Is Glenn Beck preparing to run for president?

No, he has not been at it a long time

Really, why are you so hot and bothered over a man you recognize as a huckster? He's just another ex-druggie, another ex-drunk, now feeling superior to everyone else.

View for example the fact that none of them had seen or would believe that Beck had called Obama a racist - though he clearly had.

As he spoke, two Native Americans

Doubtless it marks me out as a member of the uncomprehending godless elite, but I find the popularity of Glenn Beck very hard to understand. Sarah Palin's popularity, I think I do understand. However much of an illusion it may be -- all politicians deal in illusions -- she projects an appealing, proud, self-sufficient ordinariness that makes her a credible spokesman for many Americans. Beck sets himself up not as a spokesman so much as an inspirational teacher and guide, blackboard and all. There he stands, with the answer to everything, gravely propounding his theories of life, the universe and everything that surrounds it. Wrapped up in his own psychodrama, his self-regard seems limitless.

He strikes me as a huckster drunk on his own pitch, a true believer in his own cult, ready to hurtle off the rails at any moment -- and all of this seems obvious. Yet he, not Palin, was very much the star of the rally in DC on Saturday. They love the guy.


And so many of them. It is a sign of something I suppose that the National Park Service no longer does head-counts for events like this. (They were accused of deliberately understating the turn-out for the Million Man March in 1995. No doubt they would have been accused of bigotry if they had tendered a disrespectfully large number for Beck's event.) Reports cautiously said tens of thousands. It looked like 250,000. A huge area of the Mall was packed.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

GLENN BECK, SINCERE HUCKSTER-LUNATIC

In a fascinating interview with Beck biographer Alexander Zaitchik, David Weigel asks a simple question and gets a complicated answer:

This is the question I hear liberals most often ask about Beck: Is he doing this for money, or does he believe this stuff? You seem to come down in the middle, and argue that he's a huckster, but he's also dim enough to believe that, say, ACORN is at the root of all evil.

His main motivations are, and have always been, money and fame. If Beck has a true religion, it's not Patriotism. It's not Mormonism. It's cross-platform self-marketing.

The one constant in his life has been enormous ambition. His business and brand will never be big or successful enough --hence the new projects never stop coming.

(For a lot of readers, that's going to be the takeaway -- Beck's a phony. But read on:)

But I don't think Beck's self-image as a businessman is at odds with his beliefs about religion and politics. He doesn't know enough about the world to understand why his grand-unified theory of a 100-year progressive plot is a laughingstock outside of his own TV and radio studios. I think he actually believes God wants him to make all this money and fight dirty for right wing causes. Does he really believe God is speaking to and through him? I don't know. But in one of his books, he describes Heaven as a place where everybody "can make as much money as they want," and he does believe that God basically wrote the Constitution in 1787.

The mistake Beck's critics often make is to say, "Okay, so if his main self-identity is as a media and entertainment mogul, then everything else is just an act." There's no need to choose just one door. On his worldview's own terms, there's no contradiction between his enormous success, his entertainment toolbox, and his bat-in-the-bell tower politics. What's shocking to me is how completely his fans swallow the "selfless patriot" act. It’s like they're deaf and blind to the way his tearful civic-activist shtick feeds directly into the business, indeed is the business. What's happening, I think, is that Beck thinks God approves of his manipulations, and his fans are willing to suspend their disbelief and give him a pass because, they too, think Beck is ultimately doing God's work. The whole thing is arguably the most elaborate Kabuki theater on view on the right today.

I think that's just about as close as anyone's going to get to the right answer.

The comedians must be saying, "Please, please make this joker president. I won't even need writers, the jokes will flow like a Spring freshet

Beck would never have any interest in that. That would be, you know, a JOB. And it pays terrible, and it is for four ******* years which is way too long, and frankly it is not all that much fun.

Beck biographer Alexander Zaitchik

Why would any sane individual waste their time thinking, let alone writing about G Beck?

and Americans tend to be interested in successful people.