In the ongoing battle between Glenn Beck and Alex Jones — a hilarious battle given how alike they are, and maybe that’s exactly the problem — has taken another step up. Jones has hinted before that he thinks Beck is an agent of the government, now he comes right out and says it.
As Glenn Beck lurches back and forth between depressing depictions of impending doom and gloom, on the one hand, and hopeful missives about the good guys (led by him, of course) are going to win and restore the country to some imagined glorious past, it appears that Beck is back on the downswing.
Bob Barr (yes, that Bob Barr) recently criticized his opponent in a House race in Georgia for being endorsed by fraud David Barton and Glenn Beck has leapt to the defense of his buddy Barton, assuring his listeners that Barton is just a wonderful, delightful man. And totally not bigoted.
The terminally melodramatic Glenn Beck has penned another of his typically over-the-top bits of brooding while on a plane with everyone else sleeping. It reminds me a lot of those fundraising emails that begin “It’s 3 am and I can’t sleep because God has put a burden on my heart” or some such rot. But he assures us all that he is in the middle of an amazing transformation and will soon escape his cocoon.
There are few things that annoy me more than when entertainers suck up to their audience. When an athlete says his team has “the greatest fans in the world,” my eyes roll to Istanbul and back (what a coincidence, every team in the world says they have the greatest fans!). When a comedian ends his show with “you’ve been a great audience,” I just cringe. And anyone who ever tells an audience to “give yourselves a round of applause” really should be beaten with rakes. So when Glenn Beck declares that he has “the smartest audience … ever in television,” I feel like retching.
Man, if you needed any further evidence that Glenn Beck has a serious messiah complex, take a look at this video from his radio show on Thursday where he compares himself to Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Nelson Mandela and says this:
“Imprison me,” Beck said, looking directly into the camera, “go ahead, imprison me. I will not sit down, I will not shut up. I won’t. I will not conform. I will not comply. Period.”
“If I may quote Obi Wan,” he concluded, “strike me down. Strike me down. I will become far more powerful than you can imagine.”
Come on, that’s comedy gold. I find it endlessly amusing how he alternates between false humility — “I’m nobody. I’m just a guy who listens to God and does what he’s told” — and these grandiose declarations about how important and powerful he is. It’s easy to sound so brave when you know the thing you claim to be so resolute about won’t ever happen.
Glenn Beck’s total lack of self-awareness is truly awe-inspiring. On his show last week he criticized a Nebraska state senate candidate for associating with Grover Norquist who is “truly one of the most dangerous men supposedly on our side.” And he cautions that people ought to know all about the people they’re standing up with politically.
It’s time again for one of those periodic “Glenn Beck is sick of politics and is now reinventing himself as something completely different” articles. This time it’s in the National Review, where Eliana Johnson informs us that he’s now going to be making movies or rap videos or something something something.
Glenn Beck vacillates wildly between weepy-eyed but hopeful monologues about how God is on his side and has amazing plans for him to save America and angry, spiteful screeds about how the country is going to hell and he’s done with it (and might even move to Canada). Angry Beck is back this week with this bizarre, incoherent diatribe about how brave he is for not letting “them” (whoever that is) change him. Oh, and he might burn a flag. It’s all quite weird.
Peter Hess, the Director of Religious Community Outreach for the National Center for Science Education, takes Glenn Beck to task for comparing Bill Nye to the Catholic Church that persecuted Galileo. And he writes some absolutely delicious prose. I really wish I’d written this:
Right Wing Watch catches Glenn Beck in a bit of hypocrisy that is astonishingly blatant even for him. Gov. Cuomo of New York recently said that “extreme conservatives” have “no place in the state of New York.” That sent Beck off on a rant in which he said, “”if this is the way that America is going, then I renounce my citizenship…If this is what America is going to become, I don’t want to be an American any more.”
In a statement so blatantly ridiculous that it should have left every one of his listeners shaking their heads in disbelief, Glenn Beck told his radio audience, “I don’t know anybody who is anti-gay, at least not any of my friends.” Bear in mind that he wore a baseball cap all last week to honor Ken Hutcherson, who was both virulently and violently bigoted. Right Wing Watch points out the obvious:
Dispatches From the Culture Wars
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