)

Glenn Beck: Obama White House Thinks Fox ‘Enemy’

Glenn Beck mocked the White House’s new anti-Fox News press strategy Monday, declaring that the Obama administration now believe the fight against Fox is more important than the war in Afghanistan.

Beck then displayed a map of Manhattan and circled Fox’s headquarters, sarcastically calling Fox “the enemy” as he surrounded the spot on the map with toy tanks and barbed wire. Later, he suggested that the White House was using “your tax dollars to target the media.”

Beck was responding to Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, who told The New York Times on Sunday that the Obama administration is treating Fox News “the way we would treat an opponent.”

Dunn said that administration officials would still talk to Fox, and that President Obama was likely to be interviewed on the network in the future.

But Fox reported Monday that the channel has been told by the White House not to expect an interview with the president this year.

Here’s what Beck had to say: at NewsMax.com

In Defense of Glenn Beck