The Fusion of Pitch and Fork

I listened to some Glenn Beck this morning. Minutes into his screed about how progressive Nazi/Islamo-fascist pro-choice socialists are determined to take Lady Liberty from behind, I gave my freshly de-haired ears a needed breather. Maybe owning an official Glenn Beck decoder ring enables nitwits to unravel his sophomoric Matrix fantasies. I doubt it. But wearing an official Glenn Beck tinfoil hat would elicit rebel yells from the rusted van… down by the river.

The very real possibility exists that Beck‘s deck is lacking an entire suit. I knew a manic-depressive in gradual school and…well; let’s just say that if David wasn’t taking his lithium Happy Hour became an edgy affair. And it’s not like crackpots (genuine or faux) can’t garner lucrative rightwing talk show gigs. The format favors egos with cognitive-dissonance issues; serious childhood developmental defects coupled with delusions-of-grandeur soliloquies are common traits among movement carnival barkers. It takes an existential leap to believe that Beck segued from aping Howard Stern’s butt bongo shtick into America’s on-air Diogenes after embracing sobriety. Going on the wagon is always a good idea if you’re fending off invisible snakes. However, replacing Crown with coffee rarely facilitates the sudden growth of gray matter. Put another way, Churchill wasn’t baiting bears in Leeds before Adolph Hitler came to power.

Crazy or no, Beck’s career reinvention has to be taken seriously. Stroking the dark underbelly of fringe politics with half baked, apocalyptic horse shit can push mentally unbalanced paranoids over the chalk line. So-called pro-life advocates have yet to pull Randall Terry’s plug -- even after he insinuated the President’s pro-choice position was “instigating” latter day John Browns to free the enslaved fetus with extreme prejudice. I don’t suppose Bill O’Reilly referring to the late Dr. Tiller as “Dr. Killer” -- O’Reilly castigated the physician for providing legal medical care no less than 26 times -- might have caught the homicidal fancy of one particular psychopath. If the morally repugnant Terry wants to point fingers, let’s get busy.

What’s truly disgusting is how quickly the horde of professional hate mongers back away when their “talk” turns into violent action. At least Terry doesn’t deny Operation Rescue’s inflammatory rhetoric encourages murderous attacks on law abiding citizens. Perhaps one of Joplin’s local Taliban can explain the difference between Terry and a Muslim killing for Allah; I sure as hell can’t thread that theological needle.

Neither can Beck -- drunk or dry.


Juan Don