Glenn Beck has a one man comedy show that tours the country, but there was no more spectacular comedy than the one performed recently at the biggest Madrassa on planet Earth – the inaptly named, ‘Liberty University’.
Glenn Beck was presented with an honorary doctorate in something religious, while hundreds of young, heavily-brainwashed, students and their parents looked on and cheered voraciously.
Beck’s greatest asset is his acting ability, particularly a talent to summon crocodile tears at a moment’s notice. In his opening remarks, Beck admitted he only ever attended college for one semester, then dropped out, blaming – through great displays of choked-back emotion – lack of cash, as the excuse.
In fact, Beck is an alcoholic and ex-drug addict, who by his own admission only kicked both habits a year before he was shoe-horned into Yale in 1996 by an influential friend, Senator Joseph Lieberman. The brevity of Beck’s foray into academia may have had more to do with his Attention Deficit Disorder, than any lack of hard cash.[1]
Like most recovering alcoholics, Beck searched around for some spiritual hook to cling to, and was eventually drawn into the Church of Latter Day Saints. It’s surely a measure of the quality of his belief system that he could attach himself so readily to a church founded by Joseph Smith, a man who claimed to have been given gold tablets by an angel, and a pair of divining stones to translate them, but later gave them back so there was no evidence and no witnesses to this divine occurrence.
Despite a slender attachment to orthodox Christianity, Beck’s Mormon beliefs have not prevented him from amassing a fortune, much of it in gold. In keeping with all the great Christian evangelists of this nation he’s been quick to conveniently forget the saga of the camel and the needle’s eye.[2]
Taking money from other people, while talking nonsense and spreading malicious lies, is one career that, in America, is almost guaranteed to invoke the god of financial success. Whether that god is the same one who sent his son to Earth to die for Beck’s sins, is open to debate almost anywhere except Liberty University.
Consequently, it no great surprise to find Glenn Beck on the rostrum this week. Liberty’s founder, the now dead – and likely gone to Hell – Jerry Falwell, said after the 9/11 attacks:
I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’ “[3]
As a mentor for the vitriolic ejaculation of malicious crap, Glenn Beck could have none finer.
[2] “In Pictures: How Glenn Beck Makes His Money” Forbes Magazine, April 26, 2010
[3] “Rev. Jerry Falwell, leader of Moral Majority, dies at 73″ Boston Globe, May 16, 2007
Filed under: Snake-oil salesman
R J Adams May 19, 2010 at 12:11pm
wisewebwoman May 19, 2010 at 10:32 pm
I’ve only seen GB on Youtube being, by choice, in a TeeVee-less land and I am terrified at the amount of airtime he gets.
Maybe it’s me, but are we all looming closer to a pre-Nazi USA?
XO
WWW
Twilight May 20, 2010 at 11:53 am
Beck does not warrant your time and words RJ – your talents are far too valuable to be used upon this travesty of a human being.
J. James May 24, 2010 at 12:27 pm
I don’t think that Beck believes have of the nonsense that he spews. He knows what his absurdly stupid audience wants and he gives it to them, all the while laughing all the way to the bank.
I am only thankful that his ratings are finally on their way down as even the most conservative are starting to see through his bullshit.
murr brewster May 26, 2010 at 12:22 am
I wish I could believe he will get his comeuppance in the hereafter. That’s one irrational belief I could have fun with.