Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance

[RamboLiberal]

Read a good portion of this book today - very good read. I found most interesting Beck's early years as a Top 40 morning zoo personality. Except for early successes it was steadily downhill for Beck and failing ratings. Covers his daily drug usage during that time. And the fact he was on some medication and is speculated he is bi-polar. And his mother may have died accidentally not as a suicide like Beck likes to tell. He comes across as a mean manipulative jerk. In Kentucky even though he wasn't in competition with a woman who did an advice show on another station he continually used her weight as a the butt of his cruel jokes. At another station he called his former on-air partner's(and friend) and asked on air if she had just had a miscarriage then joked her husband couldn't even make a baby successfully. Even his first wife was appalled (she was friend's with the woman).

From Amazon

Who is this guy and why are people listening?
Forget Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity—Glenn Beck is the Right’s new media darling and the unofficial leader of the conservative grassroots. Lampooned by the Left and Lionized by the far Right, his bluster-and-tears brand of political commentary has commandeered attention on both sides of the aisle.

Glenn Beck has emerged over the last decade as a unique and bizarre conservative icon for the new century. He encourages his listeners to embrace a cynical paranoia that slides easily into a fantasyland filled with enemies that do not exist and solutions that are incoherent, at best. Since the election of President Barack Obama, Beck’s bombastic, conspiratorial, and often viciously personal approach to political combat has made him one of the most controversial figures in the history of American broadcasting.

In Common Nonsense, investigative reporter Alexander Zaitchik explores Beck's strange brew of ratings lust, boundless ego, conspiratorial hard-right politics, and gimmicky morning-radio entertainment chops.

Separates the facts from the fiction, following Beck from his troubled childhood to his recent rise to the top of the conservative media heap
Zaitchik's recent three-part series in Salon caused so much buzz, Beck felt the need to attack it on his show
Based on Zaitchik's interviews with former Beck coworkers and review of countless Beck writings and television and radio shows
Explains why Beck is always crying, why he has so many conservative enemies, why he's driven by conspiracy theories, and why he's dangerous to the health of the republic
A contributing writer to Alternet, Zaitchik's reporting has appeared in the New Republic, the Nation, Salon, Wired, Reason, and the Believer
Beck, a perverse and high-impact media spectacle, has emerged as a leader in a conservative protest movement that raises troubling questions about the future of American politics.


From the Inside Flap
Common Nonsense

What kind of disc jockey would telephone the wife of a competitor and, over live radio, belittle her and her husband about her recent miscarriage? What kind of patriot would con his listeners into donating $450,000 to finance a series of Rally for America events that turned out to be nothing but a personal promotional tour? What kind of talk-radio host would falsely describe the president of the United States as a communist and black nationalist out to enslave Americans? The purveyor of such tactics—and worse—can only be America's newest household conservative name: Glenn Beck.

In Common Nonsense, investigative reporter Alexander Zaitchik traces Beck's personal history, from his troubled childhood through his years as a "morning zoo" DJ to his sudden and meteoric rise to the top of the conservative media heap. He pays special attention to Beck's transformation from alcoholic, cocaine-snorting, failed disc jockey without a political thought in his head to wealthy, bile-spewing, right-wing demagogue whose radio and television shows form the core of a multimillion-dollar media empire.

Drawing on interviews with Beck's childhood friends, radio coworkers, and TV colleagues as well as Beck's own published accounts of his life, Zaitchik reveals the cracks in Beck's personal creation myth. He pinpoints the moment when Beck, then working in Tampa and about to be fired from his first-ever talk-radio job, discovered right-wing rabble-rousing as his route to long-sought fame and fortune. He shows how Beck adapted the timeworn gags and manipulations of radio hucksterism—including the audience donation drive—into powerful tools for propaganda and personal enrichment. He also demonstrates how Beck's screeds about ACORN, czars, and socialists are carefully honed to intensify his listeners' fears and spur them to action at a time and place of his choosing.

Beck's manipulations are not aimed exclusively at conservative Tea Party activists. One of his favorite gambits, Zaitchik reveals, is to make outrageous statements—such as calling President Obama a racist—to provoke angry and overwrought reactions from the Left. He knows that nothing burnishes his reputation as a right-wing hero victimized by political correctness more effectively than a barrage of scoldings from the "liberal elite."

You can laugh at his crocodile tears, shake your head at the "facts" out of which he spins his wild theories, gape in wonder at his abrupt transitions from cheap sentiment to vicious attack and back again—but do not underestimate Glenn Beck. Read Common Nonsense and discover how this smart, ambitious self-promoter and his devoted flock poison our political discourse and weaken our democracy.

http://www.amazon.com/Common-Nonsense-Glenn-Triumph-Ignorance/dp/0470557397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275190865&sr=8-1

[JeffersonChick]

1. Thanks! I've added it to my reading list (n/t)

[RamboLiberal]

2. Interviews with the author

This is the question I hear liberals most often ask about Beck: Is he doing this for money, or does he believe this stuff? You seem to come down in the middle, and argue that he's a huckster, but he's also dim enough to believe that, say, ACORN is at the root of all evil.

His main motivations are, and have always been, money and fame. If Beck has a true religion, it’s not Patriotism. It’s not Mormonism. It’s cross-platform self-marketing.

The one constant in his life has been enormous ambition. His business and brand will never be big or successful enough—hence the new projects never stop coming. But I don’t think Beck’s self-image as a businessman is at odds with his beliefs about religion and politics. He doesn’t know enough about the world to understand why his grand-unified theory of a 100-year progressive plot is a laughingstock outside of his own TV and radio studios. I think he actually believes God wants him to make all this money and fight dirty for right wing causes. Does he really believe God is speaking to and through him? I don’t know. But in one of his books, he describes Heaven as a place where everybody “can make as much money as they want,” and he does believe that God basically wrote the Constitution in 1787.

The mistake Beck’s critics often make is to say, “Okay, so if his main self-identity is as a media and entertainment mogul, then everything else is just an act.” There’s no need to choose just one door. On his worldview’s own terms, there’s no contradiction between his enormous success, his entertainment toolbox, and his bat-in-the-bell tower politics. What’s shocking to me is how completely his fans swallow the “selfless patriot” act. It’s like they’re deaf and blind to the way his tearful civic-activist shtick feeds directly into the business, indeed is the business. What’s happening, I think, is that Beck thinks God approves of his manipulations, and his fans are willing to suspend their disbelief and give him a pass because, they too, think Beck is ultimately doing God’s work. The whole thing is arguably the most elaborate Kabuki theater on view on the right today.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/06/interview_alexander_zaitchik_o.html

Q. What made you want to write this book at this time?

A. I first started thinking about Beck in March of 2009. The trigger was a clip I saw of his weepy "We Surround Them" episode on Fox News, the one co-starring Chuck Norris, where he choked up while mumbling about "loving his country... and fearing for it." I knew nothing else about him at the time. I just started digging around to see who this guy was and where he was coming from. The more I dug, the more it was clear that something was bubbling around his demo that was unique. There were all of these MeetUp groups and viewing parties across the country--a whole Culture of Beck. It was clear he was heading toward territory more Palin than Hannity. But I had no way of knowing he'd get as big as he did over the course of writing the book.

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Q. There is much discussion of past emotional problems. What exactly occurred and how has that affected Beck's actions?

A. Beck had his share of tragedy in his youth. A divorce followed by the death of his mother. Then a half-brother killed himself. How much these things contributed to the Beck we know today, I have no idea. But Beck is clearly full of hatred to this day, for himself, for the world, for his political opponents. More than one former colleague believes he was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder in the 90s, likely bipolar, and that he took lithium on top of his recreational drugs and booze until he went clean in mid-90s. So you start with that as a baseline, together with a history of depression, throw in some megalomania and ADHD, for which Beck takes Big Pharma speed, sprinkle it with some dry drunk fairy dust and an instinctive paranoia, and you have a recipe for a freak show.

http://mediamatters.org/strupp/201006030012

[Jim__]

3. BookTV - Alexander Zaitchik talks about "Common Nonsense"

The video is here

Alexander Zaitchik, a freelance journalist who contributes to AlterNet.org, presents a critical account of political pundit Glenn Beck's personal and professional life. Mr. Zaitchik contends that Mr.Beck's radio career was floundering until he found a niche in promoting negligent claims against the left and coordinating political rallies that the author argues were less about the advancement of a specific political or social cause and more a promotional opportunity for the radio and tv host. Alexander Zaitchik presents his book at Borders bookstore in Washington, DC.