A couple thoughts about their conversation.
Glenn gets stuck on where the Occupy Movement fits on his chart. As my page used to assert, anarchy is the opposite of freedom. Glenn’s freedom vs totalitarian line isn’t a line in the end, it’s a circle. The anarchist is the best friend of the totalitarian. He scares the sheep into wanting to be protected.
The notion Penn has on the subject of marriage is he wants to keep government out of it – until people show up at the courthouse and want government to make decisions. When a man dies and has no will, and he has a long term partner and children, who decides what happens to his property? If you say that is none of the business of government, what happens when the girlfriend and children point guns at each other? If government has no role in marriage, then it has no role in divorce and child custody. If adults aren’t secure that their rights will be protected by the rule of law, they will not form families and have children and raise healthy adults of the next generation.
If you’ve got only 5 1/4 minutes, Beck, Bolero and Page are a rockin’ alternative for a magical musical marriage made in Cleveland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laXXXJ_1dHQ
Glenn is a born-again right-wing alcoholic drug addict who honed his skills in morning zoo radio. Penn is an atheist street magician who’s never had a drink or drug in his life. They meet at the point they have in common: they’re both carnies, waiting in the midway for the cottton candy-bearing rubes to hand all their cash over. Mr. Yin and Mr. Yang, they were made for each other. I used to be a big fan of both…and I do still admire them, in a way. Nobody likes being a sucker. If he himself wasn’t such a hypocritical phony asshole, I would concede that Keith Olbermann was correct in his characterization of Beck as “Lonesome Rhodes”.
Beck, Penn or Olbermann are what? Well, none of us are perfect.
I’m of the same mind.
Back when CBS under Mel Karmazin was doing FreeFM, Penn Gillette did a radio show. It was an hour long and aired on WJFK in DC and in Cleveland.
Unfortunately, there appeared to be no management at home. FreeFM hosts showed up only when they felt like it. The thing imploded after Howard Stern left to join Mel at Sirius after the CBS “old guard” pushed Mel out.
Since Mel has just left Sirius, I like to think about things like what Cumulus would be like with Mel in charge. Under Infinity after the ownership cap ended in 1996, Mel took a bunch of loser radio stations and turned them around and got huge ratings and profits that he parlayed to get the capital to eventually take effective over CBS. He is universally despised by the NAB establishment
Sirius looked like it would die quickly and was no match for XM until Mel took over Sirius… then Sirius took over XM.
Back on the topic, Beck makes no secret that he admired Orson Welles, hence the name of his company. Penn Gillette is very much in the same mold as Welles. I remember seeing Welles a few times doing somewhat lame magic/stage tricks on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
I would like to hear Glenn explain what Rosebud is to his audience.
“I would like to hear Glenn explain what Rosebud is to his audience.”
Gawd….that is uproariously funny. Glad I was not gulping down my beverage when I read that line!!!
Hey, it’s a sled, right? 8^p
Or a bicycle
Or maybe just something you ride.
Beck is an interesting man. I’ve listened to his show since he went national somewhere around 2000, when he was still very much a Zoo animal. I struggle with his true motivations and find his bible thumping to be onerous to the mind. His IS an alcoholic and now his new addiction in Mormonism and (as he sees it) “saving the world”. Like any talented road preacher, he offers up a lot of truth and information yet he never stops selling his “cure” for the snakebites. At some point, you step back and ask yourself, why the manic unceasing pitches of books, subscriptions to Blaze TV, or Beck/God/America Revivals? It’s somewhat disturbing really, but then again, the information he has disseminated has actually changed the narrative of American Political discourse. Who knew how pernicious “progressives” really are before Beck?
I like Penn Gillette and honestly his vocation does not minimize his opinions on Liberty. The problem that exists today in the discussion of marriage “equality” is one of unseen future trends. I doubt when government decided to endorse the contract of matrimony that anyone really thought that one day homosexuals would expect to be recognized as a “normal” variation of the human condition.
A couple years back, there was a conservative talker that split with most conservatives regarding gays adopting children. He grew up moving under the guide of the state, moving from foster home to foster home until he became an adult because there was no one to adopt him. While not gay himself, he said any stable home with loving parents would have been a tremendous blessing that he never had. I don’t remember his name and a quick look at google didn’t refresh my memory.
Although I can’t find a clip of him saying it, that sounds like the bio and stance of Jerry Doyle.
Jerry Doyle does a good show, and he’s got some decent ideas. Unfortunately, when Michael Savage left TRN they instantly moved Doyle into his evening slot. He did well at first but now has to compete with Savage directly, and he’s dead in the water. It’s a damn shame.
I have no right to know, but it makes me uncomfortable that I don’t know who owns TRN and pulls the strings there. The guy who runs TRN is the son of Roy Masters, the rather eccentric guy who is on the radio at 3 AM selling meditation and self hypnosis tapes via the Foundation for Human Understanding. Like Savage, he is extremely direct. He tells people straight to their face that they are weak and he has the ability to control their mind and actions. That’s pretty basic mind control stuff – break down people’s confidence in their self identity, then fill in the void you created.
TRN says Roy and the Masters family aren’t the owners. They also have ties with the Washington Times, which is funded by Korea’s Unification church – birds of a feather, etc…
CBS, Dial Global, Clear Channel, Salem, Radio One and Cumulus have a moderately clear explanation of who owns them because they are or were publicly traded. Radio America is owned by a pro military 401(c) non-profit. TRN is a mystery.
I was living in the New Haven radio market, and he did his show locally for a while on AM late mornings before he landed the network job. The morning drive guy on WELI spewed hate in Glenn’s direction – something Glenn owns up to – before he hit bottom and found religion, he describes himself as a scumbag.
I admire how far he has come – he started not knowing much about history or how the government works, but he’s a voracious reader and has a good sense of people. In a lot of ways, I admire Beck more than Limbaugh. I drove out to Fort Collins to add my voice to what I thought could be the start if something big – but as far as I can remember, that was the last public appearance he made in front of a large audience. Beck’s thing on the Washington Mall really caught his opponents totally off guard. We need to put the large government Democrats on the defensive
Once the Establishment understood how dangerously effective Limbaugh can be effective against the Established Order, so it is no mystery why he choose to limit and/or stop his public appearances. History indicates JFK could have benefited from that knowledge.
Beck is getting dangerously close to the edge.
I reject the notion of changing the parameters due to the system itself being broken and run by dishonest and/or incompetent people. But it’s not an easy conclusion regardless. I know gays all my adult life as I work in the arts where they gravitate disproportionately to their population density and while I have been friends with many, I have found the preponderance of them to be fundamentally broken people, whose entire lives are lived through a gay haze and with a large gay chip on their shoulders. Not all, but a large majority.
Interesting observation, Ed.
The problem almost all homosexuals have these days, is they
WILL NOT accept anyone who understands that they are abnormal, like anyone born with a physical or mental defect, (or for that matter one who has been deformed in life from an accident or disease) yet also is not afraid of them, nor hates them. To even acknowledge the “problem” of being of being gay is enough to bring their wrath down, as though we are to ignore the biology of male/female function. It’s silly.
And if lesbians in particular are so “normal”, why do the majority choose to dress and act like men, and why are they so damn angry? The concept of self-reflection tends to be lost on people who are so totally focused on wearing their sexuality like a halloween costume.
The endless sales pitch – with the Bernie Madoff flop sweat glaze. No matter if it was the Millierites or Jim Jones when you keep predicting the end of the line at some point either the great cosmic curtain has to come down or you do. I went to college with a fellow who sold either dictionaries or encyclopedias door to door between sixth form and college – that’s Glenn. Sort of a mix of Dale Carnegie and PT Barnum. Since he is bent on ‘raising the moral fiber’ of the nation – does he bear some responsibility for how his audience may buy into some of the Chicken Little squawk? In the end with Glenn, nah – after all there is one born every minute.
His Road-show soapbox is a reflection of his addictive behavior and desire for control and worldly success. The guy was raised Roman Catholic, but when he decides to rediscover God after living a life of debauchery, he goes about as far into christian cultism as one can find outside of a Jim Jones. Most Mormons are decent people, but they are their own private club, who preach wealth lust and apocalypse preparation. That’s a fact, and Glenn is living the life.
That also does not diminish when people like Beck disseminate good solid facts and issues of concern, but it does mean I often switch the channel when he and his Mormon buddy start going off the deep end. lately I have been hearing Glenn talk about how his staff is being (basically) attacked by demonic forces. I think the guy is smart and nuts.
He’s a genius. When I first heard him in the early 2000s he was doing the Phil Hendrie Show. After 9/11 he was doing the Rush Limbaugh Show. These days he’s doing the Alex Jones Show. He’s a radio chameleon who can take on any persona to suit his purposes. He was literally penniless a decade ago, but now is one of the most powerful and influential broadcasters out there. He’s “written” many bestsellers and now has his own TV and radio networks. And what’s this about Glenn Beck Land? Personally, having listened to him forever, I think he’s a huckster of Clintonian proportions. But he’s the best there is. If he wanted it, and was willing to take the pay cut he, he could be President.
I don’t care for Beck’s radio show but his Blaze Network TV is fantastic. I appreciate that he has been right about most of his predictions. It you have not watched his TV show, you have missed a great SHOW!