- Opposing Voices

The NYTimes has a front page hit piece on Glenn Beck today, and while I'm generally a fan of Glenn and think he's right about most things, lately he's made me cringe a little. He's always been long on 'connection' and inference and short on detail and substance. But the emotional intensity of his presentation has always been the real issue for me. I don't see how that can be maintained for too much longer.

On the whole I think the things he says (which the intelligentsia are quick to call crazy) all have an element of truth in them. People like Van Jones really do want to shatter American society. Frances Fox Piven really has been praying for violent revolution for decades. Beck is only saying to take them literally at their word. And that's the real strength of Glenn's story - he lets other people's own words condemn them.

The left has it's less credible sources too. One of them is pictured above. I think both Glenn Beck and Michigan's answer to Jabba the Hutt fill a similar role in American society. They are outspoken individuals who no one really believes every word of, and the opposition listens to them more carefully than their fans. Glenn Beck is worried about the 'factual correctness' that inspires all thinking on the right, while Jabba Moore is worried about 'morally superior intent' that is the focus of the left. They are preachers - both preaching to the choir - and both ridiculed by the opposition.

With all that said, the right doesn't live in fear of Michael Moore actually exposing anything. The socialist mantra's he repeats are all decades old and everyone knows them already. Success = evil, rich = bad, blah blah blah. But the same isn't true of Beck. He's calling attention to the funding connections of the far left, that they've done their level best to disguise. They don't want people knowing how they've run a multi-front, muti-faceted war to disrupt the core of America's institutions, and Beck is worrying them greatly by exposing them to such a wide audience.


That fear is clearly manifest in the NYTimes piece. They're obviously begging for a raincloud and hoping to sow the seeds of discontent in Glenn Beck's world in to marginalize a voice that they find very threatening. If I take the tone of the Times piece at face value, then Glenn Beck is influencing people at the center far more than Michael Moore ever did. And the liberal left is obviously terrified if they'll devote a front page story to a slip in his ratings. (At this point he's only beating the combined ratings of all his competition combined by 150% instead of 250%.)

If I were Beck, I think I'd actually feel good about. Ratings go up and down, but you only take flak when you're over the target. When was the last time you heard National Review or the Weekly Standard complain about Michael Moore?