Glenn Beck Admits That he is Nuts (well, he doesn't exactly admit it, but he does demonstrate it)

A little more Glenn Beck for you. This guy only gets better, and is making Stephen Colbert's job harder and harder. Does he want Obama to personally shoot him in the head, or just personally douse him in gasoline and set him on fire?

Do you run out of Kleenex, Paper Towels and Toilet Paper at the Same Time? You know its true!

So a commenter on one of Ta-Nehisi Coates' postings about Glenn Beck (posted as a joke comparing Beck to Mos Def asking whether white people should be embarrassed about Beck like he jokingly suggested that black people were expected to be embarrassed of Mos Def. Just to throw in my 2 cents on the Mos Def thing, I was only slightly uncomfortable because I like Mos Def's work and assumed he was a pretty smart guy. While he sounds naive at best and conspiracy-addled at worst, I think that in there is a grain of a good point, which is that there never was a lot of media air time devoted to what folks like al-Qaeda and the Taliban actually say about themselves and the rest of the world. Hitchens says to go and watch bin Laden's videos or listen to his tapes, but that kind of shit was never broadcast on TV or radio, which I think should have been Mos Def's point. Why not? The words of these fools ought to be broadcast so that there is no confusion about where they stand and so that reasonable people can reject and oppose their ways. Marketplace of ideas or something like that. Mostly I think the problem for Mos Def was that he had the misfortune of coming onto the show on a night when Christopher Hitchens was not visibly drunk. Don't get me wrong: he's a smart guy and very interesting to listen to and read, but I have definitely seen him drunk on Bill Maher's show before.) linked to this great clip from True Stories (more David Byrne for ya. I wish he made more movies). Glenn Beck's conspiracy theories, unfortunately, are not nearly as baroque as even this guy's, but he's still young, and has time to grow....

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."

Colbert + Beck =

Stephen Colbert is on the Glenn Beck bandwagon (finally!).
This guy (Beck) just gets better and better. I can't wait until they put him on south Park:

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On Glenn Beck: "I've got cookies..."

I've been meaning to put up something on how I think Glenn Beck is completely mad, but Jon Stewart basically beat me to it. I used to simply find him distasteful, but then recently (since moving over to Fox News) I have found his ramblings to be amusing, and his ability to almost instantly get out of his depth while having a discussion fairly impressive. His discussion here about pot legalization is pretty funny, partly because he acts so weird, but mostly because he eventually makes the case for legalization without really realizing it. And then he even manages to make Bill O'Reilly a little uncomfortable with his random assertions that 'political correctness' causes mass-killings:


All very amusing, but then I read this, which is more disturbing than amusing:

"I don’t believe Al Gore is trying to gas or round up Jews, I don’t believe the result is going to be the same thing. Just understand that the tactic used was a device used by the Nazis. For instance, we have him on tape during the convention or during the inauguration where he was talking to 12-, 13-, 14- and 15- year olds, and he said “Look there’s a lot of things you understand instinctively but your parents don’t understand those things because they’re just too trapped in old thinking.” Well, gosh, I mean, I know he’s not going to be rounding up Jews any time soon but that’s called the Hitler Youth where you turn the children against the parents."

Glenn Beck was in my dream last night, which is disturbing (well, I think I was watching him on TV and remarking to somebody- my father?- how popular and yet how crazy Glenn Beck is).