Dumbest thing ever broadcast on television (Glenn Beck)

[TonyR]

[TonyR]

Here's a good write up on it from Conor Friedersdorf:


Above is a Glenn Beck clip that Michael Moynihan calls "the dumbest thing ever broadcast on (non-cable access) television." If you've never tuned into Beck's show, it's worth watching, because you might be under the misimpression that he's just a Bill O'Reilly-style blowhard, or that he just regurgitates GOP talking points like Sean Hannity.

Only after grasping his singular madness can you comprehend why the most vexing passage from his monologue is this:

> I'm not going to give you the two minute sound-byte. I'm not going to treat you like you're a moron. I'm going to treat you like you really do want to understand what's going on in the world. We'll piece this thing together. It's going to take a few days. But I invite you to DVR this show every night. Don't miss an episode. Tell your friends, "Don't miss an episode." This is important stuff. <

As I've said before, lots of Glenn Beck listeners aren't in on the joke. Unlike Roger Ailes, Jonah Goldberg, and every staffer at the Heritage Foundation happy hour, they don't realize that the Fox News Channel puts this man on the air fully understanding that large parts of his program are uninformed nonsense mixed with brazen bullsh*t. When a Fox News host tells these viewers, "I'm not going to treat you like you're a moron," playing on their insecurity about other media outlets talking down to or lying to them, they take it at face value. What sort of callous, immoral person allows these viewers to be played for fools?

Conjure in your mind a retired grandfather. He served in World War II, voted twice for Ronald Reagan, and supports the Tea Party. Awhile back, he started watching Glenn Beck – was it because that young man from National Review mentioned he would be on the program, or did he want to see Sarah Palin be interviewed? In any case, a lot of conservatives he trusted seemed happy to go on the show and never gave any indication that it wasn't a perfectly legitimate news program. Besides, Fox News generally seemed to share his ideological convictions. He even watched an interview with Roger Ailes once. The guy seemed reasonable enough. Certainly not the sort of person who would knowingly air the ravings of a known charlatan night after night.

Back when this man ran his own small business, he once caught an employee lying to a customer in a way that improved the bottom line. He fired him immediately. It seemed as if it was obviously the right thing to do. So it never even crosses his mind that a whole news network cheered by lots of people he trusts would profit by feeding the most blinkered kind of obviously wrong information to millions of people.

"I'm going to treat you like you really do want to understand what's going on in the world," Beck tells this man. "We'll piece it together."

I appreciate that this is my hobbyhorse, and that others think that the faults of cable news networks are an unimportant matter. But the fact that Roger Ailes and his associates air this kind of nonsense –couched in these kinds of assurances! – is indefensible. It is hard to think of anyone who disrespects and takes advantage of conservatives more than they do. And although they make mounds of money, they ought to be objects of disgrace, akin to any other manipulative huckster who preys on the elderly.

Did these people never have grandparents?

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...ant-stuff.html

[chadta]

I disagree, the stupidest thing ever said on tv was my local weatherman yesterday, who said " its going to stay cold until it warms up"

[TonyR]

The years 2009 and 2010 were a period of declining popularity for Barack Obama, for the Democratic Party, and for progressive politics in the United States of America. Under the circumstances, it’s tempting to examine any particular trend in American political life that operated in parallel to this and see it as advantageous to conservative politics. Hence the skyrocketing popularity of a deliberate kind of political entertainment in which folks like Glenn Beck lie to gullible conservatives about what’s happening in America appear to many as a form of successful political tactic. In reality, however, the declining popularity of Obama, Democrats, and progressives can be easily attributable to poor economic conditions. Now that trends have leveled off and Obama is back at 50 percent and we seem to be headed for a span of so-so growth I think we’re going to find that while Beck has certainly carved out a lucrative business niche for himself, that in political terms creating a paranoid and misinformed base is not helpful.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/20...ew+Yglesias%29

[Pony Boy]

Don't even talk stupid things on TV, the Democrats have this hands down.

Quam will sink......

[TonyR]

Here's some epicfaildramaskillet bait:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...073003254.html

A direct tie between Beck's nonsense and a violent act.

[TonyR]

Here's some more recent Beck lunacy, connecting ACORN with current events in Egypt! And then you wonder where some of these righties get silly their ideas...

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/a...nsible_for_egy

[JJJ]

Originally Posted by Pony Boy

Don't even talk stupid things on TV, the Democrats have this hands down.

Quam will sink......

Oh ****, that one never gets old. Just funny, funny stuff.

[Mile High Shack]

the real reason he made this "DVR this and don't miss an episode"

translation - I've lost 1 million viewers and need those back...bad

[TonyR]

I like how the righties have no comment on the Beck lunacy but instead try to change the subject...

[baja]

Originally Posted by Mile High Shack

the real reason he made this "DVR this and don't miss an episode"

translation - I've lost 1 million viewers and need those back...bad

Is that true he is losing popularity?

[DBruleU]

Originally Posted by TonyR

I like how the righties have no comment on the Beck lunacy but instead try to change the subject...

Yeah, cause the Liberals around here NEVER EVER change the subject to avoid the truth...ever.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by baja

Is that true he is losing popularity?

http://www.businessinsider.com/for-t...ox-news-2011-2

Expect him to get crazier. A whole lot crazier.

[TonyR]

Originally Posted by baja

Is that true he is losing popularity?

NYC's WOR dropped him earlier this year.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...laced_by_.html

Glenn Beck may be one of the hottest talk show hosts in the country, but he apparently left New York's WOR cold.

WOR (710 AM), one of the city's two biggest talk radio stations, said this morning it is dropping Beck's syndicated show as of Jan. 17 and replacing him with a familiar New York name: Mike Gallagher.

"The reason is ratings," said WOR program director Scott Lakefield. "Somewhat to our surprise, the show wasn't getting what we wanted."

[Mile High Shack]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

http://www.businessinsider.com/for-t...ox-news-2011-2

Expect him to get crazier. A whole lot crazier.

which is what he is doing with this new threat he is proposing

nothing scares white folks more than poor brown people

[baja]

Originally Posted by Mile High Shack

which is what he is doing with this new threat he is proposing

nothing scares white folks more than poor brown people

Well that and mushroom clouds and market crashes and three black people walking toward them on a sidewalk.

[epicSocialism4tw]

"Allison, can you tell us what an Internet is?"

[TonyR]

Here's some good reader comments on what I posted in the OP:

The only place you can see this kind of thing on TV is on the Trinity Broadcast Network, the crazy Pentecostal cable channel that will run programs in which "prophecy experts" will tell you why what's happening in the Middle East today was foretold in the Bible. If you've never been inside of that bubble, you can hardly appreciate how electrifying and compelling it is. I was caught up in it for a couple of years when I was a young teenager, and let me tell you, a lot of good people I knew took it completely seriously. The things Hal Lindsey ("Late, Great Planet Earth") said were shown by subsequent events to be nonsense, but nobody in those communities held him accountable. The narrative is too exciting to let go of.

Beck is doing the same thing, but on a secular venue, one with far more power than a Christian cable channel.

People listen to him and take him seriously in part because he is a compelling performer, but also because he finds a way to take frightening, confusing events, and fuse them together into a narrative that helps them make sense of things. And not only to make sense of them, but to anticipate what is coming next. Moreover, though Beck is not referencing Bible prophecy openly, having spent some serious time in those circles, what he's doing when he speaks of China and Russia taking advantage of chaos to invade the Mideast and Europe is straight out of Hal Lindsey and the Rapture crowd. He knows well what he's doing, and I don't think he's one bit cynical.

The real cynics are Ailes & Co. It makes me sick, because I know that my elderly parents have become big fans of Beck's, and take him very seriously. It is very difficult to have a rational discussion with them about politics or world events after they've watched an episode of Beck. It's all conspiracy and high emotion -- and it's going to get worse. You watch: Beck is going to launch the meme that Barack Obama, a closet Muslim Marxist, was the Manchurian Candidate who collaborated in these events. And that idiotic idea is going to spread like wildfire among the Fox faithful.

[TonyR]

And another:

I don't watch Glenn Beck, but ever since my grandmother started she's been inconsolable with worry about the future. And not rational worries, like what if there's a nuclear war, or America goes broke. She's literally afraid that the president is secretly the tool of our enemies, that there are big society wide conspiracies that started back before World War I. Why she started trusting that man I'll never know, but she does, and she's spending her last years frightened as a result.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...stuff-ctd.html

[Dudeskey]

[Mile High Shack]