[Strangler Lewis]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

CP and I had a discussion a few weeks ago about Beck. We admitted that we had never actually watched one of his shows, all we've seen are the most outrageous clips shown on the Daily Show, HoffPo, et. al. CP was convinced that, surely, no one would watch is show if that's ALL he did, that the majority of what he said was the sort of innocuous generic conservative cheerleader stuff. "We want less government and more free enterprise."

I was less convinced. So we made a deal. A painful painful deal. We'd watch his show for a while. We realized it was unfair to assume the worst and vilify him and his fans without knowing what he was actually saying. But I had a condition. If more than 50% of what he said was bullsh*t we could stop watching.

We turned an episode on a couple weeks ago. It wasn't a big news day, nothing specific happening to set him off. It wasn't a show that ended up with him saying something particularly noteworthy in its outrageousness. Just a middle-of-the-road episode.

We got through 5 minutes of it. He literally didn't say a single sentence in those 5 minutes that wasn't composed of half-truths, exaggerations, distortions. Not one bit of fact, all emotional b.s. "proving" his emotional b.s. point.

It actively hurt to watch. But now at least I can feel I'm justified in my horror when I hear her parents say, "You know that Glenn Beck guy, he's a lunatic...but if you really listen, there's truth in what he says." Umm, no. Quite the opposite of that. If you REALLY listen, it's nothing but lies.

It could not have been otherwise. Beck and his ilk deal in political porn. Porn doesn't waste time on subtlety and plot development. It goes from money shot to money shot. Frankly, I'm quite proud of my side that Air America failed miserably.