I Come Not To Praise Glenn Beck, But To Bury Him (Why he hurts the right more than he helps)

When originally endeavoring to write an approximately 800-word opinion piece on Glenn Beck, I hadn’t taken into account what a truly difficult task it would be. I’ve no desire to alienate some of my many friends on the right currently embracing Beck. But I do have this terrible habit of usually speaking my mind. Glenn Beck deserves credit for what he is doing to hurt Obama — there is no question about that. But in thinking about the man overall as a media figure today, one allegedly aligned with the right, I also have serious concerns. I tried to do my best to address the topic fairly, and I regret that so complex a topic took me almost 1,800 words.

Given the down feeling across the right after last year’s elections, it’s almost exciting to watch Glenn Beck inject a new vitality into the nation’s political discourse. Nearly every one of Beck’s shows packs the respect, depth, sincerity, and intelligence of a good joke at a funeral parlor into one uproarious hour after another. I don’t know how anyone can keep from snickering … at least a little bit. So, what’s the harm in a good joke?

The harm as I see it is that so many seem to be taking the joke seriously. But can you blame them? No, probably not. The media culture of today has done everything in its power to prevent the right from seeing a serious, effective leadership emerge on the national stage. One need only look back to the recent — in fact, ongoing — mistreatment of Sarah Palin to demonstrate that. A deeply informed and experienced radio host, Mark Levin, has broken out in the radio world with ratings that make Glenn Beck’s real numbers look like the third tier radio host he actually is. Levin also wrote a significant New York Times bestseller, moving well over a million copies by now. But there was no Time cover, no Newsweek splash, no Katie Couric interview for that. Have you ever paused long enough to ask yourself why?

Full disclosure — yes, Mark Levin has become something of a dear and trusted friend. But please don’t mistake this as carping or defense on his behalf. Mark is the last person I know who needs or wants to be defended by someone else. My opinions in this matter have nothing to do with Levin and everything to do with the future of the right and the desperate need we have of winning a large number of state and district elections in 2010. And I am not suggesting that Glenn Beck should somehow shut up, go away, or stop pointing a finger at this out-of-control leftist White House whenever he can. Let’s be clear about that. What I am suggesting is that at least some relatively small but vocal amount of people are misunderstanding why Beck is getting the media exposure that he is.

In short, the elitist media gets the joke. They are not putting him up there because they find him an effective, articulate spokesman for the right. They find him an oddity, something they can pin prick and laugh at. And consciously or not, they also know he has the potential to do tremendous damage to the right while having accomplished very little if anything much at all to help it himself. And that’s a fact. He was given a non-prominent microphone and television show in a mostly uncompetitive time slot, replacing a very decent but relatively uncompelling and beyond-his-prime John Gibson. And piggybacking on the efforts of others, Beck has displayed tremendous marketing ability, or his handlers have, in making the absolute best use of it while also doing damage to a politically dangerous White House. He deserves praise and full credit for that.

However, we should not confuse what it is and what it is not, nor lose sight of the extremely dangerous time bombs he has planted for the right as he’s gone so thoughtlessly and carelessly on his way in doing it. First some facts as to what Beck has and has not actually done in terms of damaging the Obama administration. From the 9/12 tea party march, to Van Jones, the NEA scandal, and ACORN, none of these were the genuine work of Glenn Beck. He did no heavy lifting on any of those stories other than ginning up noise around them on his show, often milking them for days while, to genuine observers, all the facts were out there for anyone of a mind to find them out. That isn’t an insult. He has a television presence and it’s good that he’s currently using it to capitalize on stories that help the right and undermine Obama. I’m not begrudging him that.

But his attempt to co-opt the tea party movement with that silly 9/12 Project nonsense that never actually caught on was the most ham-fisted and perhaps only insulting one of them all. Nine principles and 12 values? Can anyone even name them today? They were supposed to be what it was all about once. Oh well, at least one of his marketing schemes hasn’t tracked, so we do know he’s human after all. The D.C. tea party protest was always planned to come off. All Beck did was come up with a scheme to weave into it, trying to make it his, and it failed. I know because I was there. Aside from whatever more rabid fans he may have encircled himself with for his broadcast that day, nothing about 9/12 was about Glenn Beck. The movement preceded him, just as it preceded Obama, having started under Bush. And frankly, getting off one’s duff and getting involved in local or state party politics or actively joining up with the tea party movement is the only thing that’s going to help take back America and set the Republican Party right for the center-right. In that sense, Beck is a distraction, if nothing else. But he is also something far worse. He’s a genuine danger to us and we need to sort that out.

Without taking credit away from Beck for talking it up as he did, along with many, many others, the notion that 9/12 was much about Beck is a joke. The many pushing it were simply more generous in crediting the people actually involved — the little people, patriotic Americans across the country like you and me who are driving it. They stand in stark contrast to Beck, who seems to ultimately and always be about himself. As for the real meat behind the various other scandals mentioned, it was either Breitbart or blogger Gateway Pundit who did the real work on those. Beck’s great contribution was again, like others, to broadcast them. That’s a good thing. He deserves credit for that, though also unfortunately he seems so willing to make them his own. I guess that’s what so-called stars, or wannabe famous people, do.

But what else has he done? This represents my only serious concerns involving Beck. Otherwise, I doubt I’d be much interested in him at all. He’s called Barack Obama a racist, for one. I’m appalled by my friends on the right who seem so willing to pass that remark off as insignificant — almost pretending it was never said. It was outrageous, undeserved, and represents nothing but the very kind of racist cudgel the left has been falsely charging the right with being for years. Maybe Beck is one, otherwise he could never conceive of making such a remark — and so publicly at that.

I thought Barack Obama wasn’t even “really” black to many of his critics? I thought the good friend he was “pal-ing around with,” domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, was white? In fact, Obama has probably broken bread with more white people than black over the years. And forget the nuance, the rationalization around what it is he really meant or was trying to say. That doesn’t and won’t matter when the left and the media pick it back up and turn it on you, not just Glenn Beck, to call you intolerant and racist, just as they have wrongly been doing for years.

So, Beck-heads, be advised. If nothing else, don’t come crying to me about how a biased media mistreats you and calls you names you don’t deserve to be called when they tire of the right’s alleged fair-haired boy and decide to use his recklessness and lack of thought against you. And they will do it not just to you, but the entire conservative movement because he was prominently embraced and not denounced. Well, not me. And I want to be very clear and on record here. The comment was uncalled for.

And what about those internment camps? That’s a good one. When the story first broke I looked into it. It took all of an hour to read the text of the actual bill and see there was nothing to it at all. Yet somehow it took Beck, all the while stirring up his would-be masses, a month to figure it out. Really? With his supposedly dogged researchers and researching skills? Please, give me a break. So there again Beck has planted the very seed that, just as Obama’s past with ACORN is currently doing to him, is going to come back and hurt the right to a significant degree. We’ll be denounced en masse as a bunch of wild-eyed conspiracy freaks and racists. And thanks to any broad embrace of Glenn Beck and the lowest common denominator of showmanship that he represents, this time you’ll deserve it.

I understand the center-right’s frustration. For some time the Republican Party has failed us, though it does now seem to be getting on track based upon my observations here in Washington, D.C. I know how frustrating it was to watch the unfair destruction of Sarah Palin. In that sense, dare I say, I feel your pain. And I share the desperation of wanting to find someone that the media allows to stand up, to not be maligned while honestly and fairly speaking to our issues and representing our various just causes such as they are. But I refuse to accept just anyone in that role because it’s too important to me.

And I especially refuse to accept someone so reckless, uninformed, unthinking, and possibly even unserious with a very real potential to do the right more harm than good in the end.

-- Dan Riehl is a former marketing professional in the technology industry turned blogger/new media consultant. He's based in Virginia, just off the D.C. Beltway.

>There’s a certain childishness, a kind of wacky immaturity, that Beck exhibits, and it bugs serious people. He’s not on a par with Limbaugh or O’Reilly.

Humor is a good way to gain an audience and cope with serious situations.

ORLY and Rush’s former TV shows were very silly.

The guy hates Beck so much it affects his writing. Take a look at this:

"And piggybacking on the efforts of others, Beck has displayed tremendous marketing ability, or his handlers have, in making the absolute best use of it... He deserves praise and full credit for that.

So he piggy-backed on others and his handlers have marketed him well, yet Beck deserves full credit. Interesting.

The author needs to point his admittedly weak verbal weapon at the enemy, not at his fellows in the trenches.

I agree with the internment camp stuff. I read the bill, and it was clear it was not what it was pushed to be by some.

But, the rest of this article doesn’t make sense. Beck has done a great deal of good.

When I saw the picture of Hilton leaving a plane in a pair of Richard Simmons shorts and a tank top, all at once I understood the phrase “need to wash my eyes out with Clorox”. Even another queer couldn’t have found that enticing-but then one never knows when it comes to perverts.

Beck is no Levin or Limbaugh when it comes to original thought true. Still, does it matter that Breitbart came to Beck with the ACORN video. And his 9/12 project, as campy as it was, is about a year old. I never thought Beck was trying to take credit for the 9/12 tea party, I just thought he was trying to promote it.

If the author thinks Beck’s crime is reporting on a story that someone else has already spoken about, then every radio / TV host in the country is guilty. If he thinks it is a bad thing that Beck can actually draw huge ratings while focusing on ACORN for days, or even weeks, I think he doesn’t understand the good that accomplishes. The left has been effective over the years because they are so persistant in hammering away at a person, or issue. We could learn something from the looney left in that regard.

Oh and Beck didn’t replace Gibson, Gibson had been gone for more than a year before Beck got that time slot.

Beck isn’t even my third favorite hosts when it comes to in depth analysis, but this blood feud that Levin (my second favorite) and his allies have with Beck is just not productive.

apparently, levin and this guy don’t think Beck is an intellectual. Levin thinks he is smarter than everyone else. But the bottom line is that Beck has accomplished more than Levin other than Levin selling a lot of copies of his book with Rush’s help.

I really believe Levin thinks he is exponentially more intelligent than Beck, but Beck is getting all of the attention and Levin can’t figure that out.

Having been a featured speaker at one of these, I can tell you that there was virtually NO Republican named in ANY of the speeches, that ALL the speeches were directed against Obama, Pelosi, and or Dem policies. (There were no border speeches here in OH).

It's very simple: the U.S. is and always has been a two-party system. One or the other WILL govern. Third parties always elect the worst of the options. There is no alternative to a Republican Party that is responsive to the people, no matter what Beck says. And the more he says that crap, the more he's damaging any real hope for salvation here.

Here’s another scenario (”Hussein has a lot white of white friends”) which we can flip to see how it plays if the subject is white. What is the reaction when a clueless, if not racist, white person says “some of my best friends are black?” I myself never had a problem with that phrase,depending on the context, but it has come to be, by the race-baiters, the defining slogan of a hypocritical or clueless white racist.

Talk about sour grapes. This guy oozes jealousy out of every pore and his bleeding heart pumps it all day!

This represents my only serious concerns involving Beck. Otherwise, I doubt I’d be much interested in him at all. He’s called Barack Obama a racist, for one. I’m appalled by my friends on the right who seem so willing to pass that remark off as insignificant — almost pretending it was never said. It was outrageous, undeserved, and represents nothing but the very kind of racist cudgel the left has been falsely charging the right with being for years.

What kind of nit-wit is this guy??? Obama IS a racist! Read his books. He wants to drain every drop of white blood out of his body...he's said so. Look how he treats his mother. He spent 20 years nodding and amening Rev. Wright! Don't tell me he's not a racist.

I may be in the battle for the world?? What kind of slam is that relative to anything I've said?

I KNOW we're in the battle against evil as a Christian, and I have been on my knees in prayer for years for this nation and praying for it to be a righteous nation.

When I referred to "the enemy" I was well aware that our enemies are inspired by and fueled by THE ENEMY.

THAT is why we shouldn't be doing what YOU are doing, and picking petty and useless fights, taking your eyes off the real goal of releasing the Enemy's grip on this nation.

Now please, fight the REAL fight, and not the one you keep picking on this thread. PLEASE.

bmwcyle wrote:

I don’t know if some people even on our side want to answer that question.

That depends on your definition of “our side.’ For me, most of my family and most of my friends and acquaintances, “our side” would not include any who favor communism or “big governmenbt” over individual liberty and responsibility.

If you are dividing the “sides” by party affiliation, R versus D, then I don’t have a side. I’m closer to the R side, but there are many with “R’s” who I consider to be on “the other side.” They also favor big government. They believe in tax rate cuts as a way to increase government revenues and finance even more government programs. This is how they want to “save Medicare and Social Security.” Read the links in my sig for more about this.

From the desk of
cc2k:

Was Pajamas Media ever a conservative site?
It seems now they post nothing but anti-Beck crapola.

Pajamas Media is close to LGF; CJ co-founded it. It was a big deal (big LULZ) when they got in a slap fight and mutually delinked.

http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2009/09/lgf-delinks-pajamas-media/

They definitely don't like Glen Beck.

When Beck exposes Obama and his leftist cohorts for the radicals they are, or when he attacks the anti-American efforts of the liberal establishment, everyone on the rightwing gets pumped.

When Beck can't control his emotional diarrhea of the mouth, as was case with Katie Couric last week, and spews off the wall statements that gives the enemies of conservatism more ammunition to undermine rightwing politics with, we should stand up and speak out.

While grassroots conservatives and traditionalists are driving the agenda on the right, the GOP remains in a deep coma. The idea that the GOP is making headway against Democrats is ridiculous. Americans aren't embracing Republicans, as much as they are rejecting the Obama/Democrat agenda. When Republicans decide to offer a legitimate agenda of their own, then we can talk about making gains in 2010 and 2012. Not until then.

The “Tea Parties” got their momentum from BUSH.

Austin Tea Party Crate Dumping: 2007-12-16

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_AoCfKfpXE

Events like these won Glenn Beck over to our side.

Glenn Beck is one of the few people we have who has the guts to call a spade a spade. This guy is just plain wrong.

I don’t know if Obama is a racist, but his comments about that Harvard professor were racist. Beck may go overboard sometimes, but I think he is basically honest.

I think that point is that Glenn Beck did not get a half-million people to Washington. The Tea Party movement was around way before Glenn Beck was pushing it. Glenn reported it, promoted it, but it isn’t his movement.

Or is it now? That would be a shame, because the Tea Party movement was not about partisanship, it was about saving the country.

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