Glenn Beck Admits that he was Wrong [but only because he discovered that now he's even more right than before]

Although I don't really have the stomach to watch any of these cable/talk-radio/whatever guys anymore, I really think that Glenn Beck has taken the medium to another level. I suppose in a way, he is the logical outcome of the cable-talking system: he seems to be a synthesis of Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, a televangelist, and circus/freakshow ringmaster with the added wrinkle that he slides in and out of coherence and hallucination quite regularly.



While I especially admire this clip for its sheer over-the-topness (and graphic design) and blind grasping at some kind of populism-in-the-face-of-totalitarianism, he really ought to read or re-read '1984' because that book really does have important things to say about our world (especially with information-control-technology reaching the capabilities of what was envisioned in the book). Perhaps it is too much to expect from a man in his position to actually engage in a coherent analysis of a piece of literature as it may relate to our current state of affairs, but to confuse the world we are now living in with Orwell's vision is to just be confused. And to call that world 'totalitarianism with a happy face' is to not have paid attention to the book at all:

"Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain."