10 Reasons Why Fox News After Glenn Beck Will Still Suck

Posted by on April 13, 2011 at 10:38 am. 10 Comments :

“If I were lying I’d be off the air.”
  ~ Glenn Beck, Jan 4, 2010.
“I’m going to be leaving this program later this year.”
  ~ Glenn Beck, Apr 6, 2011.

There has already been a barrage of media analysis and discussion of Glenn Beck’s not-so-surprising separation from Fox News. For the most part that discussion has been focused on speculation as to the cause of the break up and on what will become of Beck. But any suggestion that Beck’s departure polishes Fox’s reputation is pure folly. The worst of Beck’s haunted imagination is securely woven into the Fox News dis-comforter. The trademark Fox invective, sophistry, and bias predate Beck and will outlive him.


Many in the press, however, are more interested in prattling on about the alleged animosity for Beck amongst “serious” conservatives and his colleagues at Fox who think that his doomsday rhetoric and conspiracy theories give the “news” network a bad name. The purveyors of conventional wisdom are very concerned about Fox’s teetering credibility and are scrambling to defend it:

Howard Kurtz, CNN, The Daily Beast: …many senior Fox executives are relieved to be rid of Beck. [and] …some journalists and executives at the network privately expressed concern that Beck was becoming the face of the network.

George Will, ABC News Washington Post: I think that Glenn Beck and his drift into more bizarre and extreme positions was threatening the Fox brand. So I wish Glenn Beck health and happiness but I think the health and happiness of Fox is served by his departure.

Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers Magazine: You can’t be a rodeo clown and maintain credibility,

Matt Lewis, The Daily Caller: My take is that while Beck’s show was individually a ratings hit, he also risked tarnishing the overall Fox News “brand”.

Jeffrey McCall, professor of media studies, DePauw University: Beck was no longer just a personality with a show on FNC. He became an easy target for Fox News critics to characterize him as representative of the entire channel.

These august observers have frightfully short memories. The truth is that Fox earned its nefarious reputation long before Beck arrived and there is every indication that they will preserve it after he’s gone. In fact, it’s that reputation that made Beck such a good fit to begin with and lured him to the network despite his admitted reluctance when first approached. The pundits who are advancing the premise that by losing Beck, Fox can be redeemed are, to put it kindly, mistaken. Here is why Fox News without Glenn Beck will be just as bad as Fox News with Glenn Beck:

1) Bill O’Reilly: Before Beck called President Obama a racist, Bill O’Reilly ventured to Sylvia’s in Harlem and expressed his surprise that the mostly African-American patrons weren’t acting like primitives. And when the First Lady was criticized for expressing her pride that America had evolved to the point where they would elect an African-American president O’Reilly considerately declared that “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence.” Nice choice of words.

2) Sean Hannity: While Beck may suffer from an acute case of Nazi-Tourettes Syndrome (Louis Black™), Sean Hannity is a personal friend of the notorious neo-Nazi schlock-jock, Hal Turner, and graciously hosted him on his program. Turner won’t be be revisiting Hannity for a while because he is presently in prison serving 33 months for threatening judges.

3) Megyn Kelly: No one can spin a conspiracy theory quite like Beck, but Megyn Kelly comes pretty close. For months she’s been peddling a pseudo-scandal that alleges that the Department of Justice deliberately dismisses all charges of civil rights violations when the plaintiff is white. This has been debunked by the House Judiciary Committee’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Kelly also fronted phony investigations into the alleged terrorist ties of funders of the Park51 mosque in Manhattan. Somehow she left out the fact that one of those funders was Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, the second largest shareholder of News Corp outside of the Murdoch family. Kelly has a permanently affixed expression of indignation and a vocal delivery that makes every story appear to be shocking. She is the human manifestation of Fox’s ever-present “FOX ALERT!”

4) Judge Andrew Napolitano: There are conspiratorial paths where even Beck fears to tread. Judge Andrew Napolitano has no such fears. He is a frequent guest of proto-conspiratorialist and Beck inspiration, Alex Jones. He is an avowed 9/11 Truther who says that the World Trade Center attack was an inside job. He believes that the health care bill contains provisions for a civilian military force to suppress domestic insurrection. And he also happens to be Beck’s most frequent fill-in host and a leading candidate to replace him.

5) Bill Sammon: Fox News’ Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, has espoused a hard-core conservatism that predates Beck and emanates from the executive suites far above him. He came to Fox from the “Moonie” Washington Times and authored several books lionizing George W. Bush and lambasting Democrats. He was also caught authoring memos that directed his reporters to dispense a brazenly partisan point of view. For instance, he told them to refrain from using the term “public option” during the health care debate because focus group testing proved that the term “government-run” produced a more negative response. Even more disturbing, he was recorded admitting to a friendly audience on a conservative cruise that he “mischievously” cast Obama as a socialist even though he didn’t believe it himself. In other words, he lied to defame the President and rile up his gullible viewers. Beck must be so proud to have worked for him.

6) Neil Cavuto: The glorification of ignorance is a staple of Beck’s brand, but Neil Cavuto has been contributing to the collapse of America’s collective IQ far longer than Beck. He proudly hosts such respected policy analysts as Ted Nugent, Joe the Plumber, and any random Tea Bagger to help him unravel our nation’s dilemmas. One of his favorite idiocies is his insistence that Climate Change is a hoax because it gets cold in the winter. But Cavuto really shines when he brings in guests whose only connection to the segment is a juvenile pun. For instance, in a discussion about whether Tea Party support was grassroots or AstroTurf, Cavuto interviewed the CEO of AstroTurf Technologies, whose expertise with synthetic fiber products contributed nothing to the debate on campaign organization. Cavuto is the prop comic of pundits who delights in interrupting and shouting down Democrats who are naive enough to accept his invitations to appear.

7) Fox & Friends: While there will always be only one rodeo clown in the vast right-wing conspira-circus, there is no shortage of stooges, and three of them are featured on Fox & Friends. First we have Steve Doocy, who wondered “Why didn’t anybody ever mention that [Obama] spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father.” Perhaps because Obama actually never knew his father who left the family when he was two years old. Then there’s Brian Kilmeade who fans the racist flames by saying things like “all terrorists are Muslims.” And don’t forget Gretchen Carlson, who called the late Sen. Ted Kennedy a “hostile enemy” of the United States. All of these vile inanities were delivered without any help from Beck. However, it should be noted that when Beck made his infamous remarks about Obama being a racist he did it on Fox & Friends.

8) Fox Nation: Any good 21st century propaganda outfit has to have an Internet component, and for Fox News it is the Fox Nation. This web site’s sole purpose is to disseminate the most despicably dishonest disinformation it can invent. There are way too many examples to itemize, but here are a couple that represent the ridiculous and the repulsive. Last July Fox Nation featured a story that claimed that the Taliban was recruiting monkey mercenaries. This absurdity was sourced to the People’s Daily in China. Fox Nation also ran an item that speculated about Obama’s death. This article brought out the hate in the site’s readers who posted numerous comments indicating how welcome that would be. Many of the stories on Fox Nation percolate up to Fox News for broadcast and they they are no less deranged than the nonsense Beck comes up with.

9) Roger Ailes: The president and CEO of Fox News sets the tone for the network as a whole. Roger Ailes was a long-time media advisor to Republican candidates prior to launching Fox News. He is the network’s spiritual leader. If you ever wondered how Beck could get away with aligning President Obama (and anyone else with whom he disagrees) with Hitler, your curiosity was satisfied when Ailes lashed out at NPR saying that “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.” Ailes’ remarks prove that the hate speech at Fox goes from the top down. It’s not now, and never has been, unique to Beck.

10) Rupert Murdoch: Speaking of the top – Rupert Murdoch, the Chairman and CEO of News Corp, is as high as you can get. He is the company’s captain and conscience. Every material decision requires his concurrence, including his employment of Glenn Beck. While Beck may be leaving, Murdoch is not (yet). It is, therefore, important to note that when Beck called the President a racist, Murdoch responded by saying that “it was something that, perhaps, shouldn’t have been said about the President, but if you actually assess what he [Beck] was talking about, he was right.”

Murdoch has consistently stood behind Beck for more than two years, defending him at every turn for every scandalous affair and affront. Even as advertisers fled in disgust, Murdoch never conceded an inch. In the television marketplace it is advertisers, not viewers, who are the broadcaster’s clients. Murdoch snubbed his clients in order to allow Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue and Disinfotainment Revival Hour to continue poisoning minds and influencing elections.

More importantly, Murdoch and Ailes together have fashioned a network whose persona is infested with the same conservative extremist ideology popularized by Beck. The examples above illustrate how ingrained that ideology is into the Fox News schedule in all dayparts. And those programs are augmented by an army of propagandists that include Sarah Palin, Stuart Varney, Eric Bolling, Monica Crowley, Dick Morris, Frank Luntz, and many more.

With this dedicated team of activist anchors and contributors in place, Beck’s departure, though gossip-worthy, will change nothing at Fox News. Beck was not cast off because his message was objectionable, but because he was an ineffective messenger who was alienating the audience. His replacement will surely continue the sordid tradition of which Beck was just a small, irritating part. The Fox mission remains intact and any talk of redemption due merely to having thrown off this defective cog is naive and oblivious to the dark reality that is Fox News.

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Glenn Beck Endorses 60% Tax Rate And Slavery

Posted by on April 13, 2011 at 9:01 am. 4 Comments :

On his radio program this morning, Glenn Beck laid out the argument for raising taxes on wealthy people like himself. Of course, he didn’t mean to, but the result is the same.

Beck: My total tax burden I bet is about 60% of what I make. And then somebody else pays zero and that’s fair? And that’s still not our fair share, that’s still not the wealthy fair share.

They would say that people like me don’t need it. Well I employ fifty people. How many people have created this many jobs? Since the recession hit – what did we have, ten? I’ve hired an additional forty people. I could easily hire – we’re planning on hiring another fifty people by the end of the year.

Wow! That’s quite a testimonial. Apparently 60% tax rates have not inhibited Beck’s incentive to create jobs and grow his business. Although through most of this rant that is exactly what he’s complaining about. That is, when he isn’t complaining about poor people paying nothing or government workers being slaves.

Beck: What do you think these federal jobs are all about? These federal jobs are not about helping anything. They are about getting people enslaved to the state.

Exactly! Because slaves, you recall, all had good salaries, comprehensive health care, and generous retirement plans. They had vacation and sick days. They were protected from discrimination and hazardous working conditions. They were given opportunities to advance into management (i.e. master) positions. It was exactly the same as having a federal job.

Just think how much better America would be if we raised everybody’s tax rate to 60% and fired all the federal workers so that they could be enslaved by corporations instead of the government. Thank God we have Beck’s dementia to figure this all out for us.


Fox Nation Loves Corporations, Hates Mother Earth

Posted by on April 12, 2011 at 1:02 pm. 2 Comments :

The Fox Nation is featuring a story about an initiative at the United Nations to protect the environment and it is, not surprisingly, creating a flurry of outrage.

Fox Nation - Mother Earth

The item, which links to an article on Canada.com, is titled “U.N. Proposal Would Give ‘Mother Earth’ Same Rights as Humans,” and describes the draft document that seeks to create parity in the environmental debate.

“The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to ‘dominate and exploit’ – to the point that the ‘well-being and existence of many beings’ is now threatened.”

The article quotes supporters noting that there are plenty of advocates for commercial and state interests that seek to exploit natural resources and that this initiative seeks only to provide balance by creating an advocate for the welfare of the planet.

The outrage expressed by the Fox Nationalists is typically hypocritical of those who defend corporate power over individuals. They have no problem with Supreme Court decisions that define corporations as persons, but to do the same for the Earth is something they regard as unthinkable. Never mind that corporations are notoriously insensitive to the harm they cause to the planet and its inhabitants. And forget that the Earth and its ecosystem is something we all rely for our existence.

The only voices the right believes should be heard are those who oppose the environment. And the real shame is that these rightist eco-terrorists are actually successful in persuading some Republicans and Tea Baggers that Climate Change and other risks to the environment are hoaxes and nothing to be concerned about.


Bill O’Reilly Already Climbing Glenn Beck’s Crazy Tree

Posted by on April 12, 2011 at 11:59 am. 2 Comments :

Glenn Beck hasn’t even left the building and already Bill O’Reilly is angling to take his place as Senior Scare Monger. In his Talking Points Memo segment last night he advanced the idiotic theory that the left is purposefully trying to destroy America.

O’Reilly: The far left wants the government to control the economy, not private industry. That is what is behind The New York Times, Soros and the other uber-left operations.

Very simply, they want a recast of the American economic system, and the only way that can possibly happen is if the system crashes like it did in 1929. In theory, an economic collapse could allow a new system to rise, a quasi-socialistic system whereby Washington would dole out the jobs and money.

Beck: Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing, because this plane is coming down, because the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees.

O’Reilly is appropriating Beck’s favorite fear factors including economic catastrophe, socialism and {gasp} Soros. With Beck being shoved out the door, O’Reilly is pouncing on the “Obama wants America to fail” theme before some poser like Hannity latches onto it.

If recreating 1929 is the only way to invoke a “recast of the American economic system,” then the left is three years too late because George W. Bush already did it in 2008. Where was O’Reilly?

It’s clear that the paranoid dementia and deranged conspiracy theories that formed the basis of Beck’s program will be safely redistributed amongst his successors at Fox. Rest easy Beckoids and FoxPods, the message will endure and nothing will change at your favorite indoctrination station.

[Update:] Beck noticed that O’Reilly has come over to the dark side. On his radio show this morning Beck said…

“For two years I have been talking to Bill O’Reilly and trying to get – I mean how many times have we been on planes with Bill O’Reilly and the whole time ‘Bill, Bill…no, no Bill, you don’t understand. They want to collapse the system. They’re not just misguided.’ And he’s never been down that road. ‘No, no Glenn, they’re just misguided. You’re being too pessimistic.’

“This is a huge, huge turning point for Bill O’Reilly. Huge. And, I think, for the country. Cause now it’s no longer – it’s no longer crazy. Now you’ve got it into the mainstream of Bill O’Reilly. That’s incredible.”

If you think it’s funny that Beck thinks O’Reilly’s concurrence means it’s no longer crazy, you aint heard nothin’ yet. This exchange continued with some banter between Beck and his sidekick Stu wherein Stu admits that Beck has a low standard of proof for his ravings.

Sideshow Stu: [O’Reilly] is not into the whole theorizing thing. He’s not necessarily into trying to call the future, he wants to take a – see the evidence that he sees right now and call it as he sees it. And what this means is that there’s a higher – he has to some degree a higher level of – standard of proof.
Beck: No he doesn’t. No he doesn’t.
Stu: I think he does.
Beck: No he doesn’t!

When your own sidekick argues with you that your standard of proof is weak, or at least weaker than your peers, you may want to reexamine who is the monkey and who is the second banana.


Donald Trump Is Too Modest

Posted by on April 11, 2011 at 3:47 pm. 7 Comments :

On Fox & Friends this morning, Donald Trump displayed the vastness of his elephantine ego. The man who is so stupid that he has to keep telling people that he thinks he’s smart; so incompetent that he has to keep asserting that he would be the bestest president ever; that man is now convinced that he is the sole target of the President’s wrath.

Donald Trump: Obviously I hit a nerve because they’re fighting me. I don’t hear them talking about Mr. Pawlenty or anybody else. They’re talking only about Trump. I can tell you, I’m their worst nightmare.

The “Donald” is far too modest. He is the whole nation’s worst nightmare. Trump was reacting to comments made by Obama advisor David Plouffe regarding Trump’s polling and his obsession with Obama’s birth certificate. Of course the Fox & Friends folks clipped off the question that Plouffe was asked:

Christianne Amanpour: What do you make of Donald Trump raising this [birth certificate] issue? Do you think it’s going to be a big issue in the campaign?
David Plouffe: I don’t. I saw Donald Trump sort of rising in the polls, and given his behavior and spectacle I hope he keeps on rising. Because there’s zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people to do this job.

So Trump had not hit any nerve, Plouffe was merely answering a question. He wasn’t the one who brought it up and his answer made it clear that he couldn’t care less about Trump, except insofar as the pleasure he would get from running against the bumbling billionaire.

For the record, the only polls in which Trump is rising are with Republican primary voters. His numbers amongst the whole electorate are near the bottom along with Sarah Palin. And if he thinks he’s going to get anywhere by designating himself Obama’s worst nightmare, take a look at some other candidates who have laid claim to that role:


If Trump is intent on joining this fraternity of losers, he has my wholehearted support.


Bill O’Reilly: King Pinhead Reclaims His Crown

Posted by on April 9, 2011 at 12:03 pm. 3 Comments :

Bill O'ReillyBill O’Reilly used his weekly column this week to pump up his departing pal, Glenn Beck. Somehow I don’t think his heart was really in it because his argument was barely coherent. And why not? He does stand to regain his throne as the predominant Fox News bloviator after Beck slithers off.

O’Reilly’s chief defense of Beck is that he is just an average schmo – a harmless gadfly who loves his country. O’Reilly whines that…

The hue and cry about Beck is downright hysterical. Why do they care? Beck isn’t an elected official; he’s not even a journalist. He’s just a guy with an opinion. So what’s the beef?

Exactly! What’s the beef? Beck is just your ordinary street corner herald of Armageddon who sees communists in every Prius, thinks atheist Muslims are taking over America, and calls President Obama a racist who hates white people (I presume including his own mother). However, O’Reilly manages to contradict himself a few sentences later exhorting that we…

“Remember that he’s the guy who exposed President Barack Obama’s “green jobs czar,” Van Jones […and…] also drove a campaign against ACORN. […] Those are big accomplishments, the kinds of things that can get all sorts of powerful people upset”

So which is it? O’Reilly is appalled that anyone would complain about a nobody like Beck, then asserts that Beck has had a huge impact on major issues. O’Reilly attributes the animosity toward Beck as the left’s opposition to free speech. He condemns those who criticize Beck as intolerant ideologues:

“Many hard-core ideologues in both camps simply do not want to hear opinions other than their own. And if someone is successfully bloviating views that differ from their orthodoxy, they go ballistic.”

Exactly! And on this matter O’Reilly knows what he’s talking about because he has his own web site dedicated to going ballistic on media with whom he disagrees. This is the classic conservative complaint that grants freedom of speech to right-wingers but denies it to anyone who wants to talk back.

In the end, this is just O’Reilly’s way of patting Beck on the back as he waltzes him to the exit. And O’Reilly is getting a running start on his return to being the King Pinhead of Fox news.

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Fox News Demonstrates How NOT To Make A Correction

Posted by on April 9, 2011 at 10:23 am. 1 Comments :

Faux PasOn February 24, Fox News published an article by their in-house pseudo-liberal, Juan Williams. Like any good Fox News Democrat (FND), Williams pretended to advance a liberal viewpoint while attacking what he and Fox regard as a liberal target.

That’s standard operating procedure for Fox. What makes this occurrence worse is that Williams badly mangled the facts that were the whole premise of his attack. (Actually, that’s pretty standard for Fox as well). The Williams article began by stating…

“This week The Washington Post released a stunning poll. But the news did not make its front page.” […] “The poll done by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University was buried in The Post’s Sunday business section…”

As it turns out, the poll in question was actually printed front and center, section A, page 1, of the Sunday Post. Fox was alerted to this glaring error, but they ignored it for nearly six weeks. Finally they posted this correction on April 5:

EDITOR’S NOTE: The results of the poll referred to in this article were in fact reported on the front page of the Feb. 20 editions of the Washington Post. Mr. Williams regrets the oversight to the Post, and maintains the study’s findings deserved more prominent coverage in other media outlets.

Why did Fox take so long to correct the error? Could it be that they wanted to wait until the story became stale so that few would ever see the correction? And why did Williams temper his “regrets” with a defense of his conclusions that were based on his false reporting? He was inappropriately using a correction notice to pursue an argument he had already lost.

On the other hand, Fox News commits errors far worse than this on a daily basis without ever acknowledging them, so I suppose we should be grateful that Fox bothered to issue a correction at all.


Handicapping The Race For Glenn Beck’s Successor

Posted by on April 9, 2011 at 12:46 am. 3 Comments :

On April 6th Fox News and Glenn Beck announced that his program would be “transitioning” off the air. Reminds me a little of when Charlie Sheen was transitioned off of Two and a Half Men. And so, as the chalk dust settles, it is time to look ahead.


On April 1st, just a few days prior to this announcement, I rather prophetically “revealed” a list of candidates that Fox News was considering to replace Beck. It included such conservative luminaries as Ann Coulter, Andrew Breitbart, and Ted Nugent. Now I would like to offer my own musings on how Fox could fill their 5:00pm slot.

The Favorite: Judge Andrew Napolitano. He is currently the most frequent fill-in host for Beck and holds almost identical views. If anything, he leans even further off the ledge by openly asserting the 9/11 Truther position that the World Trade Center attack was an inside job.

The Gender Card: Laura Ingraham. She has the reliably wingnut views that are a prerequisite for Fox anchordom. More importantly, she fulfills Fox’s blonde quotient. She’s paid her dues filling in for Bill O’Reilly and would bring a sizable radio audience, just as her predecessor did.

The Young Turk: Eric Bolling. He currently hosts a program on Fox’s floundering business network and may be due for a transfer to the mother ship. He has filled in for Beck and appears as a guest on several Fox shows. But this guy may want it too bad. His delivery is that of someone in a permanent state of shock. On second thought, he may have shot.

The Lone Stranger: Juan Williams. Fox shelled out $2 million for Williams when he was booted out of NPR. By giving him his own show they might be able to justify that ridiculous outlay for an occasional commentator. Plus they would fill a dual demographic hole in their schedule by promoting an African-American liberal. However, that is also two strikes against any Fox News hopeful. Even though Williams is barely a liberal, the fact that he isn’t batshit insane might be enough to disqualify him alone. And since Fox’s audience is more than 98% white, the race card isn’t worth much to them.

The Dark Horse: G. Gordon Liddy. This former Watergate burglar would love to bring his radio shtick to television. He has a loyal following and would be able to retain all of Beck’s survivalist products advertisers. He would provide a consistent transition for the American Patriopaths who revere God, gold, and guns.

Of course, there are plenty of other options for Fox. They could poach Rick Santelli from CNBC. He’s the guy who got the whole Tea Party parade marching. Or they could just stretch Bret Baier’s program for an extra hour. That would be cheap and it would refocus the network on news – something which with they have little experience.

And then there’s my favorite contestant: Victoria Jackson. She has Tea Party cred and is guaranteed to never say anything that would go over the heads of the Fox viewers – or their kids.


Glenn Beck Fundamentally Transforms Into A Fox News Has-Been

Posted by on April 6, 2011 at 1:01 pm. 13 Comments :

It’s been a long time coming. The indisputably most bizarre festival of conspiratorial dementia ever to be broadcast is nearing its end. That’s right – The Glenn Beck Acute Paranoia Revue will “transition off of” Fox News later this year.


The press release:

FOX NEWS AND MERCURY RADIO ARTS ANNOUNCE NEW AGREEMENT(New York, NY) Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Glenn Beck’s production company, are proud to announce that they will work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News’ digital properties. Glenn intends to transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year.

Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News said, “Glenn Beck is a powerful communicator, a creative entrepreneur and a true success by anybody’s standards. I look forward to continuing to work with him. Glenn Beck said: “I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and Fox News. I cannot repay Roger for the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership.”

Joel Cheatwood, SVP/Development at Fox News, will be joining Mercury Radio Arts effective April 24, 2011. Part of his role as EVP will be to manage the partnership and serve as a liaison with the Fox News Channel. Roger Ailes said: “Joel is a good friend and one of the most talented and creative executives in the business. Over the past four years I have consistently valued his input and advice and that will not stop as we work with him in his new role.” “Glenn Beck” is consistently the third highest rated program on cable news.

For the 27 months that “Glenn Beck” has aired on Fox News, the program has averaged more than 2.2 million total viewers and 563,000 viewers 25-54 years old, numbers normally associated with shows airing in primetime, not at 5pm. “Glenn Beck” has dominated all of its cable news competitors since launch.

Glenn Beck and Fox News are portraying this as an amicable separation with sloppy wet kisses abounding, but a television network doesn’t hack off a healthy limb for no reason. Nor does an egomaniacal wannabe Messiah abandon a broadcast perch with national reach voluntarily. We may never know the details of this severance, but we can be certain that it was not as lovey-dovey as the parties are pretending.

We know that Beck’s audience has been eroding rapidly. The past quarter showed more than a third of his viewers skipped out. What’s more, when he has been on vacation his numbers barely budged, proving that he was not a particularly indispensable component of his own show. He has the distinction of having driven away more than 300 advertisers who refuse to have their products and services associated with his hostile, hateful rhetoric.

From Fox’s perspective, they could air traffic at a Roach Motel and make more money if just half of the prodigal advertisers return. (Plus, the Roach Motel Hour would provide more intelligent content and attract a smarter audience). Fox may also have an incentive to distance themselves from the more extreme meanderings of Beck’s perverse imagination as the 2012 election cycle ramps up. More and more conservative politicians, pundits, and planners have become fearful that Beck’s derangement is scaring voters away.

Not to worry. Beck was prepared for this. He previously advised his congregation that…

“They can take my job and they can take my wealth but that’s okay…even if the powers to be, right now, succeed in making me poor, drum me out, and I’m just a worthless loser…which I’m just about that much above that now…I will only be stronger for it. I will use American ingenuity and my ingenuity to pull myself up, and I will find another way to get my message out on a platform that will be a thousand times more powerful!”

I always wondered why, if he had a platform that was a thousand times more powerful, why wasn’t he already using it? He never mentioned what it was. I suppose we’ll find out now. Last year, in response to a series of health issues, Beck also assured his disciples that…

“Things are changing and there is no bad news here. Because what I am feeling in myself, and what is happening to my physical body, to some extent, and what is happening to me mentally, is not a depression, is not a death. It is a transformation. It is a transcendence. It is a reaching out of the slime and pulling yourself out. So it is not bad news. It is just a transition period.”

Personally, I think that what is happening is the wrath of God. After all, it is written plainly in Deuteronomy 28:27-29 that if you fail to heed God’s law…

27: The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.
28: The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart.
29: And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.

So how is that working out? We hardly need to speak of Egypt and how badly Beck botched that. The emerods (or hemorrhoids) he has already had, and it nearly killed him. The potential blindness he announced tearfully last year. The madness is self evident.

And now the third curse attacking his prosperity is upon him as he is cast into the television ether by the Pharisees of Fox. And he shouldn’t rest too comfortably on his radio career either, as in that realm he has lost seven stations in just the first three months of this year – including major markets like New York and Philadelphia.

Soon the talk will turn to who will succeed Beck. Ironically, I came into possession of a leaked Fox News memo on April 1st that sheds some light on this question. And as for Beck’s future, he hysterically floated the idea of his own cable network. Lookout Oprah. I think he would be far better off exploiting his natural gifts as a combined televangelist/infomercial barker. Imagine the possibilities of merging Beck’s smarmy Jimmy Swaggert impersonation with the marketing zing of a ShamWow prayer cloth pitch.

Fox News should know that jettisoning Beck does not absolve them of responsibility for all the brazen disinformation they have been peddling. He was just an hour long island in a sea of red-faced lies. They still have Bill O’Reily, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Steve Doocy, and a battalion of conniving contributors delivering their propaganda. Fox News will be no closer to legitimate journalism after Beck’s departure. But they will be a little less shrill.


The GOP’s Koch Brothers Appreciation Act

Posted by on April 5, 2011 at 7:39 pm. 1 Comments :

Under the Republican leadership of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce there is a whole new approach to the environment and the role of government to protect citizens from recalcitrant polluters. The new GOP majority has unabashedly sold out to the big energy corporations by accepting more than a quarter of a million dollars from those whom they are supposed to be regulating.


The corporate bribery appears to have paid off. Currently under consideration is what the GOP have christened the “Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011.” You may wonder what this legislation does to prevent taxation on energy. Well, here is the text of the actual bill:

Providing for the consideration of the bill (H.R. 910) to amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change, and for other purposes.

You read that right. The bill prohibits the Environmental Protection Agency from protecting the environment. And other than the title, the word “tax” does not appear at all in the bill. This legislative lunacy has inspired a couple of obviously frustrated Democratic congressmen to offer amendments that seek to improve at least the official title of the bill.

Jared Polis of Colorado submitted an amendment to change the title to “The Dirty Air Act of 2011.” Gerry Connolly of Virginia was somewhat more industrious. He submitted eight amendments including “The Koch Brothers Appreciation Act,” “The Protecting Americans from Polar Bears Act,” and “The Head in the Sand Act.”

Some people may think that these sort of pranks mock the serious responsibilities of the institution. But the truth is that these amendments are no more ridiculous than the title as written in the bill’s original language. And nothing is more ridiculous the actual intent of the bill. This is a great way to illustrate that it’s the GOP who are a joke.