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There’s a little too much love for Glenn Beck in Utah. I mean, I get it: He has an endearing story. He has overcome an addiction to alcohol and gone from a small radio show to CNN to the news source you can always count on, Fox News. He’s also very politically conservative, which may or may not have had something to do with him landing at Fox.
He’s also Mormon, which makes him especially popular here, the same way people supported David Archuleta on American Idol: not because he and other Mormon reality show participants were actually the best candidates, but because they were part of the Mormon culture, which is undeniably cliquish.
Glenn Beck is getting more recognition and love in this area all the time. Take, for example, the number of people “fanning” him on Facebook, the same way they “fan” the President of the LDS Church, families, or the “Yes on Prop 8” campaign. He has also emceed “Stadium of Fire,” Provo’s Fourth of July celebration, two years in a row, beating out Sean Hannity and others of his ilk. I guess I have not been as impressed with him as others generally have been.
The first time I was turned off by Glenn Beck was back when he was on Headline News. His guest that day was Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Congress. After warning Ellison that he was going to be politically incorrect and explaining that he knows and likes Muslims, Beck asked Ellison to prove his patriotism and demanded to know if he was “working with our enemies.” You can make all the arguments you want about it being a joke or about how political correctness is destroying America, but, at the end of the day, it was tactless.
The antics don’t stop there. On June 30th, Beck agreed with a guest who insisted that it would take another attack from Osama Bin Laden for Americans to stop trying to earn praise from Europeans and demand that their government protect them with “as much violence as necessary.” Still Beck’s popularity remains alive and well.
On July 28th, Beck called President Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, a racist on the “Fox & Friends” morning show. This comment has garnered quite a bit of attention lately, with over 20 of Beck’s sponsors justifiably pulling advertisements from his show in response. Beck went further though, saying that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people” and “white culture.” (He then tried to backtrack within two minutes: “I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people.”) Never mind that Obama’s mother and half of his family is white. Never mind the speeches he has given trying to improve race relations. Never mind the fact that Beck has absolutely no factual backing for this outrageous claim. If the great Glenn Beck, Mormon superstar, says it, then it has to be true, right?
Beck employs a very common tactic. He gives a qualifier before saying something offensive. It’s like the person we have all run across at some point that says, “I’m not a racist but…” then goes on to use various pejoratives. Giving a qualifying statement does not mean you can say anything you want afterward.
Beck excels in this arena. On March 9th, he began using a recurring theme on his show about Obama lifting the ban on stem-cell research and its supposed link to eugenics, a tactic used by Hitler and the Nazis in an attempt to improve a population through breeding. He blamed “progressive doctors” and the “progressive movement and its science” for eugenics. After months of this nonsense, Beck tried to qualify his obsession, explaining that “no one is saying eugenics is coming.” Actually, Glenn Beck had been saying (very loudly) that eugenics was coming for the past six months. If he didn’t think eugenics is coming, then why was he even talking about it? But that’s how Beck does business: He qualifies…and then makes outrageous claims.
Mormons can’t pretend they don’t get offended when people make offensive or politically incorrect comments about their faith. But when Glenn Beck makes outlandish remarks, sometimes about other faiths and cultures, he is defended vehemently by the same group of Mormons that forcefully defends itself when others say similarly insensitive things about Mormons and their beliefs. The double standard abounds.
The love for good ol’ Glenn continues. That probably won’t change any time soon. Yet, I am encouraged. There is a new group on Facebook called “Mormons Embarrassed by Glenn Beck.” Maybe a few fair-minded individuals will join that group and fight the lunacy.
Randal is a graduate student pursuing a masters of public policy.
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Comments
Furthermore, we need more voices like Beck out there who are willing to question this president and his policies. It's fascinating how he can lie to our face and no one in the mainstream media calls him out on it. For proof of that statement just look at what he said during the SOTU and nobody but Fox and talk radio even questioned it. It's quite a pathetic sight.
Glenn Beck is the rallying point for many conservatives who have grown tired of taxes, increased deficits, bailouts, etc... But most importantly Glenn Beck is a rallying point for those who have grown weary of Republicans and Democrats. Love him or hate him, Glenn Beck, in all of his lunacy, cites the founders and calls for Americans to look to the constitution. I find this approach very refreshing.
However, I noticed that you did not respond to Randal's excellent article in any way. I assure you that Randal is well informed, far beyond your assertion that he only pays attention to public debate. Further, his points about Glenn Beck are valid. Beck is a demagogue who feeds on fear and ignorance. That he has such a following is indicative of the sorry state of American political and economic sophistication. More to the point of the article, though: Beck is hurting Mormonism with his extremism and belligerence. The mix between religion and finding this person attractive is strange and troubling. You did not respond to Randal's points about Beck, so I wonder what motivated your comment.
The "well, the other team is worse" argument is not a defense for Beck or anyone. In fact, in our two party system, the fact that both sides are jerks is what mathematicians call "trivial." It's obvious. Randal was simply raising a concern about so many Mormons' obsession with this demagogue.
Let me clarify what I was getting at. A major thrust of the article is that Beck makes outlandish claims and is able to do so because he leads into them or softens them ex post with a disclaimer. My point directly addressed this claim by pointing out that some of the specific things the author cited as outlandish really aren't if you go deeper than what you would get from what I would call "news for kids," or the local news broadcasts. Again, the accusation of racism is undeniable if you read Obama's own book where he approvingly quotes Wright as saying that "white man's greed drives a world in need." I'll let you read my previous comment to see why it isn't that outlandish to talk about eugenics. One point of further elaboration on that however. If you don't think too much about it, the claims that there will or will not be rationing in healthcare can both be convincing. However, rationing is an inevitability. Think about it this way. The claims are that 30-50 million Americans aren't insured. That means that if we were to insure all of them, that would mean adding anywhere from 10-20 percent more people to our healthcare system. There is nothing, however, that would add any doctors. In fact, there are indications that there would be fewer doctors. But for now lets assume the status quo for number of doctors. In a free market, ablity to pay would be the way the system determines who gets care and in what order. Leaving the argument about whether this is acceptable, under the reforms that were proposed, everyone would be insured so ability to pay would not determine. That means that some other factor would ration the healthcare. Default would be that everyone just waits their turn (first-come, first-served rationing). Whether we leave it to that (like many European nations) or do something else to decide who gets what, some mechanism must determine who gets care and who does not. So when wondering what mechanisms might determine who gets their care, should we not pay attention to what Obama's own people have said on the subject? Again, is it outlandish to suggest that there's some chance that Obama might just decide on the total lives system advocated by several of his advisors?
I know the vogue thing to do right now is call Beck a fear monger and claim that he spreads ignorance, but I've yet to hear an intelligent example of him doing either. The author of the article made uninformed attempts at doing so. Your gentle rebuke of my comment didn't even go that far. Rather than substantiating your accusations, you just flung out a bunch of ad hominem attacks.
As to the alleged lack of political and economic sophistication, you ought to note that I personally have a degree in political science and a juris doctorate from an elite school. The point is not to brag, but to point out that the blanket, unsubstantiated attacks you make on people who watch Beck reflect more on your ignorance than on anyone else's.
Again, my previous comment directly to a main point in the author's article and had nothing to do with hating the other side. I hate both parties and my point was not to say, "well at least we're better than them." I personally found it hysterical that in the last campaign, for the first time, McCain actually admitted that his strategy was that people would take him over the alternative.
As to the point that we all must love Beck because he's a Mormon...that makes no sense. If it was that blind, wouldn't we all love Harry Reid, among others? The point is, the correlation you note is what we in the social sciences call spurious. There's a correlation between hot dog consumption and drowning deaths too. That doesn't mean that hot dogs cause drowning. This is so because both increase in the summer, when more people barbecue and more people swim. Likewise, the correlation between Mormonism and Beck is likely attributable to a shared love of the Constitution and the Founding. It could also be because of the shared concern over human agency or any other number of shared concerns and attributes. Thus, to assume that correlation necessarily means causation is horribly naive and reflects a lack of understanding of the limits of science in this respect.
But why do I feel I need to defend his honor? Well, I don't really. But two favorites of mine (on a long list favorites from the political lexicon) are the terms "demagogue" and "extremist." Extremism especially is a very relative term - extreme in comparison to what? Now forgive the upcoming qualifier: Glenn Beck, by leaps and bounds, is no John Adams, but speaking of extremism, I think there's a shining example of the relativity of the term. It was largely thanks to the loud-mouthed extremism of Mr. Adams, and a few others like him, that our nation's independence was declared in 1776, and rightly so. That was a nice, refreshing piece of extremism.
Again, I'm not saying Mr. Beck is John Adams. I'm not even saying anything he says is right. I think he's wrong about much (but not all). But sometimes a qualifier isn't so bad, like when you label someone an extremist. I know, I'm all over the place; I'll stop.
Thanks for an even-handed comment. I can respect disagreeing with Beck on a lot of things so long as you, as you have, disagree with substance based on what I assume are well-reasoned positions. I also appreciate the fact that it sounds like you've actually watched his show more than the clips upon which others seem to want to form their opinions. In short, props to you for being the opposition without being unfair about it!
You're preaching to the choir. I don't like the health care reform idea, I understand correlation and causation, and I have a degree each in political science and economics (I don't have a law degree and don't plan to get one; but you're in good company with Obama and most of Congress). I also agree with you that Obama's racial history is unsettling, but Beck's behavior on that show was very strange. I happen to think Obama is a charlatan and a demagogue. You'll get nowhere with me if you continue to respond to my or Randal's criticism of Beck by criticizing Obama.
You wanted evidence for my assertions about Beck. A decent example of Beck's ignorance of economics is his broken-record discussion of gold. The most obvious issue here is that Beck is a paid spokesman for a gold dealer, a disingenuous conflict of interest. But a larger issue is that the whole "gold standard" idea betrays his lack of knowledge. If the US dollar is completely undermined, gold will not save anyone. Gold gets its value from the same place as fiat money: everyone agrees that it's worth something. The gold bugs keep talking about its "inherent value" despite it having none beyond speculative uses. Further, the gold standard, which is essentially a fixed exchange rate regime (enforced by a powerful government, by the way; so much for small government), has been tried before and failed--multiple times! Exchange rate commitments are vulnerable to speculation, which is very costly for governments (see United Kingdom 1992 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday). Finally, Beck's assertions that gold is the best way to hedge against what he believes is inevitable inflation are uninformed. Gold isn't a good hedge; as a social science guru, I'm sure you're familiar with Martin Feldstein's argument: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/feldstein18/English. So much for Beck the economist.
Further, as a social scientist, you must tire of Beck's frequent claims that Obama is both fascist and communist. In addition to this being ridiculous hyperbole--a giant stimulus and moderate socialized healthcare are certainly irresponsible, but they are a far cry from forced collectivizatio n, iron rice bowls, Hitler youth, and the Holocaust--Beck also forgets that communists and fascists are very different, and killed each other for decades in Europe. Not the most informed political history.
Those who rely on Beck as their primary source of political and economic analysis are only hurt by his hyperbole and dogma. When I criticize Beck, it is not to support Obama or his policies. It is to plea for some nuance and intelligence in politics. Further, if conservatives want to follow Beck to the fringes of the right, Democrats will be running things for a long time (unfortunately) . To win elections, you must win moderates; and the Beck doctrine alienates moderates.
I appreciate the response that contains actual substance. A minor detail, my poiint was never to criticize Obama directly. My point is that Randall used specific things that Beck has said as evidence that he makes completely outlandish claims. The detail I went into was to illustrate that the claims Beck made were not as outlandish as they might seem. That's all.
I agree with you on muc of what you said about gold. I am aware of the conflict of interest and that definietly means that people ought to view his comments there with a great degree of skepticism. That doesn't mean that it can be rejected out of hand. I agree that gold isn't the failsafe that it is portrayed to be. I understand that it has no intrinsic value of its own and in that sense is very much like fiat money. However, you surely know that despite the illogical nature of it, it retains value better than fiat currency. This is likely because of its universality but again, I agree that when push comes to shove, its value can collapse just as badly as any other currency's, the difference is that this would inevitably happen after other currencies. In short, while I think gold is more stable than what we've got, it is no infallible talisman. It is also worth noting that the gold standard has been at best a passing topic on his show. He doesn't hammer the point home by any means. he spends more time talking about how monetizing the debt through a semi-private, unaudited fed is disastrous (which I would assume you agree with) and that the gold standard would correct some of those excesses. I should also say that I think that anyone who follows anyone else whole-heartedly and blindly is a fool. Thus, while I think Beck is generally pretty good, I don't agree with everything he says nor do I take it all as pristine truth.
As to the fascist/communist issue, its not as silly as you make it out to be. First off, I know this kills Randall but Beck does point out every time he talks about this that we're nowhere near Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia and I think he believes that. While fascism is generally identified with the right, its definition varies. You'll remember that Nazi Germany was actually socialist in many respects so it may not be so diametrically opposed to communism. Semantics aside, what I think he's getting at (conceding that it's not clear) is that we seem to be pursuing fascist social policy and communist economic policy, which share the same notion that we experts can run the system better than you moronic masses. Also, while fascists and communists did fight each other for a long time, you must be aware that they were allies and Stalin was shocked when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. So much for your lack of nuance.
Again, I agree that trying to rely on some person to tell you everything you need to know is suicidal as it exposes people to manipulation and all kinds of other stuff. I find it ironic that you criticize Beck for lack of nuance when you either don't watch his show or the nuance that exists clearly escapes you. His libertarian point of view is not unintelligent. It would seem that this acusation stems more from your disagreement with it philosophically than from an evaluation of the merits. As to his being on the fringe and that causing losses in elections, I'm not sure that stands to reason. First, pandering to the center has really worked out well for the Republicans recently (cite John McCain). Second, polls show that the tea-party movement (admittedly incoherent and odd in some ways), strongly in line with libertarianism, has higher favorability than either political party.The question driving all of this is how much do you want the government in your business and life and to the extent that the Republicans don't stand for less government intrusion, they have nothing to offer that the Democrats can't (and the Ds will usually do better at it too) and can therefore expect to lose since they are obsolete.
Again, I applaud the well-thought comment you made and while I disagree with some points, I respect that your stated position was based on facts and reasoning rather than the ad hominems and baseless claims that usually dominate the discussion of Beck.
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