NYT Imagines Glenn Beck Without Insanity, Cunning, or Bloodlust. What a Wonderful World.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

In a fawning puff piece on extremist pundit Glenn Beck on the front page of today's The New York Times, writers Brian Stelter and Bill Carter seem to reveal budget cuts have finally hit the Gray Lady where it hurts. Apparently they can't afford gophers to do basic research before interviewing the subject of a profile. In the resulting article, Beck comes off as a populist hero who would have nothing to do with encouraging an armed uprising against the government.

And we all know how accurate that picture is.

Will Bunch writes the Times "article reads like Beck landed on Planet Fox in a flying saucer a couple of short months ago to save American Jesusland -- without the much-needed context that this is just the latest act for an 'entertainer' who is a clown at his best and spews hate at his worst."

OK, it's one thing that they didn't mention all the lies and hate Beck spreads via his television and radio shows.  Granted, that would have been relatively easy. Watchdog group Media Matters has a handy list of more than 250 entries tagged with "Glenn Beck." In the past month alone, the group noted Beck accused the U.S. government of using Americorps to indoctrinate children, said that if he were running the country, we'd run out of missiles and claimed that Jimmy Carter is worse than Hitler.

Maybe Stelter and Carter have never heard of Media Matters (I wonder if they're aware of Wikipedia?). But you'd think they (or their intern?) would have at least Googled "Glenn Beck," which would put the Media Matters roundup at number six on their screen. Or maybe they would've seen the number one news result for "Glenn Beck" at U.S. News and World Report, where Robert Schlesinger refers to Beck as a "nutter" who engages in "idiotic demagoguery."

Some say there are pundits on the left, such as MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who are just as bad as Beck. Now, Olbermann may get as worked up as Beck does from time to time, but I can't think of a time when he suggested that mass murderers go on killing sprees because the government spends too much money.

I wouldn't expect writers at a publication as prestigious as The New York Times to read BuzzFlash, but we've been covering Beck's mounting insanity as well as his progressively less-veiled calls to arms against the government. Beck says in the Times piece that people who think he's "stirring up a revolution haven't watched the show."

I wish for my own sanity's sake that were true. But trust me Glenn; I have been watching. 

The Times story briefly mentions Beck's 9/12 movement toward the end of the piece, allowing Beck to answer his critics without actually being confronted by anyone who's very critical of him. In fact, none of the supposed "critics" cited in the piece seem to have much of a problem with Beck at all.

No, instead the NYT story makes it sound like the only people who dare question Beck or his motives are those crazy unnamed bloggers:

His comments have prompted several bloggers to speculate recently that the TV host may have been promoting an armed revolt.

The piece also mentions Beck's fiery rhetoric without any context. And in Beck's case, context just makes him sound scarier. Take for instance this passage:

Beck has used phrases like "we surround them," invoked while speaking vaguely about people who do not share his discomfort with the "direction America is being taken in."

When you consider that the "we surround them" proclaimation is used in the context of his seditionist 9/12 club, the phrase takes on a whole new meaning, one that Stelter and Carter completely ignore. In fact, Beck is always asking his fans to join up with his vaguely defined cult that consistently alludes to insurrection and violent revolt.

Even in a recent 17-minute rant last Monday designed to address critics who express the fear that Beck's anti-government rants might inspire violence along the lines of political assassinations and the Oklahoma City bombing, Beck said this to the audience:

"Believe what you will about why I am in your living room every night. But I am sitting here, at this table, playing my cards face up every night in hopes that others will join me soon. If you think that spending and corruption and power are all out of control in Washington, congratulations; you're already a member. Now stand up and lead," Beck said. "Call it fear mongering or call it the truth, either way: Remember, you are the key."

Instead of calling him out, The New York Times allows Beck to imagine himself as a modern Howard Beale, the news anchor from the classic movie Network who was mad as hell and not going to take it any more.

The thing about Beale that Beck and his profilers missed is that the character was an insane man being used by an overly powerful media network to generate ratings in an era where TV news is on its way out. But the similarities pretty much end there. The most cutting and sensible of Beale's ramblings rage against the extreme consolidation of the news media, not government spending or citizen militias.

Stelter and Carter seemed to subconsciously know this, going straight from describing Beck's identity confusion to his impact on Fox News' success:

In an interview, Mr. Beck, who recently rewatched the 1976 film "Network," said he identified with the character of Howard Beale, the unhinged TV news anchorman who declares on the air that he is "mad as hell."

"I think that's the way people feel," Mr. Beck said. "That's the way I feel." In part because of Mr. Beck, Fox News -- long identified as the favored channel for conservatives and Republican leaders -- is enjoying a resurgence just two months into Mr. Obama's term. While always top-rated among cable news channels, Fox's ratings slipped during the long Democratic primary season last year. Now it is back on firm footing as the presumptive network of the opposition, with more than 1.2 million viewers watching at any given time, about twice as many as CNN or MSNBC.

Of course, the writers declined to actually question the appropriateness of Beck's misappropriation of Beale. But I guess that news just didn't fit.

There were several other things the Times piece missed. The writers referred to the "what-will-he-say-next quality of his live program on Fox," when anyone who's actually watched the show sees the word-for-word talking points flashed onscreen before Beck even says them out loud. The writers also failed to address Beck's hypocrisy over his professed love and care for "the little guy," while at the same time trumpeting AIG and Wall Street. But when you consider all the other stuff they missed, I'm not that surprised.

The one thing I'm glad Stelter and Carter decided to omit was Beck's heroic struggle with alcoholism. If I have to hear that damn story one more time, I think I might lose it.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS