Glenn Beck, The Go-To Gossip Guy

He is hilarious, natch, and also now the King of the Traditional Media or some such thing, because you have to react to everything he says and he makes money for the Republican Organ (pun intended) which is also called Fox. Once you have that circle completed (from nutcase to pay-attention to money), the problem is also circular.

At the same time, there is something seriously sob-producing about a country which focuses on Beck and his emotional utterances. If he were a woman nobody would take him seriously, because he is all about sobbing and weeping and exaggerating and passing on gossip and hearsay of the hairiest kind.

Now he is on a hunt for communists, Marxists and Maoists inside the Obama administration and outside it, too. Anyone who has ever met a real meatspace Stalinist, for example (which I have) finds her or his brain go at some Twilight frequency when Beck talks about serious communists. Real Stalinists, for instance, are frightening people. Beck would run very fast indeed if he ever met one. It's a lot less frightening to accuse milquetoast centrists of red-hot Maoism.

I'm not sure why I bother writing any of it. I still suffer from the Excessive Sanity Syndrome which makes it hard for me to admit that what matters is Scandal! Sensation! Superficiality!