You are correct - I wouldn’t know Cloward Piven without Glenn Beck. I learned a lot more from him than the Five Show. He just lost his marbles afterwards.
Beck got into humor and theatrics as a way of entertaining those with short attention spans and other learning difficulties, as a way of keeping them interested long enough to learn something. Let's face it, how many of such a large audience like he had on his Fox News show would have stayed tuned if he went about explaining these complex connections and so forth in a straight serious manner. Obviously very few.