Man, how do people watch this guy night after night? This clip alone contained more schizophrenic, paranoid rage and anxiety than I could handle. Like, if you watch Glenn Beck every day, do you ever get worn out from this? Do people relax after work watching this, or do they just get super fucking wound up and angry?
But man, has he ever perfected the art of talking without actually saying anything. I have no doubt that he is absolutely trying to appeal to a racist audience, whether or not he is racist himself.
The Making of Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck becomes damaged goods
Glenn Beck rises again
Oof, I just finished reading this in-depth history of Glenn Beck’s life and radio career, and I can honestly say I know more about him than I ever cared to. It’s a rather scummy story, one that might make you feel gross reading it, but at least I now have a better perspective on Beck’s persona and what he is going for in his TV and radio shows.
Look at that evil motherfucker right there. That’s W. Cleon Skousen, a man who I’d never heard of before today. So why am I calling the dude an evil motherfucker? Primarily its for writing a textbook called “The Making of America”, in which Skousen
“characterized African-American children as “pickaninnies” and described American slave owners as the “worst victims” of the slavery system. Quoting the historian Fred Albert Shannon, “The Making of America” explained that “[slave] gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains.”
That quote is from Alexander Zaitchik’s profile on Skousen, whose philosophy is the intellectual backbone of Glenn Beck’s bizarre beliefs. In addition to Skousen’s racist re-writing of America’s history, Skousen’s faults are many: he was a conservative Mormon who was too conservative for either the John Birch Society or the Mormon church. In the early sixties, he authored a book called “The Naked Communist”, in which he supposedly revealed the diabolical plans of communists who were plotting to take over the U.S. Later, he would write a book called “The Naked Capitalist”, which updated his conspiracy theories to place rich families and corporations as the brains behind this global conspiracy (meaning, if you are a fan of NWO conspiracy theories, maybe you ought to consider the intellectual background of your beliefs). Throughout his career, Skousen was repeatedly rejected by even the most right-wing fringe elements of American society, and his ideas were repeatedly denounced by the FBI, among others. And Glenn Beck has single-handedly revived interest in this Skousen’s reality-free conspiracy theories by promoting Skousen’s book, “The 5,000 Year Leap”, as being the purest distillation of truth about America and the world. Terrifying!
Holy hell, Salon has really brought the science on prominent right-wing crazyface and owner of fine, fine sweaters (seriously that sweater straight up rules), Glenn Beck. In this article, published today, Glenn Greenwald analyzes the nature of Glenn Beck’s populist fury, and the difficult of presenting it as being either liberal or conservative. The whole article is definitely worth reading, but these passages I found particularly insightful:
“Although [Beck] now parades around under a rhetorical banner of small-government liberty, anti-imperialism, and opposition to the merger of corporations and government (as exemplified by the Bush-sponsored Wall Street bailout), it wasn’t all that long ago that he was advocating exactly the opposite: paying homage to the Patriot Act, defending the Wall Street bailout and arguing it should have been larger, and spouting standard neoconservative cartoon propaganda about The Global Islamo-Nazi Jihadists and all that it justifies.”
“Far more interesting than Beck himself is the increasingly futile effort to classify the protest movement to which he has connected himself. Here, too, confusion reigns. In part, this is due to the fact that these “tea party” and “9/12” protests are composed of factions with wildly divergent views about most everything. From paleoconservatives to Ron-Paul-libertarians to LaRouchians to Confederacy-loving, race-driven Southerners to Christianist social conservatives to single-issue fanatics (abortion, guns, gays) to standard Limbaugh-following, Bush-loving Republicans, these protests are an incoherent mishmash without any cohesive view other than: “Barack Obama is bad.” There are unquestionably some highly noxious elements in these groups, but they are far from homogeneous. Many of these people despised the Bush-led GOP and many of them loved it.”
^ That, btw, is why I’m not very convinced that the tea-party crowd is a viable political threat to health care reform or any part of the liberal agenda.
Really, I could go on and on about the things I found interesting in this article- it’s certainly worth reading in full. So, too, are the articles written by Alexander Zaitchik (which I’ll post about in a moment).
Is there any kind of coherent point in any of this? Ugh jesus it’s like his whole system is to just ask stupid questions, occasionally in a sarcastic tone, throw out as many key words (socialism, communism, fascism, etc) as possible, and then say OBAMA. This shit is driving me nuts. Like, why does he go out of his way to be like “Rockefeller was such a CAPITALIST who got his money from OIL” and then goes on about how Rockefeller paid for all of this “socialist” art? WHAT IS YOUR POINT YOU ASS????? AIAAIIAIAIIEIEEEEEEEEEFRRRRRRGHHGHGGHGH
This video is floating around the tubes today, usually accompanied by “Ah HA! Glenn Beck ADMITS he was (read: is) a dirtbag and a liar!”. First off, that’s bullshit. The dude is talking about being a recovering alcoholic, which I respect tremendously, and I think it’s totally distasteful for people to use that fact against him. But second of all, I think Glenn Beck KNOWS this and is using it to his advantage- which do you think he is going to respond to, people calling him out for his idiotic beliefs, or people laughing at him for admitting he used to be an alcoholic dirtbag? Beck says enough insanely laughable stuff every day, don’t lose sight of what matters and go after him for something that is actually understandable and respectable.
But this guy, maybe I hate him the most? I wouldn’t if people didn’t actually pay attention to him. Nancy Grace is maybe as bad too, although her faux-outrage is contained mostly to dead white girls.
I HOPE YOUR FUCKING JIHADIST STATE-EMPLOYED DOCTOR DOESN’T GIVE YOU A FUCKING LOLLIPOP WHEN YOU LEAVE THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE, YOU FOX NEWS FUCKOS!!!
seriously though I can’t believe that this is the level of debate that our country operates on.
"contamination hazard urban disposal" 
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