Posted by
Bill Crawford on Friday, April 22, 2011 5:51:44 PM
Glenn is such a curious creature. Have you read his books? They don't translate well into audio. He celebrates his ADHD problem by making his books a scrapheap of clip art, cut and paste, post-it notes and all sorts of things that he seems to find more pleasing than footnotes. He is a different version of Newt Gingrich- a unique thought process, but the same problem: he needs more than a soundbite moment to complete his thoughts, or you won't have a clue what he was getting at. That is why Newt was sometimes so cogent on C-Span and so lost on the network news.
Beck is way too much a pessimist for my taste. While I can see and agree with many of the connections he makes, I don't think he understands the leveling limitations that government blankets over you, especially in the West Wing of the White House, where more interests and power are in play than anywhere else on the planet.
So yes, Obama swept into town with some freakish friends that would never otherwise get a security clearance. But what they are able to do with some of their ideas run into some high walls that are built into the system? All part of turning the ship America- the bigger the boat, the more sluggish the controls.
He does consistently find problem with one set of problems over others. He is a creature of his time. His star took off not because he showed up on Fox (although that certainly helped), but because he is a pessimist and not a fan of the counterculture at a time when a big recession was firmly in place and the biggest counterculture politician in our history was taking office.
For all this, he drives the left nuts. He doesn't do it consciously like Ann Coulter, but he understands what he is doing.
He is not going dark. though. He still has his radio show, he does live stuff with and without Bill O'Reilly, he has a website
www.theblaze.com that I have not seen yet and he is planning to continue to work for Roger Ailes as a producer. I've been told that part of this is because of his medical problems.
Any rumor that he is doing this because of falling ratings is a pantload. He could lose a third of his ratings and still be better than what they had before he showed up.
In the meantime, he is a good test barometer for me. Those on the left usually acknowledge that Beck drives them crazy, but they don't seem to be able to say exactly why. A few have, and that is always a pleasant surprise.