It was just a "bit". He was very straight with the whole thing, I thought. He just asked the questions and listened to the answers. Sure it was kind of snarky, but what the heck.
At any rate, it was something new to me, and I thought it was fascinating. I never felt ill of the "victims", but I guess you have to admit that he had an agenda. He wanted to show his audience who was out there, and he did that.
I was once a fairly regular listener, and heard quite a few of these “bits”.
Plenty of people have done “man in the street” interviews to put people’s ignorance on display. Beck wasn’t unique in this. But you can do this without deception.
When you cold-call someone, lie to them about who YOU are and what you are up to, ask them a question, and when they get the answer wrong, instead of correcting them, you give them some humorous BS answer, you are operating at a different level.
It’s just slimy, something you would expect from Howard Stern.
There are plenty of those “bits” on YouTube, take a listen and see how long you can last before developing a need to take a shower.