Once again we find ourselves at the same old point where liberals would rather tear down Glenn Beck than debate him on the merits of substance. Bob Cecsa writes at the Huffington Post an article called “Exposing Glenn Beck as a fraud” where he does little to expose anything except his own opinions of Beck:
My theory is as follows. Glenn Beck is engaged in a carefully orchestrated performance that, if taken to its logical end, can only end up in tragedy — a tragedy, not in the name of some great political or social or religious cause, as too many of his viewers might believe, but rather in the name of pure careerism and greed. A tragedy in the name of Glenn Beck’s personal drive for fame and fortune, not to mention the similar motivations of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. …
What his regular viewers haven’t grasped yet is that he’s putting on a show. He’s playing a role. He’s tricking his audience. Unlike a left-leaning audience, Beck’s audience is mostly composed of white conservative Christians who pride themselves on taking certain things on faith, and who often act against their own financial interests for the sake of patriotic cheerleading. It’s an audience that embraces gun ownership and tends to be more reactionary and militaristic. (Incidentally, there’s no equivalent to this on the “other side” simply because it’s not in the nature of liberals to be, you know, conservative.)
But it’s hard to blame Beck’s audience for being fished in. There’s no wink and nod, so he’s clearly not attempting some sort of obviously satirical character like Stephen Colbert or even a more bizarre character like Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton. He performs this role as seamlessly as any decent character actor, but he never tips his hand (we’re generally told when an actor is acting). Just an occasional mention of himself as a “rodeo clown.” There’s no crawl at the end listing “Glenn Beck as ‘Glenn Beck.'” It’s not a fiction program.
Glenn Beck is playing a character with a personality and a style that is laser focused at the souls of an intended audience. It doesn’t take many minutes of viewing his television show to see that he’s mashing up the most effective and successful aspects of Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and ’60s Bircher author Cleon Skousen, and filtering it all through the performance techniques of a televangelist. Listen to any random monologue by Glenn Beck and then watch some clips of televangelist Jack Van Impe. Both are master manipulators and (crazy aside) riveting speakers. They each nail their audiences with rapid-fire barrages of nonsense presented as dramatic fact — so twisted and obscured that it begins to seem real and anything that might not seem entirely plausible, just have faith. After all, there are complicated drawings on a blackboard! Oh, and he cries. So he must be serious. (We learned last year that the crying is fake.)
The fact that there is no substance to this article actually makes for a good point. The difference between Beck and the loonies on the Left is that when Beck exposes someone as, say a Marxist, you can take it to the bank. He uses their words from their mouths and does everything he can to cross his t’s and dot his i’s. I’ve yet to find anything other than what I’d call minutia that Beck gets wrong. But when these loons talk about exposing someone, facts rarely enter into their argument. Typically they use ad hominem arguments against the person they are trying to expose that avoid any specter of relevancy to the claims they are trying to refute. And that’s exactly what you get from Bob Cecsa in this article. Read the whole thing for yourself. There’s no claim from anyone who actually knows Beck that he is fooling everyone with his greed machine. There’s no hidden audio tapes of Beck talking (with his pipe in his mouth) about how he is exploiting America for his own personal gain and that he could care less who he has to maim along the way to make his riches. No, there’s nothing in this article except assumptions, opinions, and cheap shots.
Oh and there is one other thing in this article: elitism. Bob Cesca says that you and I, who listen to Glenn Beck and believe he is pursing the truth, are completely misguided and are victims of our militaristic gun loving reactionary ways. He does give us a little sympathy with his comparison of Colbert and Beck. Since Beck’s TV and radio show are not explicitly satire, how are we to know that he is abusing us for his own fortunes. We aren’t much better than zombies to Cecsa.
But if we are really that stupid, then why does he care about us gun loving types who cling to our religion in difficult times? Well, he doesn’t. He cares about Glenn Beck’s message resonating to the point that it derails what his messianic president is doing. He cares about liberalism. The funny thing about this is that he is defending it with a paper sword, which is fine with me. Beck has all the nukes in this fight.