Media Matters for America has named Glenn Beck the 2009 misinformer of the year. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fear monger. This charlatan is a danger in ways that we don’t even seem to realize. Beck has been whipping people into a frenzy based upon nothing but sheer speculation, deliberate distortions, and childish association games. He has proven what a conman with a flare for showmanship can truly do. He is the right wing’s own Professor Harold Hill.
My favorite musical of all time is The Music Man. If you’ve not seen this most charming gem then I would encourage you to go rent it the next time you’re making it a “Blockbuster night.” It’s about a con man who makes his living stirring up people’s emotions by painting a picture of disaster and horror that will be the result of some new thing in their small town, and the solution to this new danger is always the item he is selling. The musical ends with him having a change of heart about swindling people after he finds that he’s fallen for a local librarian who’s sharp observations have figured out exactly what his game is.
The character in the film, as potrayed by Robert Preston, is a delighfully entertaining and sympathetic figure. This is in stark contrast to Glenn Beck who is neither delightful nor sympathetic, but the reality is that Beck has been playing the same game as the main character in The Music Man. Nevertheless, the reality of the two figures is the same. As Media Matters puts it:
Glenn Beck’s well of ridiculous was deep and poisonous before he launched his Fox News show, but the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States — and the permissive cheerleading of his Fox News honchos – uncorked the former Morning Zoo shock jock’s unique brand of vitriol, stage theatrics, and hyperbolic fright, making him an easy choice for Media Matters’ 2009 Misinformer of the Year.
When he wasn’t calling the president a racist, portraying progressive leaders as vampires who can only be stopped by “driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers,” or pushing the legitimacy of seceding from the country, Beck obsessively compared Democrats in Washington to Nazis and fascists and “the early days of Adolf Hitler.” He wondered, “Is this where we’re headed,” while showing images of Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin; decoded the secret language of Marxists; and compared the government to “heroin pushers” who were “using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state.”
The reality is that Beck has been looked upon by the left as ridiculously eccentric, but the reality is by far more serious. Many of us watch this con artist with bemused smirks and roll our eyes. The average viewer of Beck’s program often buys into his routine hook, line, and sinker. In fact the right wing views any of us who look upon Beck as a joke look upon us with the same attitude for exactly the same reasons. Jonah Goldberg’s cheer leading is a prime example:
[M]uch of the anti-Beck backlash (He’s an extremist! He’s paranoid! He’s hate-filled!) from the left is hard to take seriously. First, this is a crowd that lets Michael Moore and Janeane Garofalo speak for them, and that celebrated the election of unfunny man Al Franken to the Senate. If you think it’s racist to oppose Obama’s health care reform efforts, it goes without saying that you’ll think Beck is an extremist. This is what liberals always say about popular right-wingers, including Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley. For over 20 years liberals, including Presidents Clinton and Obama, have insisted that Rush Limbaugh is everything from an unpatriotic hatemonger to an enabler of domestic terrorism. It makes sense that they’d give Beck the same business.
You may be wondering if Beck is the “Music Man” then what is this Pied Piper of Hamelin selling? It seems the money is in using his influence to start a gold rush. Ironically, FOX News doesn’t seem to approve of this. As DailyFinance puts it:
Like other news organizations, Fox News prohibits its on-air personalities from making paid product endorsements. But it makes an exception for its commentators who are also radio hosts, who are allowed to perform live reads, says Joel Cheatwood, senior vice president for development.
“When we hired Glenn at Fox News, we hired him with the understanding that he had a well-established, burgeoning radio business, and we had to be accepting of certain elements of that,” Cheatwood tells DailyFinance, noting that Beck’s relationship with Goldline dates back to his time at HLN, CNN’s sister network.
The same understanding applies to Don Imus, who recently started simulcasting his radio show on Fox Business Network. (An MSNBC spokesman says his network has a similar policy in place, while a spokeswoman for CNN said only, “CNN/US anchors and correspondents are prohibited from participating in any paid endorsements of products and services.”)
But the exemption is meant only to apply to live reads, not to the kind of broader spokesmanship Beck, to all appearances, provides Goldline. In particular, Beck’s ubiquity on the Goldline website is not in keeping with Fox’s rules. A Fox spokeswoman said the network’s legal department is taking up the matter with Beck’s agent, George Hiltzik.
So what, if anything, has FOX News done to address this issue? Politico answers that question.
Beck endorses Goldline International, but last week, Fox requested that he clarify his relationship with the firm, prompting it to tweak its trumpeting of Beck’s endorsement. Goldline removed an identification of Beck as a “paid spokesman” from its website, but left the rest of the site – which prominently features his endorsement, photo and a radio interview he did with the company’s president Mark Albarian – intact.
Removal of the “paid spokesman” language from Goldline’s site brought his arrangement with the company in line with a network policy prohibiting “on-air talent from endorsing products or serving as a product spokesperson,” according to Joel Cheatwood, a Fox News executive.
“We asked for clarification. We got it. We’re satisfied. It’s a dead issue,” he told POLITICO.
On Thursday, the network also indicated it would ask Rosland Capital, another gold retailer, to remove from its website the logo for Bill O’Reilly’s Fox show, the O’Reilly Factor, which Rosland features along with an audio clip of O’Reilly urging listeners to buy gold because “The U.S. Dollar is under attack!”
Fox’s concern was that O’Reilly’s endorsement of Rosland was specific to the radio show he no longer does, and Rosland is not a sponsor of his television show.
Rosland spokesman Steve Getzug said the company had not heard from Fox but was already “in the process of pulling the reference down as part of an overall update of Rosland’s website.” He called the O’Reilly endorsement “dated” and said “it’s been a while since the company has updated its website.”
Beck’s critics have not suggested that he was actually influencing the price of gold, which had been rising steadily until this month, by encouraging his fans to buy coins from Goldline.
But some financial analysts and precious metals experts did tell POLITICO that potential gold investors would be wise to look into bullion or exchange traded funds intended to track the price of gold, rather than the coins sold by Goldline and a handful of other firms that advertise on Beck’s shows and those of other conservative talkers. That’s because those firms focus on collectible or antique coins, which they sell for many times the value of the intrinsic gold and promote as being exempt from a potential government seizure of gold like that which occurred under Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Beck has suggested that gold coins are a good buy now because President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are steering the economy towards disaster.
And that feedback loop – Beck stoking fear of economic collapse, hyping gold as a hedge against collapse, and endorsing a company selling gold – prompted liberals from the watchdog group Media Matters to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to Comedy Central’s faux-news hosts Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to allege a glaring conflict of interest.
It’s also intersting to note how many other right wing radio show hosts endorse gold too. Consider this other article from Politico:
For years a certain strain of conservative thought has held that there was one sure hedge against economic depression, civil disorder and liberal rule – gold. Now that belief has led to a kind of harmonic convergence between ideology and commerce.
Anyone tuning in to conservative talk radio or Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck shows is bombarded by commercials for gold, mainly in the form of collectible coins, with announcers intoning that inflation and deficits caused by big government spending are devaluing the dollar and making gold the best investment money can buy.
The dire tone sounded in the ads often echo the occasionally apocalyptic economic forecasts of the shows’ hosts, many of whom have endorsement contracts with the gold retailers, appear in their ads, or have had their executives as guests to trash the economic course set by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, and to preach the attractions of gold.
“There’s a natural synergy between conservative talk radio listeners and gold,” said Michael Smerconish, a Philadelphia-based conservative-leaning talk show host who signed a deal to endorse Goldline International, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based retailer when his show entered syndication in January.
And it’s become an increasingly profitable synergy for everyone involved – the retailers, the networks and an array of hosts including O’Reilly and Beck, as well as radio talkers Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Miller, Fred Thompson and G. Gordon Liddy.
This year, Goldline boasted it had become “the exclusive gold and precious metals company” of both Levin’s show and the one hosted by Thompson. Other Goldline endorsers include Beck, Ingraham, Miller and Lars Larson.
It would seem that Glenn Beck has indeed followed the path of Professor Harold Hill. However, instead of playing the nickel-and-dime games of selling instruments for boy’s band, Glenn Beck has struck gold! It makes me wonder what other advertisers are benefiting from the fear mongering we see on the right wing. How many other cons are the being sold to viewers of FOX News and listeners of right wing radio? Are they really crazy? Like a FOX!
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Ok.
By the way, Scher: in addressing only the Hillary-Palin poll in my reply to your article, it may have seemed as if I was giving your (wonderful) article short shrift. Not so. I just know next to nothing about the topic.
But I don’t have to know anything about it to say this much: some people around here can sure write. I.e. inform and engage in a most compelling way. And one of them is you.
:] frown gone now
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Thanks!
I’m glad your frown is gone. Hehe.
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I’d like to co-sign your remark about the Scher’s writing! That is, if you don’t mind!
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This comment was in response to Abby’s post below. I don’t know how it ended up here! Sorry!
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To be fair, we also get a lot of talking up about gold from Thom Hartmann and Randi Rhodes. And even a few economists. So I”m not sure that what’s going on with Beck on that front is unique.
What is unique is that Beck has lost some 80 advertisers in the past year, and still he continues to be propped up by the Fox network. I can’t think of a scenario where a television show could lose that volume of sponsorship and still remain on the air –except where the underlying business plan is not commercial. Beck is clearly not a profit maker for Fox. But he is their propagandist in chief.
Personally, I don’t see the appeal. To me, the guy seems unglued. I understand that some people watch the show the same way people watch a train wreck, but even that morbid fascination has its limits.
For people who actually believe in Beck, perhaps it has something to do with Max Blumenthal’s theory of the culture of crisis. Because if anyone is in crisis, this guy is. (Blumenthal is a genius.)
Several prominent conservatives have also had their fill of Beck’s brand of lunacy:
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36361
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/conservative-radio-host-b_n_294786.html
But in an era where someone like Sarah Palin is considered a serious presidential contender, I guess it’s not too surprising that we would have to contend with someone like Glenn Beck.
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“Unglued” is rather kind, nellie! IMO, the man is certifiable. Last night, Keith Olbermann was doing a review of insanity from the past year. He spent quite a bit of time on Beck and his take of the artwork at Rockefeller Center. It was priceless!
To anyone who has not seen Beck’s critique of the gorgeous art deco adornment at Rockefeller Center, I’m sure it’s on YouTube and certainly worth the viewing! His paranoia is unsurpassed!
Here’s Keith’s segment from last night…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0cnlURWUuA
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I watched KO last night and I remember when Beck originally did that cockamamie Rockefeller center conspiracy thing. Exceedingly entertaining — except that I know all the good folks out there who are taking a break from reading the National Enquirer are believing every word the nutjob says. Beck himself may be a clown but I’m convinced a lot of his fans are certifiably crazy and dangerous.
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Believe it or not, I’m in the middle of watching KO’s review right now on podcast.
Palin 2012 was hilarious.
Waiting for Beck!
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Keith was a little over-the-top but I loved it anyway!
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My favorite line: Meanwhile the psychiatrists in the audience are saying, “This is fascinating. Let me grab a prescription pad.”
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Nellie, from what I gather the Aussie’s New York paper(the Post?) is also a large money loser. Perhaps a tycoon’s toys and moth pieces?
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That sounds right to me.
Imagine the ego — so determined to ram his own point of view down everyone’s throats that he’s willing to lose millions to do it.
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Could be the reason he’s trying to eliminate free TV.
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Could you imagine eliminating free TV after all the hoopla and money in converting from analog to digital?
He is also a large fighter and contributor against “Net Neutrality.” Won’t that be fun when this site (and many others) will take 1-2 minutes to load?
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Oh, the digital conversion! I had almost forgotten about that. There was a film clip from one of the teabaggers’ town hall meetings this past summer. One of them made the statement that those “boxes” on your TV were the government brainwashing everybody!! I nearly fell out of my chair laughing!
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Hmm. That’s interesting about other radio show hosts. I usually listen to left wing radio via the Internet. I guess they don’t do the gold ads that way.
I am encouraged that advertisers have been pulling their commercials from his television show. There are a few that have stood firm though. Some are not at all surprising.
So who’s still advertising on Beck? December 23 edition
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Thank you, Scher — you are always in the know. I wondered who was still supporting his freak show.
omg — the only products seem to be Tempur Pedic and Icy Hot!
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Thanks for your compliment, but I wasn’t in the know about left wing radio doing gold ads too.
You were the one in the know on that one! Hehe. 
Thanks for telling me too.
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We have two different neighbors that absolutely love Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly.
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The one neighbor we dog-sit for are not readers, yet they have 2 books by Beck proudly displayed on their coffee table.
Regardless of the loss of sponsors, Beck does have his loyal followers.
Our neighbors believe that Beck is the voice of reason and they actually believe his tears of emotion are real.
They think Beck is a true patriot brought to tears by the direction our country is going, which in Beck’s opinion -socialism.
They also believe that Beck is the target of liberals and the liberal media.
Needless to say, we never talk politics with our neighbors!
Hey javaz! I don’t know if you saw the report, but recently there was an article on Beck that stated that he used “Vick’s Vapo-Rub” under his eyes to produce tears. Sounds painful to me! What a goofball!
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I did see that and funny thing is that his loyal followers disbelieve it and call it a liberal conspiracy.
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Sheesh.
Vicks and Beck: Wish you could show this to your neighbors j’avaz:
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http://video.aol.ca/video-detail/hoe-glen-beck-huilt-op-tv/1019816566/?icid=VIDLRVENT05
A better version:
They wouldn’t believe it, b’ito.
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You should some of the email they send me about climate change being a hoax. In fact that is one of the books they have by Beck!
I’m in the middle of his book!
I just can’t believe people can’t figure out that Beck is all a big act!
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I didn’t figure you for someone who read sappy Christmas picture books… Heh Heh Heh …
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… You’re reading it? *gasp!* … and here I was thinking you’re brave to climb mountains!
Hehehe.
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hee, hee, here is a mountain I am thinking of climbing this summer.
My girlfriend and daughter both said, “NO!!!”
Pepe’s mountain
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Pepe, I couldn’t make “base camp#1″!!!!
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I think I can do this beast…
It looks worse than it is.
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GPS -Get One !
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Hey, Sherz. I think it was you who said we MUST read The Republican Noise Machine. I want you to know that I ordered a copy and it arrived today! Thanks for the referral.
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I’m reading “Republican Gomorrah.”
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You’re the second person today who said he/she was reading that book!
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FYI, just to clean up this thread, I’m removing all comments related to that silly comment. Email me today if you want me to repost your comment in Speakers Corner, otherwise I’ll just clear them.
Attention is what folks like this are seeking and that’s one thing that ain’t gonna happen here.
Now, back to the topic…
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Sorrryyy!
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No worries, everyone responded in amusement at worst. We just have a different strategy here than other sites.
Flick them away like flies and ignore them as if they were never here…that really makes them nuts. Discussing them only helps accomplish their goal of disrupting threads.
So, in keeping with that, I will soon remove this comment as well and any related to it.
Sorry Charlie!
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Wasn’t Charlie a tuna?
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Thanks for the video, boomer. What a hoot.
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Nope…he was a Chicken of the Sea! LOL
Adlib, you can wipe this one too!
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I can’t stand it, I don’t know why this stuff about this tuna is making me laugh so hard. Who is this Charlie the Chicken of the Sea…is it a story or a cartoon or a film or…?
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Abby, we have a brand of canned tuna in the US called “Chicken of the Sea”. We also have a young Hollywood actress who wondered aloud whether the contents in the can were tuna…or chicken!! Dumber than a box of rocks!
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abs,
here you go:
LOL!!!
For some reason your post has me on the ground…
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I love tuna!!!
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Thanks, AdLib.
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Thank you for being there and taking care of things!
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Oops, I just made one regarding it…
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Okies.
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“The animosity between Beck and Kelly continued to deepen. When Beck and Hattrick produced a local version of Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” for Halloween — a recurring motif in Beck’s life and career — Kelly told a local reporter that the bit was a stupid rip-off of a syndicated gag. The slight outraged Beck, who got his revenge with what may rank as one of the cruelest bits in the history of morning radio. “A couple days after Kelly’s wife, Terry, had a miscarriage, Beck called her live on the air and says, ‘We hear you had a miscarriage,’ ” remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. “When Terry said, ‘Yes,’ Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can’t do anything right — about he can’t even have a baby.”
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/21/glenn_beck/index2.html
When someone try’s to defend Beckerhead I make sure they know about how low a human being he really is…
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He’s a very sick man and also very dangerous since so many believe his twisted lies.
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From Talking Points Memo:
…continued at Talking Points Memo.
The poll itself is found here.
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I was hard on Hillary during the primaries, unfairly so at times. I began to change my mind about her when I saw how she took her loss to Obama. I began to admire her, and my admiration has grown in seeing her perform as Secretary of State.
I was hard on Palin too, but here, I have not changed my mind. I suppose it’s possible that I might, at some point in the future, but only just barely: nothing about this woman strikes a positive political chord with me.
I just want to say that Hillary coming in only one percent above Palin, in this poll, is something I take to be one of the outrages of our time.
(And I believe I’d have felt that way even if I had not changed my mind about Hillary.)
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Co-sign on Hillary. I got more emotional with her attacks on Obama and I could not stand Terry McAuliffe. There was that period when everyone, including Hillary, knew it was over and he sold the superdelegate option like a used car salesman.
On Palin, well, I’m still workin’ on some of the puzzles from “Going Rouge” which I got for Christmas.
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I’m not a big fan of Hillary’s, but I was disgusted at how vicious the media was to her. Jon Stewart actually did a spot-on segment about it, how commentators kept attacking her as sounding like a “nagging wife.” It was a real eye-opener. She took an incredible amount of crap during the campaign, but in the end, I do think her campaign was somewhat devoid of ideas.
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I was pretty hard on her too, but that’s to be expected during the primaries. I agree that she handled things very well when Obama received the nomination.
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I heart abby.
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Abby, Your comment is not in moderation!! We/you had an abusive intruder in the comment section. Your posts are great and they have created many thoughtful comments. You have enlightened many on this side of the pond!
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