Glenn Beck: the latest blowhard on Fox News

The rabble-rousing presenter has finally stopped comparing Obama to Stalin on his popular TV show. Now it’s Hitler instead

FIRST POSTED APRIL 6, 2009

Glenn Beck, the latest loud-mouthed star of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News television channel, is a little confused. Like all of his colleagues in the right wing 'commentariat', he is bracing himself to welcome home President Obama from what might look to the foolish and godless among us as a rock-star triumph of a first foreign tour.

But Beck is not sure whether it is "Stalin" or "Hitler" who is returning. Recently, he has been favouring Hitler as the appropriate comparison for the 44th President. But for most of the weeks since January when he took over the 5pm Fox News slot with a show billed, revealingly, as the "fusion of entertainment and enlightenment", he seems to have favoured Stalin.

"I am wrong that Obama has been leading us to Socialism," he bawled at his 2.3m viewers. "It's to Fascism." Images of great dictators and marching boots flashed across the television screens.

It is hard to tell what he is talking about, or what he thinks the US should do

He features a "Doomsday Room" and a segment called "Economic Apocalypse". He warns that he has so far been unable to disprove rumours that FEMA, Washington's emergency response office infamous for it Hurricane Katrina failure, is "building concentration camps". He went on: "They're marching us to 1984. Big Brother, he's watching."

It is hard to tell just what Beck is talking about, or what he thinks America should actually do to fix its problems. He urges his listeners to "be the people you were on September 12th, 2001".

It is the style that counts, the performance. Media pundits explain that the trick to ratings lies in expressing the emotions of the angry and self-described dispossessed, offering them an identity in a lonely land. In the right slot – midnight, say, on cable feeds to cheap motels and Appalachian hollows - such balm to troubled souls might be a worthy contribution to society. But Beck's rapid rise is mainstream, in a just-before-prime time show on America’s most-watched cable news channel.

Ratings posted at the end of last week show that just three months into the Obama era, the Fox blowhards rule the cables

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David Frum might be asking what is going on at Fox News but many Americans are asking what is going on in this country. I went to sleep one night and woke up to an America that was something I was having a hard time reconizing. Bush was not a very good President but the man who is traveling around the world telling the enraptured throngs of adoring fans what they want to hear is a disaster. Maybe more people around the world should start listening to Fox News because the way things are going the next time a country sends out an SOS to us we will no longer be capable of answering.

Posted by Florence Baxter at 10:38am on April 7, 2009

No, Florence Baxter, no. The rest of us watch Billo, Beck, Hannity, Anne Coulter and Rush, and realise that this is why you've started two pointless wars you can't finish... and now you expect US to come and finish them for you? No way. You believe Beck, then you figure a way of fighting your own wars without come running to us for help. You'll be in Korea pretty soon now - like you didn't learn anything from your first fiasco there?

Posted by neil mcgowan at 12:53pm on April 7, 2009

Rupert Murdoch's stable of raving shock-jock enrich themselves by playing on the worst fears and darkest prejudices of ill-educated, naive, ignorant, easily manipulated Americans. Under Murdoch's guidance they seek to restore the far-Right to political leadership by undermining not just the Democratic Party and President Obama but the very idea of democratic self-governance at the risk of ginning up a Christo-fascist nightmare based on Armageddonism. Not that the Democratic Party is perfect--it's not. Not that Obama is anybody's messiah--he isn't. But Murdoch and his minions, who in their arrogance and greed know no restraint, have lurched beyond the boundaries of human decency. They bring to mind Sen. Joe McCarthy in his most depraved moments.

Posted by MichaelG49 at 1:18pm on April 7, 2009

No, Neil McGowan, no. If I remember correctly, it was Europe that plunged the world into two disastrous world wars - remember WWI and WWII? I believe Hitler and Mussolini were Europeans, weren't they? Be careful with your holier-than-thou pronouncements; they may make you appear foolish and childish.

Posted by Zhivago at 5:08pm on April 7, 2009

Yes, Zhivago, yes! You remember very correctly, and I can say this as non-American of European descent. Had it not been for the assistance of the U.S. and the British Commonwealth countries in World War I, the European continent would have been marching to the Kaiser's beat. Interestingly, this would have perhaps prevented World War II, but because of the dastardly treatment of Germany in Paris, 1919, at the behest, largely, of the European Allies, the European Allies effectively set the world down the path to World War II, which as we all well know, ultimately required the rest of the world's sacrifice to once again prevent Europe from having to march to a rather more sinister beat. But, my dear Zhivago, I am sorry to say that you err if you expect to receive any lasting acknowledgement of the contributions of the U.S., the British Commonwealth, or any other countries to those particular wars.

Posted by Douglas Smith at 6:19pm on April 7, 2009

As a Christian who lives in the U.S. I hold in derision the right-wing moronic comment-mongers like Beck, Colter, Limbaugh and the like. They are blow-hards who have duped their easily swayed followers/fan(atic)s into believing that if they "be their best 'christian'selves," hold to "the Constitution" and buy guns and ammunition they will survive the "coming apocalypse." These conservative nonsense spouting factories will need to give an account of every idle word that they've ever spoken. "But shun profane [and] vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker...And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all [men], apt to teach, patient,In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth." The world has had enough of man's dead words.

Posted by Carrie Boyer at 3:05am on April 8, 2009

Neil McGowan I don't agree with the war in Iraq either and view it as Presidents Bush's biggest mistake. I don't look for your help to fight our wars as you have enough trouble fighting your own. I don't agree with everything these commentators say but that does not mean everything they say should be dismissed. As for your comment on us going into Korea I hope you realize that if that happens it will be President Obama not the conserative commentators who will put us there.

Posted by Florence Baxter at 12:07pm on April 8, 2009

FoxNews hatemongering loudmouth pundits and the Republican Party want President Obama to fail. They received their marching orders: To smear, criticize, lie, misinform, oppose, stall, filibuster and try to derail & block EVERYTHING & ANYTHING that President Obama and the Democratic Party propose to restore our economy and to bring our Nation into the 21st Century. But "WE THE PEOPLE" will stand firm with President Hopebama and will never allow the fearmongering Right-Wing Conservative doomday machine to succeed !!

Posted by librophile at 8:56am on April 9, 2009