THE NEW YORKER: Fox News Channel’s latest blowhard.
If you sensed something of a quiet spell about ten days ago, a lull in the usual media storm, it may have been owing to the fact that Glenn Beck, the energetically hateful, truth-twisting radio and Fox News Channel talk-show host, was absent from the airwaves for a week, to have his appendix removed. A few days after his surgery, he made it clear, via his Twitter feed, that he hated just watching TV, which is, of course, the terrible fate of those of us who don’t have talk shows. (“I know how U feel. Watching the news & knowing wht I say 2 my tv makes no difference,” he wrote. “I cnt wait 2 giv U wht I think has bn going on.”) By the middle of last week, he was back, breathing fire about Obama’s response to the Fort Hood shootings.
The persona that Beck has cobbled together over the past few years combines a determination to draw attention to himself, because what he has to say is so important, with an outsized, in-your-face show of modesty—he likes to refer to himself as a fatty (he’s barely overweight) and a clown, and, like many an egomaniac throughout history, he takes pains to present himself as a regular guy, shrugging his shoulders and saying, “But what do I know?” He declares himself no special friend to either Democrats or Republicans, and claims to be a libertarian, but his agenda is to throw tacks in front of the wheels of progress and, specifically, to make the Obama Administration crash and burn. Beck looks cherubic, with his boyish crewcut, his rubbery, expressive face, his wide eyes, and his seemingly innocent smile, but he has a wizened heart and a sulfurous outlook on American life and politics. >>> Nancy Franklin | Monday, November 23, 2009
