I was going to write this blog last night so it would be more timely and the topic would be fresh in my mind, but I was unexpectedly delayed in returning home. Yeah...Lincoln Town Cars suck.
Anyway, before experiencing that physical and emotional trauma, I bravely subjected myself to far worse mental trauma in the name of objectivity. I watched the last half of Glenn Beck's show on Fox News while eating dinner. I did not vomit, although I did lose a bit of my appetite.
Now I don't have cable at home, so I don't watch any of the cable news channels regularly. When I travel and find myself in a hotel, I tend to watch Headline News because it gets right to the point, but then it starts repeating itself so I turn it off and don't watch anything. I have no patience for regular CNN because its chock full of boring shows.
The last time I was in a hotel, I watched MSNBC because I never had before. I enjoyed it a lot actually, in the same way I occasionally enjoy Saturday Night Live or Youtube videos. But it wasn't really "news."
So it came time to cross briefly to the dark side and witness what is apparently the most watched cable news channel. I had watched Fox News on occasion back at the beginning of this decade, but not for years, and not since Glenn Beck joined them. I saw my chance to rectify that and took it.
So I sat down, sipped my soda and watched. Becky Glenn was in the middle of some diatribe involving his chalk board and something akin to math. I paid attention and tried to follow his logic, but he was yelling at me and it was a little distracting. The math didn't really back up the argument he was trying to make, but he kept insisting that the math was not real, but made up, like how the Dow was back around 10,000 but that wasn't real. I guess when you're crazy, shit that's really happening isn't real because the voices in your head tell you so.
Okay, a commercial. This is interesting. They're trying to convince me that my finances aren't sound and I need accounting help. Hm, now they are trying to sell me gold. And now they are trying to get me to go to the casino in Wheeling. I'm noticing a theme here: Fox News wants me to spend money and things that aren't products.
Glenn Beck is back and he is making it abundantly clear that he hates government. He admits that he is insane, which is a refreshing blast of honesty, but then continues. I'll include a clip of this last segment of the show for your own...enjoyment.
Becky is apparently a little perturbed that the vast majority of Americans are having government forced down their throats in the form of health care, assuring us that just because you can't hear them, or see them, or physically locate them on this plane of existence, it does not mean that this vast majority does not exist(in his mind)!
Bombshell alert! The Glenn Beck show, come January, is going to change. Becks will be moving...FORWARD. It must be a big move if its going to take him until January. It seems this Saturday in Florida (presumably chosen as the location due to the inordinately high number of morons; see hanging chads, circa 2000) Becko will unveil his master plan to all, which involves taking defibrillator paddles to the heart of personal responsibility in this country and shocking it back to life. As he vehemently states, people in the federal government refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Cough cough, Dick Cheny, cough, George Bush. We're off health care and back onto spending again by the way. And my favorite Glenn Beck quote, "Failure is Good," which epitomizes his entire career.
We're back on commercials, and they're trying to sell me gold and financial advice again. Apparently, my money situation is so bad that I need to give more of it away.
Coming back, we're greeted by the Glenn Beck chalk board with the word Truth scrawled on it in big letters. I wonder, does Glenn Beck just assume his viewers have the education level of third graders and that's why he has to write his crap on a chalk board, or does he need the board to keep reminding himself of what he's talking about? Maybe both.
We've gotten on to unions now. And illegal immigrants. I feel a little numb in my mind trying to draw logical conclusions from Beck's wild jumping around on topics and HOLY FUCK ANOTHER COMMERCIAL. I bet they're going to try to sell me gold again, maybe with a celebrity this time?
Peter Graves is trying to sell me gold. Not quite the level of celebrity I'm hoping for, but then again the only celebrity you're going to convince to peddle gold to people is going to be the out of work variety. And more financial advice. And more casinos.
Beck is back and he's decided to dress it up. The pink shirt tucked into jeans was apparently not classy enough, so we've added the navy blue sport jacket. It doesn't make him look less idiotic. Beck's guest, some guy who works for a group I've never heard of, is saying Obama is taking over private business. All of it. Through the unions. His private union army. The evidence is that Andy Stern has been to the white house 22 times (Beck comments that we are spinning ourselves into oblivion; good, that explains my headache). The next accusation is that the government wants to drag the standard of living of America down. They want to do this because? OH SHIT, we'll never know, because its time for ANOTHER FUCKING COMMERCIAL.
Buy some gold and some financial advice and play the slots. I have a feeling that if I bought REAL financial advice, they'd tell me NOT to play the slots, NOT to invest in gold, and NOT to watch Fox News anymore. I can also see why Glenn Beck's master plan is going to have to wait until January to be set in motion; its going to take him that long to spell it out between commercial breaks.
Beck is back and reminds us to catch up with him Florida where we will "look each other in the whites of the eyes." ...the fuck does that mean? Anyway, thanks, Glenn, for the experience. Its one I won't soon forget...or understand. Then the show cuts off and I guess maybe we're going to commercial again. I don't know, I was done eating and walked out at this point. I had a date with a Lincoln Town Car.
I think what I took away from this experience is that Glenn Beck, and by extension Fox News, isn't any different from MSNBC or CNN. All three channels claim to be news but show very little actual news, instead choosing to jam pack their schedules with talking heads who make bold and wild analytical observations about subjects they do not understand and have no educational background in. Each channel caters to a different audience.
MSNBC looks to grab people that are smart enough to realize that its all crap and are just their for the laughs...which is why they are failing. Those people are also smart enough to spend their time on better things than watching shitty cable news. CNN looks to grab the attention or people looking to fall asleep to something, and they are very effective. Fox News draws in the dumb, gullible, psychotic, and masochistic. That's really the best audience to go after because they are easily manipulated into believing everything you say, and if they believe everything you say they will believe they need to keep watching. Except for the masochistic, who do it because they enjoy pain.
Me, I don't have the stomach for that. Now that my foray into cable news is complete, I've decided to leave more detailed research to those with a stronger will and more time to spare. I'll stick to other sources for now. But it was fun.
5 comments:
Wow.
1) I didn't watch the whole glenn beck video yet, so your post was really hard to follow, which is pretty brilliant, since Glenn Beck is hard to follow.
2) It looks like they have to run the same 3 commercials since Beck lost a boatload of sponsors :-)
3) Holy fuck, yo! That dude got run OVER in that first vid!
Enough lists :-) Great post... I need to start watching Beck's show because it sounds AWESOME.
The accident in the video was only a reenactment. The vehicle is not my Honda Civic and I didn't have the chance to edit a Lincoln Town Car pulling out in front of him into it.
Yeah, the post is probably hard to follow because I didn't really know what I was watching, but also I'm kind of distracted by the dull oozing pain flowing through my body. I did intentionally try to incorporate the Beck Stream of Consciousness (R) method of journalism into my writing.
I think the inscrutability of it is profound... it's like reading Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells" out loud. There is a lyrical connection between the abstraction and the audition that is part and parcel of the experience.
If I could reliably get home in time, or had a dvr, or could convince my wife to watch glenn beck with me... I'd LOVE to do nightly live-blogging in tandem with the show... as an exercise in comparing and contrasting perception and reality :-)
You guys are brave. I've tried watching Beck's show and after about 10 minutes I wanted to blow my brains out.
Sorry about your accident...at least it sounds like you had an accident???
Perhaps you should have written this last night because it did not age well.
Your beloved HuffPo says “Fox News has pulled off another dominant quarter, claiming the top 10 cable news programs in 3Q 2009 and growing against 3Q 2008, while CNN and MSNBC lost substantial portions of their election-boom audience. Fox News averaged 2.25 million total viewers in prime time for the third quarter, up 2% over the previous year. That's more than CNN (946,000, down 30%) and MSNBC (788,000, down 10%) combined. Glenn Beck at 2.403 million, up 89%. Wow, it is not just “apparently” the most watched network, it fucking is! LMFAO!
Your beloved "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" averaged 1.087 million total viewers, down 12% from the previous year and it’s because regular folks are tired of the bullshit and the nasty invective that is not really funny.
“I guess when you're crazy, shit that's really happening isn't real because the voices in your head tell you so.” Very revealing.
“the vast majority of Americans are having government forced down their throats in the form of health care, assuring us that just because you can't hear them, or see them, or physically locate them on this plane of existence, it does not mean that this vast majority does not exist(in his mind)!” I think we heard them in the most recent New Jersey and Virginia Governor elections and they and their votes exist. Hey, maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but you just got our asses kicked, pal! (Brantletts Quotations this is a Hudson line from Aliens)
"Failure is Good," which epitomizes his entire career. Beck has the record for more #1 books at the same time than anyone in history. He has the #3 radio show and the #3 cable news show. You should be lucky enough to have such failure.
“All three channels claim to be news but show very little actual news, instead choosing to jam pack their schedules with talking heads who make bold and wild analytical observations about subjects they do not understand and have no educational background in. Each channel caters to a different audience.” Well said!
From Pew Research: “Among regular Fox News Channel viewers, 39% identified as Republican, 33% as Democrats and 22% as independents. Among regular CNN viewers, 51% identified as Democrats, 23% were independents and just 18% were Republicans. In short, Democrats comprise a larger share of the Fox News audience than Republicans do of CNN's audience.”
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