Glenn Beck: the latest blowhard on Fox News | People in the News | People

LAST UPDATED 12:00 AM, APRIL 6, 2009

once again: Bill O'Reilly first, Sean Hannity second, and Beck third. As election fever swept the nation last year, Fox slipped a few pips as Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow pitched in and boosted ratings for MSNBC. It was, after all, their side that won the White House. But now MSNBC is back in fourth, CNN trails in fifth, and all three Fox stars get twice as many viewers as either rival channel.

Beck takes things a step further. He models himself less as a newscaster than as an old-time preacher, delineating heaven and hell to a chorus of Amens. He likes to weep on camera and gesticulate wildly. Even his crisp business suits, light tan studio make-up and obsessively groomed silver-grey hair are designed to give him the look of a mega-church televangelist.

His show is tagged the "daily rage against Barack", and the preacher brooks no need for charity. His latest target has been Obama's Kenyan aunt and her struggles with American immigration authorities. "She has a limp, didn't you know that?" he mocked on his 2 April show, taking up a stick and imitating a limp. "She should be able to stay. We've only tried her two times and kicked her out of the country two times. You can't go for three? She's got a limp."

Oddly, it might be Beck's own frailties that have fuelled his rage and forged the personality that sells so well. He has led a deeply troubled life. Born a Roman Catholic in Washington state in 1964, he has experienced the death by suicide of both his mother and a brother-in-law. He became a roaring alcoholic, and is now "in recovery" as a follower of Alcoholics Anonymous. The drink cost him his first marriage, by which he had two daughters. He abandoned his Church, but he says, God "stalked" him and he became a Mormon.

It is Beck's own frailties that have fuelled his rage - he lost his mother to suicide

Just like his mentor Rush Limbaugh, he was enchanted by radio as a teenager and started out as a disc jockey, climbing to the heights of his own syndicated talk-radio show. That was his pulpit for career-making tirades against Al Gore and the prophets of global warming. "Al Gore," he pronounced in April 2007, "is not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. But it is the same tactic... the goal is to have the United Nations running the world."

The reference to the UN offers a key to the Beck phenomenon: we are back to dark conspiracies of global dictatorship with men in black helicopters seizing Americans' God-given guns, of presidents bearing the devil's mark of 666 taking over the White House in the final steps before the apocalypse. This is the world of the off-the-grid militias that bred the Oklahoma bombing in 1992, and the world of the Clinton-haters that erupted after the last Democratic victory.

"What the hell is going on at Fox News?" asks David Frum, Dubya Bush's speechwriter who now warns his Republican party that giving up it leadership to loony voices can lead only to collapse. He may be right. But in the meantime the burgeoning popularity of Beck and the rabblerousers offers a warning of some ugly moments ahead.

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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