A Satirical Salute to Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is a lot of things. Glenn Beck is a Fox News anchor. Glenn Beck is obnoxious. Glenn Beck is racist (or at least he’s deliberately ignorant). Glenn Beck is the angriest person in the world that wears thick-rimmed glasses. Glenn Beck is an inspiration to dumb rednecks all across the Deep South, showing them that you don’t have to know how to spell to get on television:

I’m guessing he just couldn’t think of a word that started with “c.”

Now, all idiots have to start somewhere, so let’s look at where Beck came from, and I promise I won’t make any jokes about the fact that he had a surgery a few years ago to remove the hemorrhoids he got from yelling at prank callers so much. Oh wait.

Glenn Beck was born in the state of Washington. He has since devolved into the state of paranoid fear mongering. His parents were named William and Mary. I think it’s funny that his parents share the name of a prestigious university, and yet Glenn is such a moron.

Beck got his start by chance – he won a contest and got to be a radio DJ. But back in those days, Glenn Beck was awesome. In those days, he got drunk and high daily and he was widely known for his wild and imaginative performance styles. In fact, even Rachel Maddow was a fan of him, which is surprising for reasons we’ll get to later. Those were the days.

Something people don’t know about Glenn Beck is that he did not go to college. He took a theology class at Yale. That’s it. Pretty awesome, right? He does, however, often cite his own self-education through reading a list of six authors, which includes Adolf Hitler.

He and his second wife converted to Mormonism after getting married in 1999, making him the most angry and petulant Mormon in the history of the Jesus Chris Church of Latter Day Saints. Seriously, he is the only angry Mormon person I’ve ever heard of.

Beck has so far published six New York Times Best Sellers, five of which held the number one spot, which really surprises me, because I didn’t know he knew how to write without chalk. One of his books is called Arguing with Idiots, which is funny because when I see the book cover I assume he’s the idiot that people argue with in his book.

Seriously. He just looks like a dum-bass in that picture.

The Glenn Beck Program

Glenn Beck first got his television show on CNN in mid-2008. It was billed as “an unconventional look at the news of the day… on the top stories from world events and politics…” and was the second most successful program on the network. He left CNN in October, 2008, and moved to Fox at the beginning of 2009.

At Fox, Beck’s program has become wildly successful, drawing in more viewers than the combined number of viewers of all three top competitors of the same time-slot. Stupid people mistake that fact to mean that Glenn Beck is brilliant and is the voice of the people, but more intelligent people realize that it’s because Fox has the only popular conservative news channel, whereas all of the other news channels are more liberal leaning. This means that all the conservative viewers watch one station, while all the liberal viewers split up between five or six stations.

Here’s Beck’s basic process for generating ratings:

This process of reporting gets him into a lot of trouble within his own community. His inflammatory, slander based reporting style has gotten him called out by Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Eric Burns (a former Fox host).

Here’s Jon Stewart doing the best Glenn Beck parody ever:

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More recently, Beck has gotten into a scandal because of his association with Goldline International, Inc.

Goldline is a company that sells collectible gold coins. What people sometimes don’t realize when investing in gold is that there is a huge difference between “collectible gold” and “gold bullion.” The difference is that collectible gold, usually in the form of coins, bears far less actual value in gold, and much more value in the collectible nature (i.e. the rareness or antique status of the coin), making it more of a speculative investment than a solid investment in pure gold. Gold bullion, on the other hand, is the gold you want to invest in. Its value is derived entirely from its gold content, which is usually near 100%.

Once Goldline began sponsoring Beck, Beck began talking about how the US dollar’s failure was imminent, that there’s no financial security in this world besides gold, and that the people at Goldline were totally trustworthy and that consumers should give them their money now.

When customers called Goldline, thinking they would buy gold bullion, the Goldline sales representative would inform them that they shouldn’t buy gold bullion because of Executive Order 6102 (a point Beck has brought up on his show), which said that citizens can only have up to five ounces of gold bullion, and the rest would have to be traded in to the Federal Reserve at a rate of about $20 per ounce. All that is true. It’s just not relevant. Executive Order 6102 was signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in April, 1933 to fight deflation during the Great Depression. In fact, it couldn’t really be enforced that well because the order did not allow for safe deposit box searches. But Goldline doesn’t tell their customers that part.

In the end, Goldline’s functioning business model is to sell coins that have a low melt value (meaning that they have a smaller amount of gold in them and are therefore intrinsically worth less) that have a collectible value for a substantially higher price than the market average under the premise that the dollar could collapse at any time, and right now is the last chance to cash in your money for gold or else you risk financial destruction.

And Glenn Beck has vigorously stated his support for these people on a number of occasions. The ultimate point of all this is that Glenn Beck was paid to rustle up fear of a made up scenario in which the US economy is destroyed for some unknown reason, and so it is imperative that his viewers buy from a company that pays to run ads on his network. For a clear and concise explanation, read this.

For what it’s worth, after ABC News reported the fact that Goldline is under investigation and criticized Beck’s association with them, Beck responded by claiming that it’s all a government conspiracy. According to ABC, Beck said: “They are going to nudge the gold industry out of business. They are going to regulate it and regulate it and regulate it, until you won’t be able to buy gold anymore. This is what I’m telling you — they can’t have people buying gold. They need to own all the gold… Mark my words.”

In addition to dealing with sleazy advertisers, Glenn Beck gets into more public disputes than East Coast-West Coast rap. In fact, he once got upstaged by Kanye West:

Glenn Beck doesn’t believe in the theory of global warming. In fact, if he had his way, he would get rid of EPA. Just look at one of his books:

He also had a series of live events called An Inconvenient Tour.

So it should come as a shock that first of all he made fun of one of his guests for disbelieving in the theory of global warming, and second of all, when Rachel Maddow called him out, he got offended and responded by editing clips from her show to make it seem like she was incorrect. No wait, it’s not surprising at all. Watch this:

No one is too important for him to slander, not even the President. After Obama made a comment about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates in 2009, Beck responded by saying that Obama is a racist, and that he has “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Beck calling someone else a racist reaches a new level of hilarity when it comes to light that he says racist shit, too. In 2006, he interviewed the first Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison of Minnesota (find the whole transcript here). His awesome gaffe came when he said “I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’ And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.”

No, we don’t feel that way you racist asshole, now stop ruining moments in American Civil Rights history.

On a completely unrelated note, here’s Glenn Beck saying that he hates the families of 9/11 victims:

Yeah if you listen to it, he makes a good point that the amount of support given to the New Orleans victims of Katrina was unequal to the amount of support given to needy victims in Alabama. But he makes that point in the most dickish way possible and he really didn’t need to.
Public Events and Affiliation with the Tea Party

Tax Day Protests 2009

While Glenn Beck was not officially involved with the Tax Day Protests of 2009, his fans certainly were, and he interviewed one of the organizers on the show (small side note: one of the leaders of the protests was none other than Orly Taitz, who is a notable nutjob herself). It is not clear what the point of the protests is, besides the fact that they don’t like taxes, like every other American.

Some good things came out of the rally, in the form of ridiculous posters and shirts:

This guy’s a winner.

Freedom is a big fucking deal, okay?

Restoring Honor Rally, AKA the 8/28 Project

Last year, Beck announced that he would be holding a rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, at the exact same place. Remember what I said earlier about Beck ruining moments in American Civil Rights history?

To be fair, the rally also functioned as a benefit for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which works to ensure a college education for every child that lost a parent while serving in the American Military Special Operations.

Beck scheduled several speakers for the rally, whose names he did not disclose to the media because he thought they would distort the message of the rally. You know what he never told the media? Why he’s doing this. Restoring honor? What about America needs its honor restored? How was this rally supposed to accomplish that? Watch the video, and judge for yourself whether those fans know what the point is or not.

If you didn’t watch the video here are some pretty awesome excerpts of the participants showing their expertise:

1

Tea Partier: “If we go down, the world is going down behind us, as it’s been proven now, the world follows our economy. Except now for China, for example. They’re doing very well.”

2

Tea Partier: “This is the last bastion of hope, ok? And right now, we’re on very shaky ground.”
Interviewer: “You don’t think there are any other bastions of hope in the world?”

Tea Partier: “No. No. No I don’t. No I don’t.”

Interviewer: “Canada, maybe?”

Tea Partier: “No. No I don’t. Ok? This is the last bastion of hope, right here. America. God shed his grace on thee.”

3

Interviewer: “A lot of what people were considered with was that the person who was speaking on the anniversary from the same place, was also someone who had accused Barack Obama of being a racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people, and so they’re saying they have a problem with that. What do you think about that?”

Tea Partier: “They’re saying Glenn Beck said that?”
Interviewer: “Glenn Beck said that.”

Tea Partier: “I don’t think so. I think you’re getting that wrong.”

4

Tea Partier: “I never heard him say that the president was a racist. I’ve never heard Glenn say that. I’ve never heard him actually be disrespectful to the president.”

5

Interviewer: “Where has the current administration taken away your freedom of speech?”

Tea Partier: “Well, you’re not allowed to pray in front of the monuments anymore. What’s the deal with that?”

Just to clarify, there’s not actually a law that says you can’t pray in front of monuments. Now, no Tea Party function would be complete with out ridiculous shirts and costumes. Here’s a few of the best from the Restoring Honor Rally:

I don’t even know what this guy’s supposed to be.

From what?

Here’s Ben Franklin talking on a cell phone.

As you saw, the “Restoring Honor” rally drew around 90,000 participants, many of whom were Glenn Beck’s fans that outright ignored facts. So, was this rally successful? We report, you decide!

Other Notable Bullshit

Beck founded Beck University in 2010. Yes, that is one hundred percent true; he named a university after himself.

Maybe with the money he makes off of this, he can buy a SmartBoard to replace his chalkboards.

Listed as “an unaccredited online education program” on Wikipedia, Beck University has three courses – Faith, Hope, and Charity. The motto is “Revolution against tyrants, submission to God,” implying that this “university” believes that the current administration is led by a cruel and ruthless dictator.  I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say that this whole university is a bunch of conspiracy theories strung together.

In 2009, Glenn Beck sued Isaac Eiland-Hall because Eiland-Hall made a website called “www.GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com,” which parodied Beck’s factless style of political commentary. Beck decided to ignore the First Amendment, and sued Eiland-Hall. Awesomely, he lost.

Beck, please sue me, too. It’ll get my name out.

In March of 2010, Beck told Christians to leave churches if they hear talk of “social justice,” because that phrase is a code word for Socialism and Nazism. Jim Wallis, a Christian leader and advocate of social justice spoke out publicly, and sent Beck a letter asking for a public discussion on what social justice is and what it means to Christians.

Am I the only one that sees a conflict of interest in a Mormon telling Christians to leave the church? Moreover, does Glenn Beck really think that he can play the “Nazi card” when someone talks about social justice? I mean, it used to be that you had to say something about killing Jews or uniting the master race or something for people to call you out. Now Glenn Beck applies the term to people that say things he doesn’t like? What?

So, after all of this, one wonders – why does Glenn Beck do what he do? The reason is because this is how he makes money now. Glenn Beck’s job is not to report news or to be a television personality. No one has ever made this point as well as Rachel Maddow did on a segment in her show.

The point of her entire speech is that Glenn Beck, and all of Fox News Corporation no longer represent “fair and balanced reporting.” They are a political organization, working in conjunction with and for the benefit of the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement. They regularly bring in paid contributors who are, or used to be, members of the GOP (see: Sarah Palin).

But man, if this picture were real I might have considered voting for her.

Glenn Beck does not report news. What Glenn Beck does is generate popular support and awareness for the talking points he is given by his superiors and harness the usual sentiment of voter’s regret that comes midway through a President’s term in a dishonest way for the purpose of further powering the rich people that write his paychecks or associate with those that do. Glenn Beck is the antithesis to the democratic process.

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