By Sara Robinson, Blog for Our Future
Posted on May 25, 2010, Printed on May 25, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146977/
America has this long tradition of twisted, odd, widely beloved and yet
darkly dangerous right-wing cultural impresarios that pop up out of our
landscape like cultural tornadoes, leaving huge swaths of derangement and
destruction in their wake. Aimee Semple McPherson. Father Coughlin. Joe
McCarthy. Once in a while, when the cultural cross-currents intersect just
so, they rise on the whirlwind, gather huge followings, and lead their
followers on a furious high-velocity turn that blows across the countryside
in desperate pursuit of a utopia only they can see. These maunderings are
typically mercifully short and usually end in disaster, for both the people
who started the storm as well as those who got swept away in it. And all is
forgotten-until the next time.
The next time, in this case, arrived on 9/11/01; and the tornado took on the
form of Glenn Beck. It only seems like Glenn Beck has been with us forever.
It's hard to remember a time when his endless rants weren't filling hours of
TV time on Headline News, and more recently dominating everything else on
FOX. But Beck was basically going nowhere fast before 9/11-the event that
saved his failing talk radio career, turned this know-nothing showman into a
leading political theorist, and catapulted him into the very eye of the
far-right's always-churning cultural storm.
Who is this guy? A precocious former Top 40 deejay with a longstanding drug
problem, no discernible book learning, and a mean streak a mile deep. A
"morning zoo" radio host known for his ruthlessness in ratings wars, yet
unable to keep any job for more than a couple of years. A Mormon convert who
immediately gravitated to the farthest edges of that faith's orthodoxy. The
hottest host on cable TV. And soon, if all goes according to "The Plan,"
America's next great spiritual leader, stepping boldly forward to guide the
Tea Party faithful in a complete re-making of this nation.
It's high time somebody took a critical look at the full arc of Beck's
character and career. That somebody turned out to be Alexander Zaitchik, who
had already spent quite a bit of time covering the right wing. Zaitchik's
book,
<http://www.amazon.com/Common-Nonsense-Glenn-Triumph-Ignorance/dp/0470557397
/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274674016&sr=8-1> Common Nonsense: Glenn
Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, hits the bookshelves this week. (Some of
the chapters originally appeared as articles at AlterNet.) Besides being an
engaging telling of Beck's personal tale, Common Nonsense examines Beck's
character and motivations in a way that might help progressives get a better
handle on who he is, what he means to do to America, and what we're really
up against.
Sara Robinson: I guess the first question is: what possessed you to write
this book? Where did your interest in Glenn Beck begin? What did your
research process look like?
Alexander Zaitchik: It came out of a conversation I was having with an
editor at Wiley & Sons about a rather different project-about India, of all
things. At some point we started talking about Glenn Beck. This was shortly
after his "We Surround Them" episode on Fox in March of last year. We were
talking about how bizarre it was, and trying to figure where this guy was
coming from-we'd never seen anything like it.
This is, of course, the famous episode where Beck started crying about how
much he loved his country and feared for it, and the rest of it. And the
more I started looking into him after this conversation, the more I realized
there was this subculture forming around him, this "cult of Beck" with big
viewing parties, meet-ups, this kind of thing. And I sort of got fascinated
by it, and wrote an article for AlterNet, and the response was pretty
overwhelming. There seemed to be a lot of interest in this guy.
So I when brought the idea back to Wiley, we put the other idea on hold, and
decided to do a book-length treatment on this new phenomenon, Glenn Beck.
SR: There's a lot in the book that's extremely damning. One of the things
that struck me was your description of Beck's antics while working as a
morning zoo DJ in Phoenix, which is one of the most over-the-top things I've
read this year. But it also revealed the extent of Beck's essential
meanness, as well as the extent he'll go to to win a ratings war. Can you
talk about that?
AZ: One of the consistent threads running throughout Beck's career has been
this rather vicious mean streak that has changed over the years. It now sort
of masquerades under a veneer of political argument, but at its base it's
the same kind of gut spleen that's constantly looking for new avenues of
expression.
As a young DJ, he used to attack other people in the market for being
overweight. Lately, of course, he's attacking people like Rosie O'Donnell
for being overweight-but now he says it's because she's a Democrat and a
progressive, not just because she's overweight, which is what he used to do
back when he was doing Top 40 radio.
Probably the most famous example of this mean streak that I was able to
track down is the time he called up a competing DJ's wife on the air and
proceeded to mock her for having a miscarriage the previous week. She had
just come back from the hospital. He did this live on the radio, which is of
course illegal-he didn't notify her that she was on the radio-and then
there's the moral question involved. He was the bad boy of an already
bad-boy genre. Not many people liked him.
SR: Did the local media cover any of this when it was going down? Was it
widely known, or just known within radio circles around Phoenix?
AZ: It made him infamous in radio circles. He had a reputation nationally
for being talented, but also a bit of a prick, and hard to work with. So
yeah, people were definitely aware of it.
He never lasted very long in any one market and bounced around a lot. He was
a zoo radio gypsy-"Have big mouth, will travel."
SR: One of the things that struck me about that whole description of his
early career, Phoenix, Tampa, and elsewhere, is how vicious he gets when
he's backed into a ratings war. I'm looking at that in the context of his
newest schtick, "The Plan," which he announced last Thanksgiving and is
planning to roll out this August on the anniversary of the "I have a dream"
speech on the mall-having his King moment.
What can you tell us about "The Plan"? Is this just another ratings stunt,
or does Beck really have the wherewithal to pull off a Tea Party 2.0 kind of
movement?
AZ: It seems to be something quite on a different level than just a ratings
stunt, though at the end of the day it all circles back to ratings and
Beck's business. But he does seem to see himself now as not just a movement
leader, but actually, if his words are to be believed, a conduit for the
Word of God itself. The idea that God is giving him this plan for the saving
of the Republic is, of course, a very Mormon idea-the Constitution hanging
by a thread, and Mormons will come to its rescue, possibly led by Beck. That
seems to be where he's headed-the idea that he's a world historical
religious figure who's actually going to be saving the country.
The nuts and bolts of The Plan are a little less exalted than that-it
basically boils down to your standard right-wing think tank wish-list. If
you had the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and the Cato
Institute put their best minds together, it would look something like Beck's
Plan, which is more or less how he came up with it. He wants an 11% flat
tax, the abolition of most federal departments and agencies, the slashing of
social services, that kind of thing.
He originally advertised the date of the Plan's public celebration in D.C.,
August 28, to coincide with Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech,
but he's since pulled back from that and now he claims that he picked that
date just because it's near Labor Day, and he wanted people to be able to
bring their children and make it a family vacation. But clearly what
happened is that somebody informed him that Martin Luther King was a famous
progressive "cockroach" (in Beckian language), and of course he must have
felt pretty embarrassed. He stopped talking about the King connection pretty
quick.
SR: You also got several people on the record about Beck's struggle with
mental illness. In one of his books, he's admitted to being a borderline
schizophrenic; another is premised on his confession of multiple personality
disorder. He's also copped to having ADHD, and taking medication for it. And
of course there's this very long history of addiction. What did these folks
tell you, and why do you think they were so forthcoming with this
information? And what part does all of this play in his history?
AZ: One of the first things people used to say when Beck first arrived on
the national radar is: This guy is obviously crazy, in a clinical sense.
And, in fact, a number of his former colleagues said that they believed that
Glenn was under treatment for some form of psychiatric problem. They didn't
know what exactly, but many believed that it was bipolar disorder, and he
used to take medication that one former manager believed was lithium, and
all the behavior traits seemed to be lining up in that direction. That was
in the early 90s in Baltimore. And I heard something similar from Beck's
ex-colleagues in New Haven in the mid-90s. One of his old colleagues in
Baltimore said their manager always used to sternly remind Beck, "Don't
forget to take your pill."
So clearly, he's now or was at some point under treatment for something. But
what that is is less important than the fact that he's able to command such
influence over so many people while putting forward a sort of political
version of mental illness.
SR: Another thing that struck me is the crass way he manipulates his own
family stories to elicit sympathy. He uses his daughter, who has cerebral
palsy, as one of his props; and he tells people that his mother committed
suicide when all the evidence points to a very straightforward boating
accident. Even for someone like me, who's intimately familiar with the
testimonial culture of the religious right, lying that your mom committed
suicide for the sake of ratings is just beyond comprehension. You actually
went out and tracked down the documents on that.
AZ: The police records record a drowning accident in 1979. Beck was 15 years
old that year, even though he always says he was 13. His mother and a friend
of hers were found dead in the water after they apparently went swimming.
There was an empty bottle of vodka found in the boat; there was no sign of
foul play; and there was no suicide note left that was left or referenced in
the local papers or police records.
Family friends also seemed to think that it was just a tragedy. I tracked
down one of Beck's closest childhood friends who was actually a pallbearer
at the funeral, and he said that there was never any sign or discussion of a
suicide at the time. So while I don't know for certain why the death
occurred, it appears to be the case that Beck sort of embellished this
tragedy to make a more compelling life story. Which, of course, is one of
his stock-in-trades. He's constantly talking about his personal redemption
narrative, which begins with the tragedy of his mother, and continues
through this sort of 700 Club arc through a valley of depression and despair
before he finds Jesus. This isn't exactly how it happened, but it's the
story he's always run with, for good reason. He knows his audience.
SR: There's a lot of incentive on the right to make those stories as
dramatic as possible. That's how you get your cred in that highly emotional
culture. You need that drama. Tell me about Glenn Beck's America, the one
that he wants to take us to. Is this really about a return to some
mid-century Golden Age, and is that even possible?
AZ: He does sentimentalize the middle of the 20th century, and even the
America of his youth. Which is an odd thing to sentimentalize, because
that's the mid- to late 1970s, which most conservatives usually don't
remember as the halcyon days.
But what I think is most interesting about his reveries about mid-20th
century America is that this was the social democratic peak of the country's
history. I mean, this was when the New Deal and the post-New Deal programs
gave the country its most egalitarian tax structure. There were more dollars
flowing down the income pyramid than ever before.
This was the nation that FDR built-and of course, the America that [Beck]
would like to build looks nothing like the America that was built by New
Deal policies. So he seems to want to have the benefits-the sense of shared
social purpose, the safe streets, the whole suburban middle-class
fantasy-without having the economic policies that alone are capable of
leading to this kind of society that he remembers as a kid.
The policies he advocates result in Detroit today, not Mt. Vernon in 1955.
SR: What influence do you think his conversion to Mormonism had on Beck? And
how do Mormons view him?
AZ: Mormonism has, I think, had a pretty big impact on Beck in a couple of
ways. First, he didn't have much of a political education before his move
into talk radio. I mean, he knew nothing about the world by his own
admission. He might as well have been in grammar school, aside from his life
experience. There was a big void that needed to be filled. He sort of poured
the liquid from right-wing Mormonism, in the form of this guy Cleon Skousen,
into this empty vessel. That's what formed the bedrock of his political
education.
Cleon Skousen's this very right-wing Mormon involved with the [John] Birch
Society and later got more and more into New World Order conspiracy culture.
In the 50s, 60s, 70s and into the 80s, he was a very influential guy in
Mormon circles.
SR: Although he was also something of an embarrassment to the Mormon elders
as well, wasn't he?
AZ: He became so, yes. He became too extreme, and he was causing problems
for the church. But he did manage to drag the church fairly forcefully to
the right, and now you have this orthodox Mormon culture that is in many
ways the product of Cleon Skousen. And it's the same Mormon culture that
embraces Beck. So that's one way that the conversion deeply influenced his
development.
Another thing: I have a chapter in the book where I talk about this very
Mormon ritual known as "bearing testimony," which involves members of the
ward house getting up and telling what amount to spiritual radio monologues.
They talk for a couple of minutes about some sort of gut knowledge that they
have, and very often they get emotional and tear up. It's very stylized. If
you look at video of church leaders doing it off the LDS website, often they
look like they're imitating Glenn Beck. It's a very Mormon thing.
So it seemed that he sort of absorbed and adapted that aspect of Mormonism
to his entertainment purposes, and uses it to bond with religious
conservatives who respond to that kind of non-logical messaging. It's part
of what accounts for the chasm of understanding between his fans and
critics. Liberals just have no idea what's going on when Beck tears up. But
his fans often see it as a sign of sincerity, even authority.
SR: Why else does Glenn Beck cry?
AZ: I think that, at bottom, there's a really fundamental emotional
neediness in Beck that's come out over the course of his career in different
ways. To some extent, you see it in a lot of entertainers-people who've
always had audiences and always sought them out. Even as a young kid, Beck
was on stages performing magic; and then he was on the radio from age 13. He
loves to be heard, to be the center of attention.
And crying is a way to not just be the center of attention, but to hush the
audience and draw them in emotionally and connect with them in a way that is
unique. That's something he's really trained himself to do well. That's one
of the reasons why his success has been as striking at it is: he does manage
to connect with his radio and television audiences and his live audiences
and his readers in ways that most people doing conservative commentary
cannot or dare not.
Beck's willingness to go there is one of the keys to his success. And it's
not just a media strategy; it also dovetails with his personality and his
deepest needs.
SR: OK, this is a long question, so bear with me. One of the things that's
got progressive right-wing watchers most concerned is Beck's real skill in
co-opting the language and symbols of American patriotism. The right has
done this systematically for 40 years-but Beck is a genius at it.
I'm thinking specifically of the way he's hijacked Tom Paine, who was easily
the most progressive of the Founders. Paine was the first one to propose
social security and welfare. The 19th century elites found him so
threatening that they wrote him right out of history. Most Americans didn't
even know who Tom Paine was until FDR and Eleanor put him back in the
pantheon, for reasons of their own.
Another example is how he's publicized Jonah Goldberg's revisionist idea
that the Nazis were somehow left-wing welfare statists. Can you speak to
this?
AZ: What makes that that founder appropriation possible is relative
ignorance on the part of his fan base. The only books on the subject they
read are these religious psuedo-histories that Beck recommends to them.
Also: Beck himself has only recently started to learn about this stuff, and
he's really not a scholar on early American history, to put it mildly. So
it's an easy sort of touchstone for him to seem like he's representing the
deepest and most consistent traditions in American history.
Of course, if you went back to exactly what the founders and many of their
fellow revolutionaries believed-Paine being perhaps the most glaring
example-it's just absurd that he would claim that mantle. As you mention,
Paine was profoundly rationalist-he despised Churches and preachers,
especially money-minded charlatans like Beck. But it's Beck's use of Ben
Franklin, my own favorite Founder, that drives me the most nuts. [Beck] has
an enormous picture of Ben Franklin on his TV set a lot, and also in his
radio studio. Of course, Ben Franklin was a giant of the Enlightenment: this
is not a guy who'd have had any patience for Glenn Beck had they been
contemporaries. And Beck himself would not have idealized Ben Franklin. For
one, Franklin embodied the scientific spirit, and Beck hates science. While
Franklin was making the case for lightning rods, Beck would have been
running around arguing in favor of continuing to ring Church bells during
storms to appease an Angry Christian God, which is what they did in Colonial
Philadelphia before Franklin.
And you can just go down the line. Thomas Jefferson, of course, believed in
a pretty radical egalitarian view of society. His belief in limited
government wasn't a belief in limited government for its own sake, but
limited government for the sake of a society of equal citizens, in which
there weren't massive concentrations of economic wealth like the kind we see
today-which Beck not only glorifies, but openly worships. There's few things
that'll quiet Glenn Beck faster than a kind word from or the presence of a
multi-billionaire industrialist.
As for the argument that the modern welfare state inexorably leads to some
kind of Nazi state, or that the two even exist near each other on the same
continuum, it's hard even to know where to begin. The modern welfare states
in the U.S. and Europe were built up in large part as a direct response to
Nazism, as a way to preempt something like it from happening again. The idea
that the welfare state leads inevitably to totalitarianism has been proven
wrong. Hayek's book, The Road to Serfdom, was a very specific warning
against the British welfare state, which turned out just fine. That whole
argument, which Beck makes in a clown costume, has been completely
discredited by history.
SR: Beck has set himself up as this sort of revisionist history and civics
teacher. What do you think it means for the country that we've got two
million people watching his fractured-fairy-tale versions of history every
day?
AZ: It doesn't speak very well for the state of conservatism, that's for
sure. It wasn't all that long ago that the most high-profile representatives
of conservatism were people like Bill Buckley, who-disagree with him as you
might have on the issues-was very educated, and didn't routinely make wildly
idiotic statements. Here's another difference: Instead of smearing those
with whom he disagreed, as Beck did with Van Jones, Buckley invited Huey
Newton, who actually was a black revolutionary, onto Firing Line and talked
to him for one hour, like an adult. So I think first and foremost, Beck's
stature and influence is a statement on conservatism more than it's a
statement on the country. It's important to keep in mind that it's only a
very small percentage of the country at large that's watching this guy, and
those people tend to be the more hardcore, less-educated conservatives.
To the extent that it is a reflection on the country, it's a sign of the
fracturing of media into these niche communities where people get their
politics-and in this case, their ignorance-reinforced. The old gatekeeper
system is done. You don't have three networks and PBS deciding what goes on
television. In many ways, that's a good thing. But now you have FOX
producers, and people like Glenn Beck, who are able to speak to national
audiences, when before they were forced to go on community television or
find the nearest street corner.
SR: Having written this book, do you think Glenn Beck really deserves the
attention the left wing lavishes on him? And knowing everything you've told
us about him, what's the best way for progressives to deal with this huge
Glenn Beck phenomenon going forward?
AZ: It's certainly important that his statements-and those of his peers,
like Rush Limbaugh-are taken seriously and debunked. I'm glad there are
organizations like Media Matters out there doing real-time fact-checks on
these guys.
At the same time-and I may be a weird messenger for this, having just spent
the better part of a year thinking and writing about Glenn Beck-I do think
that at some point you have to start asking yourself what the opportunity
costs are of fixating on every absurd statement coming out of the mouths of
Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Limbaugh, and the rest. It's
very easy, and very tempting, to tee-off on every idiocy that comes out of
their mouths. Sometimes, when you tune into progressive radio, television,
and blogs, it seems it's the only thing we're talking about.
But at some point I think we need to ask ourselves how much is enough, and
realize that it's much more important to come up with and advocate for a
positive agenda that is educative and forward-thinking. That is another way
to counter the profusion of lies, and arguably more effective. Otherwise,
Beck and the rest of them are successfully running the most massive
political diversion play in history. There are only so many hours in the
day.
Sara Robinson is a Fellow at the Campaign <http://www.ourfuture.org/> for
America's Future, and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works
<http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/> in Seattle. One of the few trained
social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and
extremist movements at Orcinus <http://www.dneiwert.blogspot.com> since
2006, and is a founding member of Group News Blog
<http://www.groupnewsblog.net> .
;)
;)
;)
June 1, 2010 
