Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck’s Fear For Profit Paranoia Play

Posted by on November 30, 2009 at 1:59 pm. NO Comments :

Sitting through an episode of Glenn Beck’s program on Fox News, an emotional punch is delivered that is not much different in substance than a disaster movie like 2012. It is jam-packed with terror-inducing scenes of catastrophe, destruction, conspiracy, and death.

For example in Beck’s own words:

  • …there are people intentionally destroying our country.
  • It is time to prepare yourself for some tough times.
  • You’re gonna see a black and white world, man, that is nothing but destruction and ugly.
  • …creating the path to America’s destruction.
  • Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing.
  • They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered.

Beck wants you to “be afraid…be very afraid.” But this is not just a case of Apocalyptic fever. This is Glenn Beck’s marketing plan. The dramaturgy practiced by Beck is deliberately designed to manufacture fear and panic. It is not coincidental that Beck’s broadcasting company is called Mercury Radio Arts. It is a perverse homage to Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre on the Air. The Mercury Theatre, of course, was best known for causing a nationwide panic with “War of the Worlds,” a radio broadcast of a fictional invasion by martians. For Beck to name his company after a theatrical enterprise notorious for fabricating an hysterical frenzy tells you all that is necessary to know about his motives. He is virtually admitting his intention to concoct phony spectacles of dread. Beck wants you to believe that we are at war. And while the enemy may not be Martians, they are still mysterious, secretive, and deadly. And, oh yes, aliens (i.e. Mexicans, Kenyans, Socialists, etc.).

Beck’s entire program is a hoax that is comparable to recent notorious hoaxes like Balloon Boy and Sarah Palin. And it is reaching its intended market. Earlier this year Beck appeared on Fox & Friends and called President Obama a racist who has “a deep-seated hatred of white people.” In response, advertisers abandoned the program in droves. The ads that remain reflect the fear mongering tone of the show’s content. Rosland Capital and Goldline International are gold traders banking on the decline of the dollar and the economy. LifeLock and Consumer Debt Advocates peddle services aimed at people afraid of identity theft and collection agencies. The National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Fox News affiliated Wall Street Journal, are all publications that preach gloomy prospects for the administration, and therefore, the country and the world. The remainder are a mix of old-age products for insurance, retirement, or cosmetics, along with advocacy ads that promote tea parties and bash health care reform.

The category of advertiser has remained at best second rate. These are not the sort of top tier enterprises that a highly rated program would be expected to attract. Procter & Gamble, GEICO, Wal-Mart, etc., were all advertisers prior to Beck’s remarks about the President. They have not returned despite predictions by some media analysts that the ad boycott would be short-lived. And contrary to Fox PR flacks, they have lost millions of dollars due to the anti-Beck campaign that was spearheaded by Color of Change.

This ad slump for Beck comes at a time when the industry is bouncing back from a long recession. Yet Beck is still compelled to not only accept lower tier ads, but he is also forced to personally shill for these services. The gold dealers get plugged by Beck during his program as he warns his viewers to get out of the stock market and stockpile gold and guns instead. He also pitches another advertiser, The Villages retirement community in Florida, by appearing there to promote his book and announce the commencement of his ludicrous and paranoid “PLAN.”

The point of all of this is to leave you depressed, discouraged, and desperate. It is a persistent message that permeates Beck’s program and continues through the commercial breaks. As a marketing strategy it has the benefit of producing viewers who are addicted to the rhetoric of hopelessness and the clannish appeal of membership in a club that regards itself as the only clear-eyed community of truth seekers. At the same time it creates consumers who cannot resist the products that promise them security and salvation. There is no more motivated buyer than one who believes his life is dependent on a purchase.

The sad part is that there are way too many people who are buying Beck’s snake oil. It is making him richer and his viewers, and the country, poorer. It is a strategy that brings a whole new meaning to the phrase Caveat Emptor – Let the buyer beware.

Glenn Beck’s Sermon On Shared Sacrifice Will Make You Sick

Posted by on November 25, 2009 at 12:47 pm. 2 Comments :

There’s no doubt about it. The United States economy is still reeling from the effects of one of the worst recessions in its history. It is piling up massive debt and struggling to produce even modest growth and job creation. At the same time it is embroiled in two wars overseas that are costly on matters both fiscal and fatal.

In response, Congressman David Obey floated a proposal that a new tax on high income earners be imposed to cover the costs associated with any escalation of activities in Afghanistan. This sensible suggestion is an attempt to restore responsibility to wartime economics. If the nation is going to engage in an expensive adventure that puts its citizens lives at risk, it ought to be willing to ask those who remain at home to chip in and insure that the military and personal needs of our soldiers are met. It’s called shared sacrifice.

From Glenn Beck’s perspective, however, this is just another political maneuver by Democrats to hasten the socialistic utopia Beck imagines they are plotting. He insists that it is a continuance of President Obama’s campaign to redistribute the wealth. In a way, Beck is right. It is an initiative to redistribute wealth from chickenhawks like Beck to soldiers on the battlefield. And Beck will have none of that.

In his patented drool-dripping diction, Beck commences reasonably enough by declaring that war “should qualify as a shared sacrifice.” But then he veers into irrational demands that strain any effort to understand.

“What sacrifice are you willing to share? Shave your armpits, sign up for a tour of duty and share the sacrifice.”

Is he directing this exclusively to women? Or are all recruits expected to shave under their arms these days? It may be best to set that aside for the time being and focus, not on armpits, but on Beck’s call to arms. What is notable about Beck berating others to enlist is that he never did so. Not in his youth, nor for the current wars in which he claims to believe. Beck was 37 years old in 2001. He could have signed up after 9/11, and during any of the five years thereafter. But apparently shared sacrifice was secondary to seeking radio stardom.

Beck is not only opposed to sharing sacrifices by spreading the costs of war to all citizens, he believes that the sacrifice Americans ought to be making is in the area of their own well being. He argues that domestic initiatives like health care should be curtailed in favor of war funding. And his specific approach to this theory is particularly grotesque – and false:

“I don’t see Americans dying in the streets as they’re waiting in line to the hospital because they’ve been shot in Detroit. They get in to a hospital. You know where I do see them dying? Afghanistan. Nobody died because they didn’t have health care. Nobody!”

I’m quite certain that Beck is telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t “see Americans dying in the streets.” He certainly wouldn’t see them in the streets of his gated community in Connecticut. A media celebrity who earns tens of millions of dollars every year is not likely to encounter many shooting victims in urban Detroit. But even more egregious is his claim that nobody has died because they didn’t have health care. It would not have taken much research to discover this report published by Harvard Medical School just a little over a month ago:

Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

Glenn Beck is a wealthy, well-insured, elitist who has never served in the military. Yet he is comfortable lecturing everyone else on what it means to share sacrifice. He is content to allow thousands of Americans to die here at home – ten times the number every year than have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in eight years – so that he doesn’t have to pay a little more of his millions in taxes. And then he has the gall to belittle others for failing to show due consideration for the troops.

An equally disturbing aspect of this is that, in pursuit of his greedy selfishness, Beck will deliberately misinform his legions of deluded disciples about the facts related to health insurance deficiencies and abuses. With his proclivity for purposeful deception he joins his Fox colleague, Bill O’Reilly, who still insists that there are no homeless veterans.

The only lessons to be learned from Beck’s sermon on shared sacrifice are sadistic, shameless, self-serving, specious, and quite literally sickening.

THE PLAN: Glenn Beck’s Ticking Time Bomb For America

Posted by on November 22, 2009 at 3:42 pm. 6 Comments :

The walking Messiah Complex that we know as Glenn Beck has something in store for America. He is not content with having a daily television program, radio broadcast, books, web site, magazine, movies, and live performances. That’s not nearly enough for a megalomaniacal doomsday prophet of Beck’s caliber. He must have more. He must have the attention of every self-deluding dullard that he can herd into his parish. He must have unambiguous devotion. He must have it all. He must have the future.

And that’s why he is developing what he calls “The Plan,” a one hundred year blueprint for the restoration of an America that exists only in his mangled mentality. He longs to return to an era when our founding fathers consumed and polluted our young nation’s natural resources at will. When they slaughtered savage natives and confined them to reservations. When they enriched themselves with the blood and sweat of imported slaves. When voting was the privilege of male landowners. Ah, those were the days.

This is not to say that America’s founders were inherently evil. They had many admirable qualities and ambitions. They drafted a governing document that is still the model for free, democratic societies. But they were not perfect and ought not to be beatified. It is fair to say that a couple of centuries of progress has contributed to our store of wisdom and purpose. It would be foolish to fail to recognize the advances we’ve made and to build on them. Yet that is precisely the path that Beck would have us follow. He has a plan to move us a hundred years – backwards.

Beck’s obsession with plotting out a hundred years of his philosophy was laid out in a speech to his disciples yesterday. To be clear, it was a speech laying out his obsession, not any real philosophy. There doesn’t actually appear to be one. And as is his practice, he focused primarily on the tribulations of our grievous destiny.

Beck: “I’ve done a lot of reading on history the last few years. And I was amazed to find that what we’re experiencing now is really a ticking time bomb that they designed about a hundred years ago at the beginning of the progressive movement.”

A ticking time bomb? Beck’s reading of history has found some sort of Da Vinci coded scheme by a cabal of early twentieth century super-villains determined to destroy an America they would never live to see. These ragtime conspirators lit the fuse a hundred years ago, and today the threat they set in motion serves as Beck’s Apocalyptic siren. It is the trumpeting of the end of days, and in Beck’s ears it is as sure as Gabriel’s horn. Yet it is a fate that is invisible to everyone but Beck. Thank God we have access to his dementia. Otherwise we would never see the bubbling cauldron of calamities right before our eyes. We would be blind to the signs of doom all around us, like the pernicious paintings and sculptures littering Manhattan courtesy of the socialist clan of Rockefeller.

In his speech yesterday, Beck even found hidden clues to the secrets of the Statue of Liberty. She is not what she seems. Beck recited the words carved at her base:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

On the first reading he delivered it hushed tones, almost a whisper, saying that that was the way we had been taught to perceive it. Now I never knew there was a “correct” intonation, but no matter, Beck quickly declares it was wrong. He then commenced a second recitation, this time a cacophony of anger and judgment and spittle running down his chin. This represented the true meaning of the words to him, to which he added, still shouting, “The message is clear…”

“You send the worst of the worst to America.
The people you’ve rejected. The ideas you don’t like.
And freedom will free them. Free their minds.
Liberty will change everything.
My friends, we are in troubled, troubled times.”

That is Beck’s vision of America’s welcome at Ellis Island. It is not an embrace of the world’s downtrodden that they may find peace and fellowship. It is a condemnation of inferiors that they may seek repair. That these diseased and broken souls may be healed. He literally describes Liberty’s poem as “an insult” to foreign tyrants, rather than the appeal to hope that the rest of us heard. It is a vision that perfectly fits Beck’s fixation on creating idols and demons and saviors.

And after excoriating the progressives of yore for their conniving villainy, Beck triumphantly proclaims that “two can play that game.” This is his way of announcing that he too can shape evil plots. He too can form cabals intent on destroying the country. He is openly alerting us that he too can plant a ticking time bomb in America’s foundation.

Beck regards this as his sacred mission. He preaches it to his flock. And over the next year he plans to hold seminars to further indoctrinate his disciples with disinformation and fables that he will convince them are true. And as foreboding as this seems, in the end, Beck cannot prevail. His brand of gloom has never been strong enough to overcome the indomitable optimism of the American people. But sadly, while America will survive Glenn Beck, not all Americans will. And that is why we have an obligation to confront and to counter him. On behalf of those he misleads, and the victims they produce, we must not leave the field to his cult of ignorance.

Glenn Beck’s 100 Year Plan: A Century Of Idiocy

Posted by on November 21, 2009 at 5:37 pm. 3 Comments :

After spending most of this year denigrating ACORN and the general notion of community organizers, Glenn Beck is now forming his own FAKE-ORN (FAKE Organization of Right-wing Nuts). The big announcement that Beck has been teasing all week is apparently an effort to corral his disciples into an electoral movement that will endure for a hundred years. Does that mean we will have to have him around for that long? {{{shudder}}}

“Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. He says he will promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of conventions across the country featuring conservative speakers, all leading up to a rally in Washington in August to coincide with the release of his book on conservative proposals for the country.”

The nature of Beck’s new enterprise is precisely what community organizers have always done and Beck has long disparaged: bring people together, educate them, and promote their participation in civic affairs. It will be interesting to see what sort of voter registration plans he has in store. Will he seek to serve disenfranchised communities that have been ignored by the political class? Or will he venture into the suburbs to sign up as many Joe the Plumbers as he can find?

Beck told a local Florida Fox affiliate that his conventions will be educational gatherings where he will teach “ethics, history, finance, community organizing and everything American’s need to know about how the government works.” These classes will be something on the order of Hannibal Lechter’s courses on vegetarian cuisine. We can rest assured that anyone graduating from Beck’s seminars will be less informed, or more ill-informed, than when they went in. As for the event in August, it is planned for August 28, 2010, which is the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. That’s an interesting bit of scheduling for a guy who called the nation’s first African-America president a “racist,” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

What do you suppose triggered this fundamental transformation in Beck’s thinking? Why is he suddenly an avid community organizer? I wonder if it has anything to do with the whole affair coinciding with the release of his next book. Beck’s utter lack of expertise in the areas enumerated will prove useful for the building of his army of imbeciles, and will surely achieve his goal of selling more books and expanding the congregation of his TV church.

The run-up to this announcement was repeatedly plugged on his program last week. It was sold as a game-changer for him and his show:

“This show is changing next year. We are moving forward. Cause I’m tired of it. We are going to unveil a plan this Friday…uh…this Saturday in Florida. I am going to be at The Villages in Florida. I’m gonna bring it to you on television if you can’t be there. But I wanted to be able to look people in the eye. I want to see your commitment back. Coming this January, my whole approach changes on this program. There is a problem here, America. And I’m gonna have the…I don’t care what people say about me. Personal responsibility is dead in this country. It is time that we get the little paddles – poof – and bring the body back.”

As it turns out, Beck’s concept of personal responsibility is just another campaign to get conservatives to the polls. The appalling thing about this is that Beck is using his platform on Fox to conduct this campaign. It is not particularly surprising with respect to the role Fox has long played in the media. If anyone doubted Anita Dunn’s assertion that Fox is a wing of the Republican Party, this should allay those doubts once and for all. But the brazen openness with which Fox is now asserting itself as a partisan enterprise should disturb every American and certainly every journalist.

This is not the only example of Fox’s bias. Sean Hannity has a long record of promoting Republican politics. As has Fox contributor and fill-in host, Laura Ingraham. Fox is even the television home to two potential Republican presidential candidates: Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Beck’s web site for his 9/12 project is hosted by Foxnews.com. And the Fox Nation is an unabashed Democrat bashing web venue.

The relationship between Fox and the Republican Party is iron clad. There is no way they can plausibly deny it any longer. The participation of Fox presenters in clearly partisan activities cannot be ignored. Undoubtedly, Fox will broadcast Beck’s rally in August next year. The rally is characterized by Beck as…

“…the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.”

The Plan is the title of the book he will be releasing in conjunction with the rally. In the book he will outline his “100 year plan” to bring the country back from the brink of…whatever it is Beck imagines we’re on the brink of. The fact that Beck is embarking on a 100 year plan says something about his Messianic ambitions. Perhaps the August rally is his attempt to gather the flock for the boarding of the Ark.

Late summer of 2010 promises to be a season of protest. In addition to the August rally for The Plan, Beck is still promoting his second annual 9/12 Project rally that next year will take place on 9/11. The thought of Beck exploiting that day with an event that is known for hostile protests of a decidedly political nature is flat out disgusting. That, along with his August rally date really makes you wonder what this guy is thinking (a futile exercise in the best of circumstances).

Finally, there is a possibility that this isn’t partisan at all with regard to Republicans and Democrats. Beck may be aiming for third party status and an assault on the Washington establishment. In that event he might actually be doing the Democrats a favor, because very few of them would migrate to his camp. Consequently, he would peel off disaffected Republicans and clear a path for more Democratic victories. However, it is possible that his voters, having no actual third party candidates for whom to vote, would either have to console themselves with Republicans or stay home. But if he succeeds in registering enough people who ultimately vote with the GOP, that could sway some contests. So in the end it is still a operation that could favorably impact one party over another.

With evidence like that, and all of the other overtly biased behavior of Fox News, it would be fair to wonder when the Federal Elections Commission might get involved. It seems that they would have an interest in a network that is so shamelessly contributing to a political cause via its expensive airtime and commentary. If they are going to be giving away such valuable assets, some regulatory agency ought to be paying attention.

The Newsmax Dream Ticket: Palin/Beck

Posted by on November 17, 2009 at 7:00 pm. 4 Comments :

This is just too delicious not to pass on. The uber-rightist magazine/web site, Newsmax, has been flapping hard for Sarah Palin since she fell from her nest in Alaska and took wing. They are presently hawking her new book as a free premium with a one year year subscription to their magazine. And if you don’t want a subscription, you can still buy the book for $4.95, a $25.00 discount from the retail price. Shipping and handling is $5.95, a dollar more than the book itself.

But here’s the fun part, Newsmax asked Palin about her future plans and specifically inquired as to whether she would entertain the idea of running on a ticket with Glenn Beck. They described it as their “dream ticket.” Palin’s response:

“I can envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I’m not there yet,” Palin tells Newsmax. “But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He’s a hoot. He gets his message across in such a clever way. And he’s so bold – I have to respect that. He calls it like he sees it, and he’s very, very, very effective.”

That’s the dream ticket for NewsMax: Hockey Mom/Hoot 2012. I think it may be my dream ticket too.

The Communists In Glenn Beck’s Pointy Little Head

Posted by on November 16, 2009 at 10:58 pm. 2 Comments :

This is going to be brief because Glenn Beck really speaks for himself.

GLENN BECK, 11/12/09: I’ve been very consistent on all of this stuff. But they don’t even look at any of that. In fact, the claims that I make about socialist Marxism, et cetera, et cetera, communist, I’ve only charged that there was one communist in the White House, in the administration, one. I have not made a claim that there’s more. Only one.

GLENN BECK, 8/31/09: Why does the president have so many Marxists, socialists, radicals and self-proclaimed communists advising him?

GLENN BECK, 10/17/09: It is not a crime to admire communist murderers, but to me – pardon the pun – it is kind of a red flag. But even more chilling than all the admiration is the fact that so many in and around our nation’s capital and the White House, in the halls of power, adhere to the tenets of socialism, Marxism, and communism.

GLENN BECK, 10/26/09: I have made an unchallenged case that there were and are communist revolutionaries, socialists, Marxists, people that follow Chairman Mao, people that do not believe in the free market system, people that are radicals that have been appointed by Obama to the executive branch positions in government.

Beck frequently claims that he would immediately correct any mistake, but we really can’t hold him to that. If he actually had to correct his lies and misstatements, how would he have time to do his show?

Glenn Beck’s Cast Of Racists and White Supremacists

Posted by on November 16, 2009 at 4:57 pm. 9 Comments :

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a haven for racism and hate. So many of the network’s presenters have been caught expressing repulsive views that they should just stop pretending and pull their sheets out of the closet.

Let’s give Glenn Beck a taste of his own medicine. He revels in phony guilt by association scams, but he is also vulnerable to them. Sam Stein at the Huffington Post has done some investigative work that documents what rational observers already know. His column itemizes a parade of purported hate mongers that Beck has featured on his radio and TV programs. People like…

  • Michael Hill, the founder and president of the League of the South.
  • Thomas Naylor, the secessionist head of the Second Vermont Republic.
  • Tom Woods, radical, pro-Confederate author.
  • Larry Pratt, the president of Gun Owners of America.
  • Roy Beck, the founder and president of NumbersUSA.
  • Charles Goyette, Phoenix-based radio host and 9/11 skeptic.

The research done by HuffPo’s Stein is a useful addition to accumulated evidence against Beck. Stein notes that Beck is well known for casting aspersions on his enemies based on associations he can make between them and other dubious figures. By that standard, Beck is the leading candidate for Grand Wizard in America today. And remember, Beck is the guy who called President Obama a racist. Beck is also the guy who has been on an obsessive campaign against African Americans in public service. Along with organizations that represent the interests of the poor, minorities, and workers, like ACORN and SEIU, Beck has attacked mostly black staffers in the Obama administration:

Anyone who thinks that the election of a black president put an end to the problem of racial prejudice in this country is terminally naive.

Bold/Fresh? The Bill O’Reilly/Glenn Beck Idiots Tour

Posted by on November 14, 2009 at 4:46 pm. 62 Comments :

On the O’Reilly Factor yesterday, the big news was released that Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck will be taking to the road for a major entertainment event: The Bold & Fresh Tour.

It sounds like the launch of a new laundry detergent to me. But no – this is the Tea Bagger equivalent of the Grateful Dead. This national extravaganza will march across this great nation from Westbury, NY, to Tampa, FL, to North Charleston, SC, to Norfolk, VA to … well actually, that’s the whole thing. Four cities in seven days. It’s gonna be WILD! As it says on BoldFreshTour.com…

“It’s an event that makes professional wrestling seem like a night at the opera.”

Now that’s exciting! This will not be just another evening of inspiring music, compelling drama, extraordinary talent, and cultural enrichment. Hell no! It will be a sweaty brawl with two of America’s premiere purveyors of slack-jawed invective, spitting furiously at each other in their phony, choreographed dance of dimwitted arrogance. Either that or a Marx Brothers movie.

The announcement last night revealed the name of the tour as the Bold & Fresh Tour. Then the fireworks started as Beck pretended to be bothered by the fact that the tour was named for O’Reilly’s book instead of his own. I’m inclined to agree with Beck. They definitely should have used Beck’s book for the name of this tour. It is so much more accurate to promote this as the “Arguing With Idiots” tour. But that would have been a bit more honesty than this clod couple could muster.

The Gospel According To Beck: Destruction

Posted by on November 13, 2009 at 11:09 am. NO Comments :

Heed ye the call and come unto the word of FOX. Herewith are more revelations as revealed by Glenn Beck in the divine Gospel According to Beck*:

2:1) You’re gonna see a black and white world, man, that is nothing but destruction and ugly.
2:2) I don’t know why no one else will tell you the truth about these things. I don’t know and I don’t care. All I I know is they are all there. Embedded in each one of these bills, in plain sight.
2:3) Barack Obama and Congress are selling you a bill of goods. It is only when you take down the mask of sunshine and lollipops that you will see the real thing – the real image.
2:4) Destruction. These bills are creating the path to America’s destruction. How many months ago did I say “Please, please America, don’t debate, don’t compromise on these things.”.
2:5) There are things in these bills that you don’t even know. They’re building a machine and they’re about to turn the darn thing on. You don’t compromise on your destruction.

Once again, Beck is the only one who can see the danger that lies ahead. He is the only one with the courage to warn us that we are on a path to destruction. And you do not compromise on destruction. You do not even debate. It doesn’t matter if you know what you’re talking about. You do not need to know – or care. Just listen to Beck. He sees the things that are hidden in plain sight. He is your light and your guide.

* These are the actual words of Glenn Beck.

Media Matters: A Tale Of Two Networks

Posted by on November 12, 2009 at 5:59 pm. NO Comments :

I was going to write a piece similar to this one that I found at Media Matters. However, Simon Maloy has so perfectly articulated everything I had to say on this subject that I just copied and pasted his article. I hope he doesn’t sue me.

Consider for a moment the circumstances surrounding Lou Dobbs’ abrupt departure from CNN, announced last night and effective immediately. Dobbs had been going increasingly far afield in
his programming, from spinning North American Union conspiracy theories, to indulging the Birther nonsense, to claiming that his opponents had taken to shooting at his house (the police said it was likely an errant bullet from a hunter’s rifle). Notably, CNN itself debunked each of these stories. According to the New York Times write-up of Dobbs’ exit, Dobbs’ on-air behavior was apparently too much for the network to bear: “Months ago the president of CNN/U.S., Jonathan Klein, offered a choice to Lou Dobbs, the channel’s most outspoken anchor. Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN.”

Now, contrast CNN’s Dobbs situation to Fox News and its handling of Glenn Beck. In terms of delusional conspiracy-mongering and spittle-flecked invective, Dobbs is a stripling compared to Beck. Fox News’ steady transition from untrustworthy cable news network to conservative political action committee can largely be attributed to Beck, whose 9-12 Project is wrapped up with the Tea Party movement. Except for those that buy into his fevered shtick, Beck is an embarrassment, an embodiment of everything that is wrong with cable news, and there is no greater example of this than when he called the President of the United States a “racist” who has “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” The network lost scores of advertisers over that remark, and, as NBC’s First Read pointed out, “[t]here was a time when outrageous rants like this would actually cost the ranters their jobs.”

But what happened to Beck? He got a pat on the head from NewsCorp president Rupert Murdoch, who said Beck “was right” to call the president a “racist.”

CNN’s movement on Dobbs was long overdue, but they eventually decided that their credibility as a news network outweighed Dobbs’ (rapidly dwindling) ratings. Fox News, on the other hand, shows no such concern with Beck, maybe because they didn’t have a whole lot of credibility to sacrifice in the first place.

Well said, Simon.