Ok so I like Beck and everything but why this obsession with him? Especially from liberals?

ronke a said:
Ok so I like Beck and everything but why this obsession with him? Especially from liberals?

Liberals are wondering exactly the same thing. Especially from tea-baggers.

Ted- said:
Liberals are wondering exactly the same thing. Especially from tea-baggers.

Really? Well, the liberals could stop it at any time. They seem to be the only ones obsessing with Beck.

tgk said:
Really? Well, the liberals could stop it at any time. They seem to be the only ones obsessing with Beck.

No, liberals simply wonder how so many can be taken in by an obvious scam. It’s like watching a train wreck. My bet is that Beck packages his “Rally to to Restore Bullshit” event, put it on a DVD and sell it to you tea-baggers. That’s how this clown works and you will gladly fork over the $19.95. Just be sure to pick up your hat and free cup of soup with that DVD.

TED, I’d pay attention to you if you expressed disagreement with something Glenn Beck SAID.

But as far as I know, few, if any of his critics do that. They always call him names or spout off some liberal vs. conservative crap. Believe it or not, a few are even desperate & pathetic enough to use an unflattering picture of Glenn as their avatar. Yes Ted, there are a few people that sad. We can only hope they get the professional help they need.

Arkansas Steve said:
TED, I’d pay attention to you if you expressed disagreement with something Glenn Beck SAID.

But as far as I know, few, if any of his critics do that. They always call him names or spout off some liberal vs. conservative crap. Believe it or not, a few are even desperate & pathetic enough to use an unflattering picture of Glenn as their avatar. Yes Ted, there are a few people that sad. We can only hope they get the professional help they need.

Arkansas – Open up, Glenn has something you’re going to want to swallow without question. How do you pathetic idiots put on your panties without instructions?

good piece, I don’t pay attention to NYT unless it’s linked or talked about. Nice to see alteast 1 reader has a legitimate gripe about Beck, the all-or-nothing. I wouldn’t mind seeing someone counter what Beck shows his viewers instead of mindless ‘i don’t like you’ politics. When I catch it I can always just look up some info to get more background to understand it better.

His only drawback is that all things get stale after a while. He’s gotta change it up, not add more magnets. I liked his history lessons, even if it was from a certain viewpoint only.

Not to be a complete a-hole or rag on the new guy, but it’s one of my pet subjects…

Other than Andrew Sullivan and a couple of folks on CNN, how much of the media aren’t “regular citizens”? And, if the “regular citizens” weren’t interested in the subject, why would the Times have done a profile?

It’s referred to as the Fourth Estate, Magister. And I don’t recall implying that regular citizens “weren’t interested in the subject,” but rather the opposite.

@Ray Rahman: My intention was to give you a gentle poke because the phrasing stood out, but on a more serious note, the lines between media and the general public have become so blurred, they’re pretty much non-existent. A woman signed-up for a credentialess Huffington Post program and her audio tape made national headlines; James O’Keefe is just a kid with a video camera; Glenn Beck is simply a disk jockey who started taking calls and John Roberts is a VJ who took a job in news; A huge percentage of bloggers with national platforms got the gig because of someone they know, they were at the right party or hung-out at the right bar, or because they’re willing to live in New York City and if the internet didn’t make the effort pointless, anyone could start a newspaper or a satellite channel without a lot of expense and in just a few days.

Again, I was just poking you because it’s one of my pet subjects, but we’ve gone full circle from the days of a voice coming down from the hill, back to the days of Thomas Paine. In fact, the non-regular citizen blog/magazine that you linked is simply a publication from some guy whose Wiki entry could be summarized as describing him to be an entrepreneurial pamphleteer without a college degree.

The post may be up top, but it’s no more important and should have no more weight than the conversation which takes place below. The same can be said for Keith Olbermann or Jon Stewart’s opinion because as the old saying goes, everybody has one of their own.

Naturally, I’d love to be able to edit, so that I could break that first paragraph into two, but since I decided to step back in with this postscript, I thought that I’d add “no harm, no foul”. I was just trying to give the new guy a hard time.

jk76 said:
good piece, I don’t pay attention to NYT unless it’s linked or talked about. Nice to see alteast 1 reader has a legitimate gripe about Beck, the all-or-nothing. I wouldn’t mind seeing someone counter what Beck shows his viewers instead of mindless ‘i don’t like you’ politics. When I catch it I can always just look up some info to get more background to understand it better. His only drawback is that all things get stale after a while. He’s gotta change it up, not add more magnets. I liked his history lessons, even if it was from a certain viewpoint only.

Honestly, I’m kind of getting tired of Glenn. He takes himself way too seriously now, and it’s starting to grate on me.

Don’t worry Magister, I’m not at all offended. But to clarify, The Week is an actual print publication, one that I’ve inadvertently perused in many, many offices of dentistry. It evaluates a week’s worth of media coverage in order to interpret what it is the media were/are covering that week (sound familiar?). So when The Week covers Beck, it doesn’t mean that The Week cares about him — it means that the rest of the media do.

As for the “regular citizens” issue, I understand and empathize with your points. However, I’d like to note that the vast majority of citizens don’t have Wikipedia entries (I certainly don’t). In fact, I wrote a story the other day about a former HuffPo writer who has indeed made national headlines, and here is what one commenter said:

“Who’s Mayhill Fowler? She has been a Huffpo blogger since 2007. She doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry when a Google search for her name isn’t seen in the first couple of pages of the search.”

So, if you do believe that something like a Fourth Estate still exists, it’s hard to argue that Beck, Olbermann, Stewart, Van Susteren, and Sullivan aren’t a part of it. In fact, that’s the point of the whole concept; they are, of course, “regular citizens” in a certain sense, but it’s their national platforms that separate them from you and me. For further proof, check out our Power Grid. ; )

jk76 said:
good piece, I don’t pay attention to NYT unless it’s linked or talked about. Nice to see alteast 1 reader has a legitimate gripe about Beck, the all-or-nothing. I wouldn’t mind seeing someone counter what Beck shows his viewers instead of mindless ‘i don’t like you’ politics. When I catch it I can always just look up some info to get more background to understand it better.

His only drawback is that all things get stale after a while. He’s gotta change it up, not add more magnets. I liked his history lessons, even if it was from a certain viewpoint only.

Really? Well lets start with the fact that he insults every one of his viewers by using black board and crayon theology to explain his bigotry! He uses so many pretty pictures to illustrate his propaganda tirades and when that doesn’t get the point across he reverts to tears to show just how only “Americans” like he care so much about our country! What a croc!

Love the story about him trying to shake Gandolfini’s hand and James says: Who let Satin in?

That’s classic!

Also, do any of you see him pushing this Goldline company ads all the time. He’s making a lot of money from feeding you guys all this BS…a lot of money!

and didn’t he recently tell you all how to dress at the hate rally’s?

Now he even has a dress code? Wow!

1) Beck is a hot media star right now.

2) The NY Times Magazine biographical sketch is fair, or at least as fair as any other article they ever publish.

3) I am not surprised at all that some on the Left are unhappy that the Times published such a fair article. They wanted a hatchet job like the one done on the Koch brothers in a recent New Yorker issue.

@Ray: I appreciate that you came back to respond and I’ll let the subject go for now, but so you know and as others in your office might attest, it’s something that I’ll likely revisit from time to time.

@Ray: I realize that I said that I’d leave the subject alone for now, but I’m going to add one more scenario because I’ve been away from my machine and it occurred to me.

On the first days of the most recent Iraq War, Peter Jennings — an anchor whose only qualification to become a reporter was that his father was big in the industry — spoke to a doctor in Baghdad via the phone. Jennings was obviously unfamiliar with the subjects the doctor wanted to discuss, though they were later proven in hindsight and because the media hadn’t done their homework, the anchor appears to have been largely uninformed, so because he didn’t personally place the call and didn’t know Chalabi or the allegations against him, Jennings concluded that the call could have been a prank.

I’ve written on a couple of occasions that I suspected the doctor to be the father of noted war blogger, Salam Pax. “Salam” had a Baghdad-based blogspot and perhaps through it, he was recruited to be an interpreter for a print reporter, while he maintained his increasingly war-oriented blog as one of the few English-language points of information from within Iraq.

After his blog became known throughout the west and he had helped bring attention to other noted bloggers in the area, Salam was whisked to London, where he took a gig blogging for the Guardian about the war and they also sent him to the US to report on the ’04 election, plus he produced a few award-winning reports for a BBC magazine show.

Which leads me to wonder, when did Salam become a member of the “Fourth Estate”? When he launched his blog? When he took freelance work as an interpreter? When he started writing for a “legitimate” organization or did he never join the ranks because his Dad was a doctor, not a reporter?

Clarification: I said “only” and I should’ve have said “primary” in regards to Peter Jennings because obviously I enjoyed his work and he grew beyond his start.

ronke a said:
Ok so I like Beck and everything but why this obsession with him? Especially from liberals?

They want to BE him. They cannot. They’re frustrated trying to figure out why they’re failing.

aceshigh121 said:
Also, do any of you see him pushing this Goldline company ads all the time. He’s making a lot of money from feeding you guys all this BS…a lot of money!

Where was gold 2 years ago when they became his sponsor? Where is gold now? I’ve made a TON of money in the premets; I’m sorry you have not.

(If gold reaches $1390, you might want to take profits on 1/4th of your holdings, and buy back in when it drops to $1210. That’s a freebie.)

J Baustian says: “I am not surprised at all that some on the Left are unhappy that the Times published such a fair article.”

Fair? If pitching soft balls to a hardball player is “fair,” then yes. It was fair.

Leibovich didn’t ask any tough questions:
http://www.sharethisurlaboutglennbeck.com/2010/10/ny-times-didnt-ask-beck-tough-questions.html

ronke a said:
Ok so I like Beck and everything but why this obsession with him? Especially from liberals?

It’s really quite simple: Rational people are hungry for the TRUTH, they will go to the ends of the Earth in search of the TRUTH. Mr. Beck tells the TRUTH–he even challenges people to verify or refute his words. Conversely, the irrational mind HATES the TRUTH; they will do all within their power to marginalize, ridicule, denounce, and destroy those who tell the TRUTH.