Glenn Beck's Fox departure now has a date

By Richard K. Barry

I just couldn't help but mark the news that Glenn Beck's departure from Fox News now has a date attached to it. According to Mediate, it has been confirmed by the network that his last day is to be June 30th.

There was a time when I would get home from work and actually tune in to the crazy little man mostly because I could not believe that anyone was seriously buying his act for anything other than comic relief. I slowly had to come to the realization that there are those out there who believe that he talks sense. I am told that many people have even been scared senseless by his warnings of the imminent demise of the America we all know.

I have been amazed by the chalkboards and lines drawn from one "radical" to the next proving beyond a doubt, or so he tell us, that a grand conspiracy is afoot and that we must be ever vigilant to protect ourselves against threats foreign and domestic.

But I will tell you what really amazes me. It is the thought that there are so many people in the world so easily fooled by this snake oil salesman, that so many are this hungry for such a simplified explanation of a frighteningly complex world that they will turn to this idiot for answers.

Those of us who follow politics closely like to believe that most people are reachable with rational arguments, that even if we can't convince others of the correctness of our own opinions, everyone has a desire to be swayed by the force of the better argument.

And then we come upon people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, who believe no such thing. They are people stuck in a looped sound track full of nothing but meaningless platitudes. They don't want to be convinced of anything because they already know everything.

That people like that exist and that they have a significant following scares the crap out of me.

I go back and forth between believing that people like Beck and Palin are just charlatans in it for the buck or that they may actually believe the things they say. Maybe both are true.

If they didn't have such an impact on the quality of our discourse, it would be best to ignore them. In Beck's case that may now be somewhat easier. I look forward to the day when it will also be easier to fully ignore the half-term governor from Alaska. Please God let it be soon.

(Cross-Posted at Lippmann's Ghost)

Elephant Dung #26: Glenn Beck calls Huckabee the worst thing possible... a progressive

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By R.K. Barry 

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

In Glenn Beck's vocabulary, there is no dirtier word than "progressive." All the villains in his warped understanding of history can be shown to carry this particular banner: Wilson, FDR, TR, LBJ, WJC, and, of course, the current occupant of the White House. Their shared sin is some variant of the claim that they use government to devise schemes that ultimately oppress the people. Nazis, Communists, New Dealers, Great Society advocates -- progressives each and every one. It's not very clear how it all works, and it usually involves a chalk board and diagrams, but that's the charm that is Mr. Glenn Beck.

Fascinatingly enough, he has recently taken to calling Mike Huckabee a progressive.

Judging from the audio clip you can access here, it seems that Huck started his slide when he supported Michelle's Obama's anti-obesity campaign. Go figure.

Many of us have been saying for some time that the radical right will get tired of simply going after liberals. At some point, which seems to be happening now, they will go after those putatively within their own ranks who they deem not pure enough -- not conservative enough.

Huckabee has a show on the Fox network, as had Beck until recently, so maybe this is a sort of parting shot at his old company. The truth is that for ideological purists like Beck and Tea Partiers no one is truly safe and everyone must be scrutinized, even as their own circle becomes smaller and smaller.

As I have said before, this is what has been called the tyranny of virtue.

Any willingness to believe that one's opponents might just have something to offer, that they might have something reasonable to say, that they might be of value as human beings, is proof of one's own unworthiness to continue on in the ranks of the anointed. You will recall that former Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist was thrown overboard as a potential Senate nominee for having once hugged President Obama. Tough crowd.

We see this with the Tea Party v. the Republican leadership. And now Glenn Beck, the high priest of the conservative revolution, has just banished one who the rest of us thought was among the elect.

The only question now is, who's next?

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)