The Crazy Cuban, who tilts reliably to the left when he's not tilting at windmills, plunged headlong into the weeds. During his embarrassing dissociative rant he called Jon Stewart "a bigot" and told listeners that Jews run the news networks (including CNN). He went off on the "white liberal establishment" and "elite Northeast establishment liberals" for short-sheeting Latinos like him.
The First Amendment may allow for loose cannons but CNN does not. Game over.FOXNews, on the other hand, wouldn't dream of dismissing The Manic Mormon -- Glenn Beck, no matter what he says or where he says it, is paid to be a loose cannon, a loon unconstrained by accuracy. Beck's bosses at FauxNews don't insist that he be responsible, only provocative. His audience, estimated at three million each day, gobbles it up.
There's a new Beck-book out -- Dana Milbank's Tears of a Clown. The author says of his subject:
Now here's the thing: Many of Milbank's observations of Beck apply to Sanchez. It doesn't matter that one is a bleeding-heart Miami liberal and the other a weepy-eyed occupant of the far-right fringe -- both are manufactured characters, real-life cartoons catering to audiences that can't be bothered with thinking."[Glenn Beck] perfectly captures the vitriol of our time and the fact-free state of our political culture. The secret to his success is his willingness to traffic in the fringe conspiracies and Internet hearsay that others wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole: death panels, government health insurance for dogs, FEMA concentration camps, an Obama security force like Hitler's SS.
"But Beck, who is, according to a recent Gallup poll, admired by more Americans than the Pope, has nothing in his background that identifies him as an ideologue, giving rise to the speculation that his right-wing shtick is just that -- the act of a brilliant showman, known for both his over-the-top daily outrages and for weeping on the air."
"Ultimately, only Beck knows if he actually believes the things he says on-air. Given his background as a pro-choice, ponytail-wearing, drug-using DJ on morning radio, it's tempting to think he invented the conservative persona, and found the ideology, to exploit a market opportunity. Anger and fear always grow in times of economic trouble and Beck's arrival at Fox News in early 2009 just after the American economy collapsed could not have been better timed.
"Yet even if Beck embraced the ideology for entirely commercial reasons, it's entirely possible that, after playing the role for so long on radio and TV, he has internalized it."
The two are more similar than they are different. Preferring one of these snake-oil salesmen over the other is a reflection of ideology, not credibility.
I'll get my news -- and my entertainment -- elsewhere, thanks.
