My brother is a big fan of Glenn Beck. We were debating illegal immigration one day and Beck came up. Half-jokingly, I dismissed him as that "weirdo Mormon" and promptly made fun of his
"weird underwear." True, it was a cheap shot, but I was only half-serious. Wearing funny underwear is no less weird than, say, pretending to drink the blood of Jesus or praying towards Mecca five times a day, at least for me.
When it comes to trashing religion, I'm an equal opportunity offender. But Beck's religion isn't the reason why I make fun of him. No, that would be his bonafides as a right-wing hack job.
"But he's not a right-wing hack job," my brother says. "He's funny."
That I believe. Before he became a right-wing hack job, I understand he was primarily a radio funny man. But then 9-11 happened... Er, actually I don't know what inspired Beck to go from radio comedy to radio commentary, but it's been quite lucrative for him.
He's got a new book coming out, too, which my brother wants for Christmas. Guess what it's called?
An Inconvenient Book. So clever, and yet strangely original...
From the Amazon description:
In this appraisal of America's woes, conservative TV and talk-radio host Beck (The Real America) lays lighthearted siege to everything that makes the world worse. [P]olitical correctness is the biggest threat this nation faces today, he declares, as it makes us prey for Islamic fundamentalists, renders taboo the roots of our economic troubles (poor people are, in fact, lazy, he argues) and creates rampant distortion in the media. Beck goes paragraph for paragraph with global-warming alarmist Al Gore, merrily slaughtering the sacred cows of the environmentalist crowd.
Of course, I can't critique the book without having read it, but I can lay into a few of those positions.
For one, I am sick and tired...sick and
fucking tired of the right-wing global warming skeptics. Tired of them.
Yes, yes, we all know that global warming is Al Gore's pet issue. We all know he's made a lot of money and won a lot of awards making sure that "Al Gore" and "environmentalism" are synonymous. Surely all of that can be divorced from the larger point that mankind has an effect on our environment and we can choose whether it will be a positive effect or a negative effect. We can really nerd out on the specifics, debating all day and night whether the ice caps will melt and sink New York City, but it is pure folly to pretend that human activity (especially
industrial activity) has little to no environmental impact.
That claim is not only patently false, but also quite ridiculous. All one needs to do is look at the pre-industrial cultures that obsoleted themselves through careless use of environmental resources. Read Jared Diamond's book
Collapse for a few examples.
I'm not sure what Glenn Beck thinks he will accomplish by going "paragraph for paragraph with global-warming alarmist Al Gore, merrily slaughtering the sacred cows of the environmentalist crowd." Does he think ridiculing Al Gore will make our environmental problems go away? Or does he think that we don't have any environmental problems?
This is an important question to answer. It means the difference between Glenn Beck being a fucking idiot, or a mean-spirited hack? (And neither are things one should aspire to be, in my book.)
At any rate, my brother issued me a challenge. Listen to Glenn Beck's radio show for a week and see if I still think he's a right-wing nut job. I'll try, despite my visceral dislike of all things talk radio, and I'll even have an open mind.
But if he starts blasting global warming by sniping on Al Gore, or bitching about Islamic fundamentalists but saying nothing about Christian fundamentalists, or going off on immigration, I'm going to tune out.
In other words, I expect that I'll be tuning out on day one...
