Not a big Glenn Beck fan.
I know.
It comes as a shock to me, too.
(Insert smart ass grin and wink here)
As someone who really does try, success or failure notwithstanding, to walk somewhere near the center line, I find Beck's particular brand of snake oil distasteful.
If only because of a nagging, and inevitable, belief that extremism, regardless of its placement extremely right or extremely left of the aforementioned center ultimately impedes whatever progress might be made in solving the problems both sides insist they alone can solve.
But Beck's demagoguery isn't what really turns me off about him.
It's his stunning and, frankly, wearying lack of originality.
Been there, heard that.
It's a style of propagating the propaganda as old as the sands of time.
Not to mention Larry King.
Pick issues that come factory loaded with emotional hot buttons, write and perform the kind of simplistic, primal rhetoric that, without fail, never fails to flip the reactionary switch found in the medullas of God fearing, basically good but, again unfailingly, unsophisticated men, women and children, instilling in them the kind of fear that, again unfailingly, is birthed by ignorance and then serve it up with a brilliantly concocted tasty frosting of charisma.
Add to that, of course, the genius of offering up for sale, on the inevitable merchandise page of the inevitable website, personally monogrammed editions of the hand baskets in which the country is, according to the sermon, most assuredly going to hell.
Bottom, not to mention center, line...
Say what you will about Beck...and Lord knows, we do...his clarion call is, unarguably, not so much new wave as golden oldies.
And, as recently as the late 1950's, was played, purely for entertainment, not on a call to arms trumpet but on a good old fashioned gee-tar.
The 2011 version has a crew cut, coat and tie covered look about it.
But, big ass billboard notwithstanding, Glenn Beck is, ultimately, just another face in the crowd.
No comments:
Post a Comment