Spending most afternoons at work, and most of them doing overtime, it has been ages since I last saw a Glenn Beck show. With the timezone difference down to only one hour between NY and Porto Alegre — wow, for a split second it even sounded as if Porto Alegre was a place worth mentioning… — his programme starts at 6pm, and I’m usually at the school or on my way home, so I don’t get to see it. My co-worker even says a “thank God” now and then when I say I can’t watch the show anymore. Well, I agree with my co-worker in many aspects, and not seeing his show kind of made me forget how insane he is. So, as I was at home preparing the meal for tomorrow, and it was 6:15pm, I went, “why not?”
He was of course blasting the “socialist” media, that you know, write about him and write about people that seem not to enjoy what he says and thinks — basically what Fox News does with everybody that’s not a Tea Partier (or a sympathizer), right-wingers and radio talk show hosts — something that, again, contradicts his ideas of “freedom” and “no government control whatsoever”. Shouldn’t he be OK with the fact that, by saying things that would cause a bit of a distress in some people, such as encouraging parents to take children out of school, he would probably be the target of a lot of criticism? But the topper was during his show today. He so passionately delivers his crazy, non-sense stuff, almost preaching, that he managed to link Obama with Satan! This is really, really sad, you know, what people are capable of doing for ratings. And as I said before, what’s even sadder is that people believe that kind of stuff.
Well, you might think that I’m one of the ones that gives the guy those ratings, and as Jon Stewart would say, “guilty as charged…” But you cannot ignore that this guy is big and it helps me understand what’s been going on there, you know, when crazy Arizona bills get passed or when commentators get surprised that Obama’s ratings go up five points or when Bill O’Reilly devotes huge amounts of time grilling the “liberal” media and says that Fox News is the “fair and balanced” news network — and he includes himself into the mix… — and the other networks just don’t show what people are interested in, what people want. And, as “the trusted name in news” that they now are, Fox News can simply say whatever they want and support whatever groups and parties and simply get away with “we’re number 1”. I think that’s happening a lot lately.
I guess, once again, I turn to Stewart…
-- Never too many beers -- 