Posted on 09/29/2009 9:01:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
I thought it was Breitbart that got Jones fired.
Yes, but if you are trying to compare Beck with the insane SOB on Network you are goofy.
Beck and Levin are resources in the fight for America.
So long as we remember that resources are used, not worshipped, we are OK.
If we link Beck to the cause, then when Beck screws up, it hurts the cause. The cause is not Beck, or Levin, they are merely instruments which can be useful sometimes and need to be ignored at other times.
I believe one of his oft-repeated lines on air is "This is not about Right vs. Left, but Right vs. WRONG." Unlike the "cheering section", aka Sean & Mark, he doesn't much care a wit about the politics of someone. If they should be denigrated, he'll denigrate. If they should be praised, he'll praise.
Would that others on both sides had the same capacity.
I just had to click on the thread to see whom the idiot was who wants to attack a man standing for truth. Yeah, Glenn may be mistaken about the birth cert issue, but he ius right on about the corruption destroying America.
Breitbart may break a story, but Beck brings it to the masses and provides the impetus for getting the job done.
At least that's how it's working lately.
I urge you to seek the face of YHvH and do His Will. Those who read His Word know that we are in End Times. There is no mention of America in the Holy Word of G-d. If you were a follower of Yah'shua, you would be doing His Will not your will.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
NAsbU 2 Timothy 4:2 preach the word;
be ready in season and out of season;
reprove, rebuke, exhort,
with great patience and instruction.
You nailed the new wedge issue on the right. It’s about the threat of Communism.
Some of us recognize the very real danger that the radical far left is attempting to realize through the installment of Obama and his thugs into the highest positions of power.
Others, such as Bill O’Reilly and those like him, arrogantly and disdainfully dismiss the threat of Communism as the paranoid delusions of cranks or the naiveté of uneducated folks.
I don’t know what to think about that second group. They apparently believe that Obama is what he advertised himself to be during the campaign (just a big-government socialist) and that we must simply endure his “misguided” policies until the Democrats realize that those policies have never been successful in any society in history.
That they don’t recognize or don’t want to believe that the radical far left has a specific agenda for this country angers me. They discuss Immelt of G.E., AIG, the Palin Effect, the Kennedy Legacy, and various other issues to display their “high-mindedness” while Obama and his DNC thugs destroy the very fabric of America. Why do they not see or acknowledge what is so painfully obvious to the rest of us? Have they learned nothing from history? Do they really believe that the human race is above such evil?
One thing about GB; he will not retreat, he will not surrender! He is on a mission to expose and deal with corruption and since Obama and his administration are full of it, Glenn will be VERY BUSY (and very profitable) over the next 3 1/2 years. Lord willing, many people will go to jail as a direct result of his actions.
When I first heard Levin's carping on Beck, he was saying that it was not time for conspiracy theories. That we need to follow Levin's lead as he was a conservative when "the 5:00pm'er was puking on his shoes." Then the dominoes started falling and Beck is proved correct again and again.
As Levin continues, he sounds like a high school girl who is mad that Hannity and Levin weren't invited to a party when they thought they were the coolest girls in school. It is sad.
[I STRONGLY DISAGREE WITH BECK’S SILLY NOTION THAT “IT’S ABOUT BOTH PARTIES.” IT IS NOT! There were no mass marches against Bush, not even against the bailouts. Bush’s policies were bad, but they were not motivated by a hatred of America as are Obama’s and the SOONER BECK GETS OFF THIS “BOTH PARTIES DO IT” CRAP, the more effective he will be.]
Yes, LS, Beck has been bugging me with his constant harping on this as well. The only way for the right to re-gain power is through the Republican party. There are a lot of elected conservative Republicans and we should support them, but Beck seems to want to throw them all under the bus. That would gain us nothing. A 3rd party movement would be A DISASTER for the right. The Republicans are NOT IN ANY WAY as bad as the Democrats and I am sick of hearing Beck say they are. I haven’t even been watching him because of it.
I like Beck, but I’m not enamored with him. Of course, I tend to look negatively on any “cult-like” treatment of people. People let us down.
Maybe I overreact sometimes, but I see danger in cults of personality. We need to be about ideas, not the people who espouse them. When people fall into personality cults, they stop thinking about the ideas, and start defending the person, even when the person isn’t making any sense.
With Beck (and it’s not his fault, it’s the people listening), you see it here at FR, you can hardly discuss anything negative about him without some people making personal attacks.
The same is true for Sarah Palin. Her biggest problem on the right is a subset of followers who essentially worship her, making it difficult to discuss anything about her without it turning into a personal slugfest.
Of course, all candidates have this. Romney’s an interesting example, because he had a cult of followers, AND a cult of non-followers, so you can’t ever have a discussion of anything Romney says without it turning into a set of meaningless personal attacks.
But other candidates have their own cults that follow them around. And our popular talk show hosts also have some people who do worship them rather than the message, although even using the term “worship” is going to get me in trouble — I don’t mean “worship” in a religious sense.
If we focus on the issues, policies, ideology, then we can be largely immune to being misled by a popular “leader”. I’ve seen local politics overrun by these cult-like leaders who grab an issue, use bombastic language and disregard for facts to gather a large following, and then use that following to advance their own pet causes.
They get so powerful that elected leaders have to listen to them, rather than doing what is right. And when later they are revealed to be flawed characters, it hurts the cause.
I liked the Tea Party movement, because it wasn’t about a person, it was about an idea. We need to guard against that movement being taken over by a person.
The pro-life movement is a great example of a movement that never fell into the trap of following a person. So when some “pro-life leader” ends up having some scandal, it doesn’t effect the movement.
I can understand that others do have a thing for people over ideology. I’ve always felt for example that churches should regularly change pastors, so that the church would be about doctrine and not about the pastor. But that’s because churches I belong to have tended to go through pastors. Now we’ve had the same guy for almost 15 years, and I wouldn’t mind getting a new pastor, but others are happy we finally have “stability”. To each their own.
I’ve just seen how when a pastor is around a long time, people start following the pastor rather than the church, and then if the pastor goes off the deep end on some theological issue, and is forced to leave, the church splits.
So I don’t want to attack Glenn Beck, or Levin, or Hannity, or Limbaugh. I just don’t think any of them are my “leader”. And because I don’t “worship” them, I think it’s easier for me to judge what they say, and determine when they are simply wrong.
Beck, strikes me as the kind of guy who drinks too much caffeine.
LS wrote:
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.
If that were true, there would be no Republican party today.
The truth is that third parties can succeed, but only when formed out of one of the existing major parties. If 50 to 150 principled, Republican Congress critters, along with a significant number of Republican Senators (10 or so), and a significant portion of Republican state and local legislators and executives (30 to 50 percent of the total Republican population in these positions) were to say, ”The Republican party has left us, We represent conservative values, smaller government and personal liberty.“ If they then formed a new party dedicated to those principles, They could probably succeed. They would need to bring new candidates to their party to contest elected positions held by both Democrats and Republicans. They would also have to act in a way that visibly supports their declared principles and not compromise their principles by allowing anyone who doesn’t support their principles to declare themselves part of the new party.
Historically, that’s pretty close to how the Republican party was formed in the 1850’s. Whigs who opposed slavery (the Whig party was divided on the issue) and other parts of the Whig platform split off to form the Republican party. Within 3 or 4 election cycles, the old Whig party disappeared, and the Republican party grew to become the “other” half of the two party system.
I’m not sure which way is the best for the future. If I were sure we could bring the Republican party back to its roots and principles, that would be the less risky path. But 2010 is a big opportunity. There is a lot of “Throw them all out” rage this cycle that could be harnessed by strong, principled leadership that wants to establish a new conservative alternative. To the topic of this thread, Beck is actually stoking those emotions.
The problem is there is a lot of inertia in the Republican party. Look at Florida (Crist v. Rubio) for one example. There, the primary for an open Senate seat is wide open right now. The polls have Rubio closing the gap in the Primary. Polls for the general election that ask Rubio vs. Meeks have Rubio winning that match up (Crist also beats Meeks). This in spite of the fact that Crist has $4.3 Million in campaign funds, and Rubio is still struggling to get his first million. And party “leadership,” including the Republican National Senate Committee are behind Crist. Crist, the governor who embraced Obama to thank him for the Stimulus back in February.
| From the desk of cc2k: |
He’s a recovering alcoholic. I’ll give him a break on the coffee.
“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.”
In short, Glenn Beck is not the leader of the Tea Party movement.
Correct, because in fact there IS not one leader of The Tea Party movement.
I'm glad he's there for the moment. I'm glad he can help get the word out about ACORN for example. He'll be a great mouthpiece on Afganistan if Zero fumbles badly. He may help save lives.
Not too worried about Beck becoming a cult figure even though some may consider him that way now; I think he'll likely be hot for a time then people will get tired of him. That is...unless he fools me and proves himself to be more adaptable than I think he is. I think we need his firepower for now.
I agree that people are tending these days to look for perfect people. Can't be done. I laugh when a new idol is discovered, then dropped like a hot potato by conservatives the minute he/she shows a fault. Ex: Bobby Jindal was the hottest thing around until he had a so-so post SOTU performance. Now I hardly ever see his name on this forum. Makes me laugh.
“Glenn Beck deserves credit for what he is doing to hurt Obama —”
And you and people of your ilk deserves credit for doing all you can to promote the demise of this country with your failure to disclose the truth, the coup and the corruption of this government and the Marxist thugs running the show. You people are in collusion with this treason.
“He doesn’t give much of a crap about Right vs. Left ideology.”
Ideologies are collections of ideas ... our patterns of Governance are built on them ... not ‘giving a crap’ about it in politics is like a rocket scientist not ‘giving a crap’ about Gravity.
Its nonsense.
One has to conclude that he either has a simplistic world-view himself or pawns off that nonsense to his listeners as a way of keeping things simple for them.
“He sees things that are wrong, states them in plain terms and is working to get average folks off their asses to FIGHT for the country of our fathers.” - Duh, that *IS* an ideology, once you peel back the ‘what is wrong’ stuff ... and if you havent been living in a cave lately you’d know that only the right-wing is fighting for ‘the country of our fathers’. And his attacks on ‘progressives’ clearly marks him conservative in the conservative v progressive line.
In short, Beck hasnt self-labelled his ideology because he hasnt thought it through clearly *OR* because it would hurt his show if he self-admitted to where he’s coming from.
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.........
Well Dan why would any of us come crying to you...whoever you are!
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