AZspot AZspot

blue bits. red rocks.
Friday 28 August 2009

…cable news networks, with their focus on the exciting and inflammatory rather than the useful or the important, suck. Glenn Beck embodies that trend, carried to its logical extreme. His shows — yes, I’ve watched or listened to both — play on emotion, to the detriment of logic, and inflame rather than educate. We hear why X or Y is a “communist” or “Nazi” scheme, but not why, what those terms mean, or why, absent hyperbole, we should be concerned about them. It’s political vaudeville or prop comedy, and the books are worse. Whole swaths of the internet are dedicated to disproving the dozens of lies Beck manufactures on a daily basis, but to no effect: with cable networks in the hands of few truly disinterested parties, Beck’s detractors, and the truth, stand no chance against such well-promoted, frequently-aired charisma. Media centralization, careful marketing, and fear have together created a monster immune to “good speech.” Beck’s popularity, predicated on our coarser emotions, and intelligent America’s inability to counter him, have checkmated the First Amendment. Until now. As I noted, because of Beck’s overreach in calling the first black President a “racist” who “hates white people” (YouTube), he’s lost forty-six advertisers, at last count. When this trend ultimately drives him off the air, it will not be because of government action or power, but a result of the free capital markets reflecting the sensibilities of a free people, finally fed up with malicious, inflammatory, potentially dangerous lies. When Glenn Beck falls, it will be because the First Amendment works; not because it failed. Submitted to a Candid World

A GNT creation ©2007–2011