GOING CRAZY WITH GLENN BECK

"I was a dirtbag and liar, but I'm not now!"

Glenn Beck has problems. After screaming, weeping, and ranting that Obama was a racist who hated whites and white culture, several sponsors dropped his show--but that's not what I mean. What I mean is Beck is nuts. Whacko, crazy, off his rocker, cuckoo for Coco Puffs. Watch him give this weirdly disoriented self-serving rant that verges on evangelical testifying. He sounds like a character in "Idiocracy," a comedy set in the not too distant future where idiots rule, and the population has been dumbed down to a manageable level.

How bad could it be? He's on the cover of Time Magazine, though probably not under the best of circumstances. Read Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America? at Time.

According to Beck, he quit the booze and bad behavior and saw the light. According to Harper's, he shares plenty of characteristics with patients in Katherine van Wormer’s Addiction Treatment: A Strengths Perspective, a book that "summarizes the professional literature with respect to dry drunks by identifying a number of recurrent traits, including an exaggerated self-importance or pomposity; grandiose behavior; a rigid, judgmental outlook; impatience; regressive infantile behavior; irresponsible behavior; irrational rationalization; projection; and overreaction."

Sounds about right.

(Read this story on Beck in Harper's, and another here.)


Recently, Salon ran a feature called "The Making of Glenn Beck." Evidently, he lied about his history of trouble and redemption, the cornerstone of the Beck myth. He fudged some facts, you could say. Loud and obnoxious from the start, he worked his way through the annoying world of morning drive-time--"zoo radio culture"--zig-zagging through drink and drugs and a nicely fictionalized biography as he barked and cried his way to becoming a leading conservative pundit on Fox News. Read the article at Salon.

Here's another clip (courtesy of The Young Turks) in which Beck goes nuts on a caller about health care. Clearly, Beck is not well. Looks like he could use some health care himself--more specifically, mental health care. I'm sure he can afford it.