Ever know one of those public personalities that people love to hate? There are several who promote themselves as political conservatives, then use their notoriety to spout whatever they want, be it correct or not, for the masses to ingest and/or choke upon. They are like viruses that thrive upon the ills of the country, and seek to increase ratings by increasing the divisiveness among the people. Any news organization with one of those cash cows on the payroll is certainly not going to quibble over the validity of what they spout. One of those annoying people is Glenn Beck. In fact, I’d say at this moment, today, he’s the leader of that vicious pack.
If you don’t already know who he is and what he stands for, let me fill you in. He works for the unabashedly right-wing Fox network, which in itself isn’t all that controversial or even annoying. Selecting our TV channel is still sort of a free choice and nobody makes me watch him. As a conservative, he of course disagrees with the sitting president. Again, not particularly annoying. That’s called political freedom. But he uses his platform to spout inaccuracies, slanted ‘news’ in the loosest of terms, and basic, downright slop that he won’t even admit are just his opinions for the masses of politically and socially dissatisfied viewers tuning in for their daily dose of hatred and superiority.
He loves it. Ratings shoot up and he keeps his lucrative job a while longer. But this is what people forget about him. He is nothing more – I repeat, nothing more – than an entertainer, by his own admission. When confronted about his incendiary words describing as ‘socialists and communists’ any Christians who aren’t as conservative as him, he replied that he was “only an entertainer”. He’d do well to remember that fact.
Rush Limbaugh didn’t. He got so excited and puffed up over the success of his popular hate-mongering radio show that he began to believe his own rhetoric. His arrogance took over and led his mouth to places his powerful backers couldn’t go. He insulted and dismissed pretty much anyone whose views didn’t fit with his ever-narrowing ones. But once you gain popularity like that, you have to ride the wave. Then it all blew up in his face and he had admit that he was a fraud. His career never fully recovered.
Along came Glen Beck, to fill that void, eager to get some of that fame for himself. In his own radio show, he has attacked blacks and other minorities, made jokes about police violence being an answer, then went on to television where he uses a daily ‘news’ forum to tell people that the president is a communist and anyone not sharing the Fox network’s narrowing view of politics is an extreme left-wing socialist. Beck has stepped so far to the right that even a moderate looks like a left-wing extremist comparatively.
Since when has looking out for our poor and disenfranchised in this country not been part of our country’s original charter? Our own Statue of Liberty calls out to immigrants, the ‘tired, poor, huddled masses.’ Yet, Beck would have you believe that to look out for anyone other than your own selfish interests is communism. And we all know if you pull that word out and start bandying it about anyone older than 40 gets a chill remembering the post-WWII cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, and how those evil communists were out to take over America. So what better words to ignite that deep spark of fear in his listeners than “communist” and “socialist”?
Now, he has chosen the exact date (today in fact) that Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Washington Mall as his date for a rally to ‘bring back old-fashioned values and integrity’ like our founding fathers. He would tell you that he didn’t plan that date, that it was an accident. Yet, last November when he began talking about it on his radio show, he talked about how difficult it was to get his permit for that specific date because of its historical significance. Of course, it was planned. Whether he thought he would ingratiate himself to blacks by looking as if he’s aligning himself with their greatest leader for freedom and equality, or whether he hoped to drop a little water on that flame and thus further inflame his own followers, many of whom fall into the “white, not quite over racism” category, is anybody’s guess. Maybe in some twisted way he thought he might fool both groups into thinking he was on their side.
Mostly, he just hopes to get people talking about him either way so his ratings will stay constant. First, you get the politically ultra-conservatives railing against the ultra-liberals. Then you narrow that divide by narrowing the concept of political conservatism. Then you attack Christians because they want to follow the directive of their leader, Jesus Christ, to care for the widows and orphans and feed the poor (direct quotes from the New Testament, just in case anyone believes that’s not what Christianity means). He said anyone who uses the words ‘social justice’ to describe their church is a communist. So that divides the religious front. Now he’s looking to resurrect a barrier in the just healing racial divide. Just who doesn’t he hate, I must ask? The group of people who can be members of his exclusive club just keeps getting smaller and smaller. And that does not bode well for Beck.
Like Limbaugh before him, I believe Beck has forgotten that he’s just an entertainer and he has begun to take himself far too seriously. I believe that he figured out just how much his listeners love to hate the sitting president and he believes getting in good with the Tea Party movement and having Sarah Palin show up will give him the stamp of approval as “official representative” of the conservative movement. He hopes it will somehow legitimize his nonsense and maybe even bring him into the political arena. For what purpose, one wonders? Still, it is a free country, despite what he would tell you. And he’s free to crash and burn his career however he wants.
Sadly, the media mogul, Fox, is probably already grooming his replacement. Another patsy for the major media corporations is used and discarded when the next big thing comes along. And it will. Money is being banked assure it. After all, the entire nation of news networks, except National Public Radio and the BBC, is owned by only three major communications companies and they are behemoths who spend a lot of money telling us how to think, how to act, what to wear, and what to watch. Do you think it’s coincidence that they align themselves with the political right? Less government equals less looking over the shoulders of their growing media empires. Beck is just one pawn in that game of ratings and dollars. Maybe he knows that he’s headed for the dustbin when the ratings fall. Maybe the real evil takeover has already occurred and none of us saw it coming.
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