Yesterday’s edition of Glenn Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue contained a remarkable confession from Beck. He embarked on an elaborate demonstration to illustrate how political operatives in the White House use misdirection to achieve their goals. In order to convey this concept to an audience he apparently believes are rejects from remedial kindergarten, he performs a hackneyed magic trick wherein a coin astonishingly disappears from one hand and then magically appears in the other.

The lesson Beck hopes to impart is that, through the use of distraction, government can enact some nefarious and secret legislation while the people are entranced by an irrelevant shiny object. That’s actually true and it happens with some frequency. And it even appears to be happening to Beck even as he speaks.

“You know what? They believe that if they can get you to watch the coin, if they can get you to have you watch me and Fox, well then they can slip [health care] by and get it passed.”

So the scheme employed by the White House is to get you to watch Glenn Beck. The cads! And Beck appears to be abetting the scheme. How insidious! Beck then goes on to quote from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

“The press corps will mostly ignore all of this [health care] because it is complicated and boring policy, as opposed to the epic drama of Anita Dunn vs. Glenn Beck.”

It’s downright Machiavellian. Beck’s contention is that the “war” that has recently erupted between the White House and Fox News is the shiny object. He wonders why the administration would waste its time and energy attacking Fox News. He asserts that it is a deliberate attempt to sway attention from the more serious issue of health care so the administration’s reform bill will sneak past a beguiled public and into law. This plan is only plausible because health care reform is so completely under the radar. No one in the whole country is aware that it is even under consideration. Are they?

Apparently Obama’s plan is working brilliantly. He has manged to get Beck himself to spend hours, virtually every day since the original volleys in this war, consumed by this distraction that he has said is an attack on Fox News and him personally. He has become obsessed with White House communications director Anita Dunn, placing a dedicated phone line on the stage in his studio with a staffer sitting next to it ready to answer should Dunn heed his pleas to call. He is now signing off every program by saying, “Good night Mrs. Dunn, wherever you are.” Obama has masterfully manipulated Beck into waving the shiny object around for almost two weeks now, even though he knows it’s a ploy to shove health care down the throat of America (in which case America would at least be able to see see a good ear, nose and throat specialist).

His daily sermonizing on delusional associations between Dunn and Mao keep getting more complex. And the larger ramifications he proposes with regard to the end of free speech are getting more absurd. He is frothing at the mouth with allegations of Maoists in the government. Yet he still seems to be serenely oblivious to the connections that his employer, Rupert Murdoch, has with Chinese communists, or to his own admission of idolizing Adolf Hitler. [If it’s not true, Glenn, PLEASE call me]

This campaign of misdirection has taken root throughout the Murdoch empire. Fox News airs frequent segments about their squabble with the White House. The Fox Nation website today has nine separate stories on its home page pertaining to the skirmish, some of which also appear on FoxNews.com:

• President Obama Fueling War With Fox News?
• Is WH Coordinating With Media Matters & MoveOn to Smear Fox News?
• FCC-Church Conspiracy To Silent [sic] Talk Radio And Fox?
• Why the WH bullies Fox
• Why the WH shouldn’t play chicken with Fox
• Fox News as White House Bogeyman
• Obama Responds to Administration’s Attacks on Fox News
• Fox News On the White House Enemies List
• WH Cites Opinion Shows as Basis for Fox News Complaints

So if the goal of the White House is to manufacture a controversy between them and Fox News, with the purpose being to shift attention away from other matters, why is Fox News taking the bait? Why is there more coverage of this distraction/war by Fox than by any other news outlet? Why are Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and numerous other Fox presenters and contributors hammering on this every single day?

Don’t they know that it’s a ruse? Glenn Beck knows. He said so. Yet he’s still playing along. He’s still filling his show with almost nothing but the phony war. Is he in on it? Is he brain damaged? (You don’t need to answer that). What’s clear is that he is so thoroughly outmatched by Obama that he is falling for what he believes is a scam, even as he declares that it’s a scam. How demented do you have to be to do that?