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Alexander Zaitchik - Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance
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1728
The Crying Conservative Glenn Beck And His White "Real America"
Pros
compelling and well-researched
Cons
one read's enough
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
I've never listened to Beck and never will. I wish nobody did. He creates high emotion, not rationality or tolerance.
Speaking about President Barack Obama on Fox & Friends co-hosted by Brian Kilmeade, former cocaine and pot abuser/failed Top 40 deejay/talk-radio host Glenn Beck has said:
This president has, I think, exposed himself as a guy, over and over again, as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture. I don't know what it is. But you can't sit in a pew with Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and not hear some of that stuff and not have it wash over you.
He went on to accuse the president of being a racist on the strength of one black man, Van Jones, that was chosen to be the green jobs czar for his expertise, as seen in his 2008 book The Green Collar Economy. When asked by Katie Couric of CBS News what Beck meant by white culture, he had no answer because he felt it was a trap. Within the year Beck's own show lost eighty major national and international sponsors and was only kept alive by direct-marketing companies, gold dealers and ‘ideologically supportive outfits that live off foundation money,' due to efforts by the Color of Change organization that Van Jones once was involved in.
Investigative, freelance reporter Alexander Zaitchik took eight months to research Beck's past and present through early this year, including at least three hours a day of listening to him deliver his deliberately provocative, right-wing rabble-rousing. It resulted in the 2010 book, Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. Zaitchik considers how Beck, after failing to make it as another Orson Welles or Bob Hope whom he idolized, then 'adapted the timeworn gags and manipulation of hucksterism--including the audience donation drive--into powerful tools for propaganda and personal enrichment.' Indeed Beck has lived in gated communities for a decade and loves his stretch limos. Zaitchik compares him to the radio and television huckster character Lonesome Rhodes played wonderfully by Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd. I agree.
It's not that Beck is simply an idiot spewing unfounded bile on the Left to polish his image as a right-wing hero who's been unconscionably victimized by, um, political correctness and needs, sob sob, your sympathy, but Zaitchik recognizes that Beck is a 'smart, ambitious self-promoter' who has a loyal following that poisons our political discourse and actually weakens our democracy. Perhaps you wonder how it hurts to keep an open mind to his way of thinking. Let me mention the very offensive, violent language used by his fans in e-mails to Color of Change and shown on his website with a number reprinted here.
Beck wasn't always captivated by politics. As a coke, pot and alcohol addict through his twenties (the latter two begun in his mid-teens), he hadn't a conservative thought in his whacked-out head that was a perfect fit for morning zoo radio (for a while) and soon needed to add lithium to treat his bipolar condition. Zaitchik also points out that Beck wasn't always enamored with the radical Mormonism that he fervently adopted after being introduced to a forgotten Cleon Skousen book, The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed The World. Briefly, the ambitious book of ultraconservative Mormon pedagogy contends that the U.S. Constitution is a Jesus-inspired miracle and all of America's problems result from neglecting to instill a Christian-based society with limited government and, basically, fifty, little theocracies (with welfare and civil rights banned). There's a whole, fascinating chapter on Skousen who wrote other anticommunist, antigovernment tracts that are beloved by its biggest promoter Beck and his fans. He also had "Miracle of America" seminars hated by federal agencies, but embraced by conservative evangelicals, including Ronald Reagan who as president praised Skousen's Freemen Institute, renamed the National Center for Constitutional Studies after Reagan‘s election, as "doing fine public service in educating Americans." Nothing is mentioned of the fact that even the Founding Fathers realized the Constitution needed to be amended.
Let's take a look at just what the deeply troubled, Nazi-minded Skousen included in his seminars.
...He especially wanted to abolish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Also on his wish list: repeal the minimum wage, smash the unions, nullify antidiscrimination laws, sell off public lands and national parks, and end the direct election of senators. He wanted to kill the income tax and the estate tax, destroy the wall separating church and state and, of course, raze the Federal Reserve.
Skousen's lecture tour would've made a Ku Klux Klan member feel welcome as African-American children were referred to as 'pickaninnies' and U.S. slave owners were described as the "worst victims" of the slavery system. He would've applauded the use of blacks for long medical experiments which killed them (see book Medical Apartheid). Need I go on? This reprehensible man, deceased in 2006 but reborn in Beck‘s unique world, forms Beck's idea of politics--and religion--and the so-called real America. As Zaitchik observes, this vision of America has no bearing on reality. If America magically turned into Beck's grandfather's nostalgic America, its three hundred million citizens wouldn't fit into it. I guess he wants a Confederate America, filled with white, middle-class and rich people.
More On The Book
Common Nonsense, so named to counter Beck's Common Sense book that Thomas Paine would've found unamusing, has a great deal more depth of information and insight than this review may indicate. Zaitchik spends some time on Beck's hatred of ACORN, short for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now begun in the 1970s, and the long conservative struggle to dismantle it because of its success registering minority voters, which conservatives fear. I'm glad it's still around under the wings of President Obama's Serve America Act. Speaking of the president, he isn't the one under scrutiny here and the focus is on Beck and what he believes, but we do get a feeling that Beck's 9.12 Project followers are heckling the president's stimulus package and job-creating initiatives for no good reason I can discern. Beck's 'Real America' doesn't ever need a democratic, federal government's help, but where would farmers be without subsidies and would there have been his iconic radio personalities without the FCC? Would there even be a corporate America without FDR's New Deal program?
Final Thoughts
With thirteen compelling chapters with titles like "The Luckiest Loudmouth in Tampa," "A Rodeo Clown Goes Large," and "Brother Beck Presents: Mormon Masterpiece Theater," plus helpful Notes, this seemed like a thorough biography. Beck does not endorse it, which is all the more reason for reading it. He may appear merely entertaining and bizarre to many listeners, but the love of his sentimental theatrics so different from his competitors only stokes his ego and isn't for anyone else's benefit (unless you're rich too). My conclusion is that he's a prime example of what's gone wrong with America.
This president has, I think, exposed himself as a guy, over and over again, as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture. I don't know what it is. But you can't sit in a pew with Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and not hear some of that stuff and not have it wash over you.
He went on to accuse the president of being a racist on the strength of one black man, Van Jones, that was chosen to be the green jobs czar for his expertise, as seen in his 2008 book The Green Collar Economy. When asked by Katie Couric of CBS News what Beck meant by white culture, he had no answer because he felt it was a trap. Within the year Beck's own show lost eighty major national and international sponsors and was only kept alive by direct-marketing companies, gold dealers and ‘ideologically supportive outfits that live off foundation money,' due to efforts by the Color of Change organization that Van Jones once was involved in.
Investigative, freelance reporter Alexander Zaitchik took eight months to research Beck's past and present through early this year, including at least three hours a day of listening to him deliver his deliberately provocative, right-wing rabble-rousing. It resulted in the 2010 book, Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. Zaitchik considers how Beck, after failing to make it as another Orson Welles or Bob Hope whom he idolized, then 'adapted the timeworn gags and manipulation of hucksterism--including the audience donation drive--into powerful tools for propaganda and personal enrichment.' Indeed Beck has lived in gated communities for a decade and loves his stretch limos. Zaitchik compares him to the radio and television huckster character Lonesome Rhodes played wonderfully by Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd. I agree.
It's not that Beck is simply an idiot spewing unfounded bile on the Left to polish his image as a right-wing hero who's been unconscionably victimized by, um, political correctness and needs, sob sob, your sympathy, but Zaitchik recognizes that Beck is a 'smart, ambitious self-promoter' who has a loyal following that poisons our political discourse and actually weakens our democracy. Perhaps you wonder how it hurts to keep an open mind to his way of thinking. Let me mention the very offensive, violent language used by his fans in e-mails to Color of Change and shown on his website with a number reprinted here.
Beck wasn't always captivated by politics. As a coke, pot and alcohol addict through his twenties (the latter two begun in his mid-teens), he hadn't a conservative thought in his whacked-out head that was a perfect fit for morning zoo radio (for a while) and soon needed to add lithium to treat his bipolar condition. Zaitchik also points out that Beck wasn't always enamored with the radical Mormonism that he fervently adopted after being introduced to a forgotten Cleon Skousen book, The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed The World. Briefly, the ambitious book of ultraconservative Mormon pedagogy contends that the U.S. Constitution is a Jesus-inspired miracle and all of America's problems result from neglecting to instill a Christian-based society with limited government and, basically, fifty, little theocracies (with welfare and civil rights banned). There's a whole, fascinating chapter on Skousen who wrote other anticommunist, antigovernment tracts that are beloved by its biggest promoter Beck and his fans. He also had "Miracle of America" seminars hated by federal agencies, but embraced by conservative evangelicals, including Ronald Reagan who as president praised Skousen's Freemen Institute, renamed the National Center for Constitutional Studies after Reagan‘s election, as "doing fine public service in educating Americans." Nothing is mentioned of the fact that even the Founding Fathers realized the Constitution needed to be amended.
Let's take a look at just what the deeply troubled, Nazi-minded Skousen included in his seminars.
...He especially wanted to abolish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Also on his wish list: repeal the minimum wage, smash the unions, nullify antidiscrimination laws, sell off public lands and national parks, and end the direct election of senators. He wanted to kill the income tax and the estate tax, destroy the wall separating church and state and, of course, raze the Federal Reserve.
Skousen's lecture tour would've made a Ku Klux Klan member feel welcome as African-American children were referred to as 'pickaninnies' and U.S. slave owners were described as the "worst victims" of the slavery system. He would've applauded the use of blacks for long medical experiments which killed them (see book Medical Apartheid). Need I go on? This reprehensible man, deceased in 2006 but reborn in Beck‘s unique world, forms Beck's idea of politics--and religion--and the so-called real America. As Zaitchik observes, this vision of America has no bearing on reality. If America magically turned into Beck's grandfather's nostalgic America, its three hundred million citizens wouldn't fit into it. I guess he wants a Confederate America, filled with white, middle-class and rich people.
More On The Book
Common Nonsense, so named to counter Beck's Common Sense book that Thomas Paine would've found unamusing, has a great deal more depth of information and insight than this review may indicate. Zaitchik spends some time on Beck's hatred of ACORN, short for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now begun in the 1970s, and the long conservative struggle to dismantle it because of its success registering minority voters, which conservatives fear. I'm glad it's still around under the wings of President Obama's Serve America Act. Speaking of the president, he isn't the one under scrutiny here and the focus is on Beck and what he believes, but we do get a feeling that Beck's 9.12 Project followers are heckling the president's stimulus package and job-creating initiatives for no good reason I can discern. Beck's 'Real America' doesn't ever need a democratic, federal government's help, but where would farmers be without subsidies and would there have been his iconic radio personalities without the FCC? Would there even be a corporate America without FDR's New Deal program?
Final Thoughts
With thirteen compelling chapters with titles like "The Luckiest Loudmouth in Tampa," "A Rodeo Clown Goes Large," and "Brother Beck Presents: Mormon Masterpiece Theater," plus helpful Notes, this seemed like a thorough biography. Beck does not endorse it, which is all the more reason for reading it. He may appear merely entertaining and bizarre to many listeners, but the love of his sentimental theatrics so different from his competitors only stokes his ego and isn't for anyone else's benefit (unless you're rich too). My conclusion is that he's a prime example of what's gone wrong with America.
