posted
Well, there can't be that many attempts, but I agree Stewart nailed Beck. He was still just alittle too controlled throughout his delivery, Beck tends to break out into lengthy 60mph rants where he hardly stops to breath.
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posted
A good video for comparisons to Jon Stewart's. (I don't particularly care if it's an accurate representation of what he's normally like. I'm going for funny over informative)
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I saw this earlier on, maybe itll work towards humiliating Beck and driving him from media.
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posted
not sayin' he's going to be gone but he appears on the surface to be ridiculously strained. it is hard to stretch one's credulity (and one's emotions!) that hard for so long without something giving: audience or sanity.
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posted
I'm with Brinestone on this one, Rush Limbaugh has been around forever, I think Beck has similar longevity in him. Of course there's a chance he'll explode, but I think he fills a niche that people want to see filled.
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posted
Imagine right-wingers imitating Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and cackling. It would be very easy to do yet right-wingers don't feel like doing it because they're not as threatened by Maddow and Olbermann as liberals are by Glenn Beck.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Beck doesn't threaten us, they make us laugh.
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: Imagine right-wingers imitating Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and cackling. It would be very easy to do yet right-wingers don't feel like doing it because they're not as threatened by Maddow and Olbermann as liberals are by Glenn Beck.
who is threatened by glenn beck
honestly
it's like being afraid of the guy on the street with the sandwich board. you aren't terrified of him. you think he's adorable, with his stubble and his head-lilt and sunken eyes and tendency to mutter to himself about 'educated stupid time is simultaneous four-day creation'
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: Imagine right-wingers imitating Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and cackling. It would be very easy to do yet right-wingers don't feel like doing it because they're not as threatened by Maddow and Olbermann as liberals are by Glenn Beck.
who is threatened by glenn beck
honestly
it's like being afraid of the guy on the street with the sandwich board. you aren't terrified of him. you think he's adorable, with his stubble and his head-lilt and sunken eyes and tendency to mutter to himself about 'educated stupid time is simultaneous four-day creation'
posted
especially considering that the guy just keeps going and going and going. he is SO SERIOUS about it.
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: Imagine right-wingers imitating Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and cackling. It would be very easy to do yet right-wingers don't feel like doing it because they're not as threatened by Maddow and Olbermann as liberals are by Glenn Beck.
who is threatened by glenn beck
honestly
it's like being afraid of the guy on the street with the sandwich board. you aren't terrified of him. you think he's adorable, with his stubble and his head-lilt and sunken eyes and tendency to mutter to himself about 'educated stupid time is simultaneous four-day creation'
To be fair, I'm threatened by Glenn Beck. He is emblematic of everything bad in modern American politics, appealing to fear and hate and every other negative emotion, abhorring rationality and reason. He is a true demagogue, someone who knows the power of rhetoric and who uses it to scare his audience about nebulous enemies of America and nonexistent conspiracies. After all, why provide a citation or attempt to ground your argument in factual basis when you can obfuscate, create strawmen, claim a slippery slope, or just cloak everything in a veneer of passion?
There are plenty of intelligent, thoughtful conservatives out there who seek to promote their agenda through peaceful and thoughtful discourse. Glenn Beck and his Fox News buddies do not represent those conservatives. They represent the conservative equivalent of the lefty fringe - brooking no reason, viewing politics as a war rather than a process of government, and seeing their political opponents as enemies to be destroyed. And unlike their counterparts on the far left, they comprise a fairly significant proportion of the American populace. That's why they scare me.
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posted
Tarrsk, let me tell you something that you may find comforting. Beck is ultimately nothing more than an enthusiastic byproduct. He does not create the bizarre and wholly irrational conservative mania that he represents; he is simply the inevitable economical byproduct of such a market of mentality existing. It is commercial media abhorring a vacuum in a manner similar to nature, and Beck is presently tv's most visible weed. You don't have to be afraid of him, because ultimately his pogrom is a ruthless and monomaniac code governed strictly by the incentives of commercial enterprise.
In effect, Glenn Beck is safer and more friendly than the Timecube sandwich board guy, because Glenn is ultimately more predictable. Sandwich Board Guy might have a twitchy day and shiv you, but Glenn Beck will follow the code — more a business practice — of never doing anything to imperil Glenn Beck, the Commercial Enterprise. He is not actually a crusader for social change. He desires the status quo, a world where electoral and demographic forces and the general evolution of society are leaving conservatism in the dust, creating an immense market of scared and bitter remnants who are so driven to delusion that they will hinge on every confirmation bias that Beck can boldly embody, with his weeping and his chalkboards of incoherent conspiracy theory flowcharts.
Ultimately, he does not create the national delusion, and it is a force he cannot control. Instead, he relies on it. Moreover, he has engineered himself to rely specifically on our present level of delusion. If it fades, so will he. He would simply come off poorly in a world that grew out of the insanity that sustained him, just like McCarthy burned out spectacularly when the public could no longer be brinkmanned on the fear power of the Communist Menace. And we are living in an odd time of peak delusions — in the year of our lord 2009, literally over half of Republicans don't think Obama is a natural-born american citizen. The majority. This is peak affliction, a fever-pitched delusion season that follows in the wake of major sociopolitical change. Unless someone's putting hallucinogens in our water supply, it's unsustainable.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: just like McCarthy burned out spectacularly when the public could no longer be brinkmanned on the fear power of the Communist Menace
A slight difference, though, is that McCarthy in his heyday wielded a tremendous amount of power, and ruined the careers and lives of thousands of people. Looking back, he seems laughable, but we forget how powerful he was.
Glen Beck otoh, is laughable right now. He holds very little power, and I suspect if he were suddenly put into a position of power like McCarthy's, he wouldn't want it. He doesn't want power, just money and admiration. Being powerful would make him dangerous, and being dangerous is bad for business.
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posted
Oh I don't consider McCarthy laughable. I consider his influence a cautionary tale for those culpable americans who allow our politicians to advance their interests through arguments to fear.
Today's islamophobes and 'death panel' chanters, take heed. you've filled that mould nicely.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAHpqqYmeAs <a good clip of Glen Beck. This has to be the greatest impression I've ever seen... simply brilliant.
Ouch! There should have been a warning with that link. I only watch about 15 seconds worth and I think it may have caused irreparable brain damage.
I remember a time when lunatics like this would have been relegated to distributing pamphlets on street corners rather than given a regular program on a major TV network.
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posted
I don't think Glenn Beck is a lunatic, but I also feel like radio and talk show hosts have to talk so frantically in order to maintain attention that they turning down if not turning off the filter that processes words before they leave the mouth.
I bet if I was sitting next to Glenn Beck in an airplane I could have an interesting conversation with him. I've been tempted to call into his show several times while I was driving, but I feel like I should listen to him longer, and get more of his nuances down before I do so.
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posted
If you do, Blackblade, be sure to tell us about it:) I'd be absolutely astonished if you called in and were a) let on in the first place, and/or b) allowed to make your full point.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I don't think Glenn Beck is a lunatic, but I also feel like radio and talk show hosts have to talk so frantically in order to maintain attention that they turning down if not turning off the filter that processes words before they leave the mouth.
I bet if I was sitting next to Glenn Beck in an airplane I could have an interesting conversation with him. I've been tempted to call into his show several times while I was driving, but I feel like I should listen to him longer, and get more of his nuances down before I do so.
I have no idea whether or not that youtube video is representative of Glen Beck, but that video is clear evidence of lunacy.
1. He repeatedly implies that there is a conspiracy to keep the things he says out to the mainstream media. CNN and Fox have both broadcast his show -- if CNN and FOX aren't the mainstream media -- pray tell who is?
2. The clip is a series of fully unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Backing these kinds of conspiracy theories in public used to be enough to get you branded a lune.
Let me give an example. Back in the 90s, I used to participate on an internet forum where one poster continual posted diatribes about how Bill Clinton was a descendent of the last Gypsy King and was secretly involved in a conspiracy for Gypsy domination of the world. He actually had far more real data to support this conspiracy theory than any of the "Obama is a Muslim", "Obama is a Marxist", "Obama is not a natural born US citizen" conspiracies that Glen Beck has promoted. But back in the 90s, people promoting this kind of conspiracy theory were recognized as the lunatics fringe. When they said, the mainstream media is ignoring the Clinton/Gypsy conspiracy -- they were right. They were relegated to posting their thoughts on obscure internet forums where everyone ignored them. But that's not true anymore. No no. If you've got a good Obama conspiracy theory, Glen Beck and the right wing will be happy to give it air time on National TV. And you don't even need any reasoning for your argument of data to back it up, you just need to say "I'm not saying its true, I'm just asking the questions and isn't it interesting that the mainstream media is ignoring the question."
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posted
Rabbit: I know Beck often sounds like he is spouting off about conspiracy theories, but I think that is a very recent development. He seems to be spending alot of time talking about socialist/communist infiltration of the government. When he started relentlessly talking about "Van Jones" being in the White House and seemed to be the only one doing so, he was vindicated when Van Jones resigned, even more so when the NYTs admitted to dropping the ball on that story. This really galvanized Beck's research and commentary. Then Raum Emanuel and David Axelrod said that Fox was not "really a news organization." And Beck got what he wanted, real evidence at the highest level that he had struck a nerve. Of course now he is at absolute full throttle on this issue, because early signs show there is a story to be uncovered, and more and more officials are commenting that he should knock it off.
I personally think that while he might have had something with Van Jones, there isn't much substance to the idea that communists are in the white house. But he is so convinced that he is on to something, and that the rest of the media wants to silence him, that he is prone to stating the situation in excessively dark terms.
Even when the media is kind to him, those around him see poison. This article came out when Beck was in the hospital and the commentator sitting in for him was convinced that sarcasm was an underlying theme in the article. I don't know how Beck felt about it personally, and I haven't had a chance to listen to him since his appendectomy, but I don't think Beck is a lunatic. He just found a gold nugget in a river, and is now digging up the ground deeply thinking he might be on a gold mine.
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posted
Well, I'm not saying it's true... but isn't it interesting that *nobody* in the mainstream media will even discuss the idea that Obama is secretly a 8 foot tall Jewish amphibian? And how they all try and jokingly portray his fly killing incident? It almost seems like they're trying to keep something quiet... these coincidences seem to line up a bit too neatly.
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I think she struck a nerve when she accused him of not talking about credit card companies, banks, and bailouts.
I've seen people on these very forums, act the way Glenn did when insults are exchanged, offense taken, and finally some statement makes the thread reach critical mass, and there is screaming followed by Papa Janitor locking the thread.
Again, I've never heard him act this way in the last two months I've been listening to him. But he is on the radio and TV every single day (save weekends), in a format that is stock full of conflict and emotion, it does not surprise me that these people lose it from time to time.
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quote:I don't think Beck is a lunatic. He just found a gold nugget in a river, and is now digging up the ground deeply thinking he might be on a gold mine.
I remember when being a member of the John Birch Society would have been more embarrassing to a public person than any of Van Jones affiliations. Beck's attack on Van Jones was reminiscent of McCarthyism at its worst and I think anyone who can head down that road a second time qualifies as a lunatic. Joe McCarthy pretty effectively demonstrated what can happen when people start paying attention to unsubstantiated conspiracies.
Joe McCarthy was operating during the height of the cold war when communist nations presented a legitimate threat to the world, so its at least fathomable why people were willing to listen to him despite the fact that his claims were completely unsubstantiated. What possible reason is there today for any rational fear that our government has been infiltrated by communists. Its shear lunacy and anachronistic lunacy at that.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I've seen people on these very forums, act the way Glenn did when insults are exchanged, offense taken, and finally some statement makes the thread reach critical mass, and there is screaming followed by Papa Janitor locking the thread.
Beck is hardly defended by being compared to the illustrious standard of sanity present at Hatrack. This place is two terry gilliam screenplays short of an asylum.
No seriously he's not a psycho, but he has definite issues. His television show in particular gives an unflattering portrayal of the man as an entire host of delusions and personality disorders. In particular, Beck comes off as completely paranoid. He also seems to cycle between pervasive histrionics and borderline behavior (the black-and-white worldviews, especially).
Sure, it is enhanced dramatically from how he constantly has to amp it up to 11 to keep the attention of the birthers and the other conspiracy theorists and tea party radicals, but it does not come from nowhere. It is not merely manufactured by stress on an otherwise level-headed beast.
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Actually, I really doubt anyone here would resort to screaming like that in a broadcast political debate, though maybe I haven't read the right threads. There's a difference between strongly worded rhetoric and batshit crazy.
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