Politics or performance art?

[sabotabby]

I am still, some days, surprised that Glenn Beck is real. Or rather, not surprised that he's real, but surprised that he's real and is given air time. I mean, a lot of people, present company included, have mental illnesses, but they don't stick me on the telly.

I take these moments of befuddlement as good signs that I'm not completely cynical.

But really. I can't believe that the political discourse has sunk that low. (There's lower, of course—see Uganda, but Uganda is really the fault of American interference and it's part of the same problem.) Say what you like about the Cold War, but when I was growing up, there was a little bit of reality mixed in with the hot air. Now it's impossible to tell a well-compensated media pundit from the guy with the goiter who hangs out across from Dundas Square gibbering about Jesus.

Comments

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

What's with Uganda? My little brother explained to me but my mind switches off as there is just too much horror and eek in the world. So I'm trying to stick to smaller, managable chunks of eek, such as this:
I have just been plastering this over facebook - my friend's nephews and nieces in need of malaria medicine in Uganda. Misfratz's friend, but now my friend too, is married to a Ugandan man and his sister died leaving children who are cared for by their aunt but they are all very short of food and medicine money.
So hey - I thought if I could persuade some people to give one pound each it would add up to some malaria medicine, which I suppose is one dollar, oh bugger, I don't know how it works in foreign. Oh well. Seeing as Uganda was mentioned and on my mind I thought I'd post it!

http://www.margaretskids.org.uk/

[sabotabby]

Uganda is trying to pass a bill that makes homosexuality punishable by death. It's the fault of American fundies, of course.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Oh fuck - yes, I heard about that of course. My friend said she felt it was prevented by Western culture-imposing, which made me a bit miffed, as surely, well, personally I think many "cultural" things are evil shite, that being one of them. Anyway, as many people here pointed out in newspapers and all, the derangedly bigoted form of Christianity seen in much of Africa now was imported by British missionaries.
Many of the mental nurses in the mental hospital here are African Christians, and although some of them are very nice and clearly care about the patients, some do come out with stuff about schizophrenics being possessed by devils and about how letting Jesus in will cure all. Not good for paranoid schizophrenics, methinks, all this talk of devils and Jesus. Especially as then the patients start arguing about which of them is in fact Jesus.

Anyway, yes, Uganda, bad, eek. Would love to visit it but find bizarre sexual bigotry horrific.

[sabotabby]

The latter gets points because his goiter has reduced in size over the years, apparently due to divine intervention.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

very well compensated.

[sabotabby]

*looks it up*

Oh dear lord that's a lot of money. Quite the oppressed little guy, isn't he?

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

eeeuwgh - just looked up Glenn Beck. Looks VERY slimy.

[sabotabby]

I find him deeply disturbing.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I had never heard of him and hope never to again. Slimy turdface!

[seanmonster.livejournal.com]

I envy that you live in a place that does not know...him.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Thing is, he's a longstanding American dysfunction as by A Face In The Crowd - the fame/power obsessed huckster who's bullshit is half personal politics half pure contempt for anyone but himself.

Beck's rhetoric is not as "plain folks" as Lonesome Rhodes, but the way he echos it is surprising.

My problem with Network is it supplanted the Rhodes satire with the Holy Fool persona of Howard Beale.

I've noticed media types prefer to cite the latter, in part because it is the more famous of the two, but also because Beale's character evades agency and seems heroically deluded, instead of knowingly shameless.

[sabotabby]

That, and Beale was kind of likable. One felt pity for him.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Are you referring to a particular Beckcident, or is this a general comment?

I look at people like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter and think, these are fairly intelligent educated people... they went to school, they could more or less function in human society and pull down paychecks before they got into politics, wha hoppen they get bit by a Dumb-Spider one night or something?

I think they've just discovered the value, entertainment and financial, of pandering. It brings them attention and money in amounts they couldn't have ever achieved otherwise, if they'd stayed wino junkie DJs and lawyers respectively. In private moments, they must look askance at what they're saying and doing and think that it's a form of harmless and lucrative clowning... unless they get sucked in by their own nonsense, or taken in by simple power-worship as they meet people much richer, more influential, and outwardly more self-assured than themselves.

Meanwhile, I think it's entirely possible that Sarah Palin, while possessed of a certain amount of low animal cunning, really IS as stupid as she looks and sounds.

[sabotabby]

General comment. It stems from reading the BoingBoing commentary on the shooting of that Mexican kid, which had nothing to do with Beck. Only it led to a strange train of thought, which was that most people who comment on BoingBoing are better educated than, say, your average FOX viewer and thus consider themselves more humane and rational, but are apparently not more ethically developed. This is your Democrat demographic—relatively intelligent but secretly sociopathic pieces of shit who don't blink at the cold-blooded murder of a child. And on the other side, you have the Tea Party douchebags who fanboy Beck. And Beck himself is such a caricature that one can't even distinguish between the leaders and the useful idiots on the loony right.

I'd give Canadians more credit, but we elected Harper, after all.

TL;DR: sabotabby remembers every so often how fringe her beliefs are, which is sad when you think that those beliefs amount to "people should be kind to each other and share their shit."

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Oh Good Lord, he's written a novel!

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/tag/Glen-Beck/

[ironed_orchid]

There is already a snarky review of it here (via jonquil)

My favourite part of the review: "The Overton Window is chock-full of characters that don't really do anything, but perhaps the person whose presence is least felt is the editor."

Although the entire "Don't tease the panther" section comes a very close second.

[sabotabby]

One free internet to anyone who obtains an advance reading copy and sends it to me.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

Jon Stewart does a frighteningly good Glenn Beck.

gratuitous icon post

[ladypolitik.livejournal.com]

.

[kellista.livejournal.com]

Probably the highlight of my internet(dot)week was a israeli zionist i know using Glenn Beck to prove her point re: flotilla raid as measured and necessary action. Like, how to express how wacky I think your position is when you've already outwackyed yourself in trying to make it? Despite my bitter nature I took this not a reason for despair but instead an opportunity for epic lulz! Look at those rightwingers go! ...rereading your post i guess this just suggests that i AM completely cynical, though i'd prefer to think this buildup of sideshow absurdity is going to apex and crash.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think the media are doing us a disservice. There are plenty of left wing loons who would be at least as entertaining as Beck, Coulter et al. In my time I have met perfectly sincere people with the following beliefs:

1. That Albania is(was) the only truly socialist country in the world and that its emulation should be the basis of policy

2. That visiting the local supermarket and stuffing one's self with cheese until arrested was a viable form of political action.

3. That all groups protesting discrimination or oppression against e.g. people of colour, women or gays were counter revolutionaries diverting attention from the class struggle.

4. That fluoridation of water was a capitalist plot.

5. That East Germany was a workers' paradise.

Any one of these would have made a splendid TV pundit, especially the guy with the cheese.

[sabotabby]

I have met all of these characters! Though in fairness, I'm pretty sure the Albania people were anarchists having a lark, and the fluoride people are equally split on the left-right axes. #3 is Will Shitterly.

I would actually subscribe to cable TV if there were shows with Titoists debating the cheese-as-political-action people. My token Stalinist friend Uncle Joe is on some sort of live video chat that I think might be similar to what I'm picturing, and I've been meaning to check it out for precisely that reason.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The pro-Albanians were actually the CPB (M-L). Maoists who rejected Chinese revisionism.

#3 was the RCL (aka Militant tendency), especially Ted Grant.

[sabotabby]

The pro-Albanians were actually the CPB (M-L). Maoists who rejected Chinese revisionism.

Oh, I know. There was a fairly significant American Maoist group that fit that description too, if I recall correctly. I forget which one.