Glenn Beck's Stategery

As I took quite a break from blogging between '08 and '10, I recently realized I had yet to blog about Glenn Beck of Fox News.

Now, I've never been a fan of Fox News, from Sean Hannity to Bill O'Reilly to Brit Hume to the morning crew and beyond (Shepard Smith being the lone exception), but Glenn Beck is another beast entirely. While Hannity and O'Reilly make me shake my head at their angry rhetoric and heavy slant, Beck simultaneously frightens me and makes me laugh.

I laugh at the man and his show because the majority of what he says is so outlandish and ridiculous, his words and actions come across to me as over-the-top comedy more than anything. However, the fact that so many people listen to this guy and take his words seriously, that frightens me a bit.

Beck is quite a fan of the chalkboard and using the chalkboard to connect the dots of people and events to form a conspiracy. He's drawn links between different Democrats and the likes of Adolf Hitler, Stalin, etc. There are times when there are so many different lines drawn on the chalkboard, connecting one person and event to another, it really appears to be the final product of a child whom just connected the dots in a book. I don't even know how he does it. I have a theory of my own on the matter, though.

Every morning, Glenn Beck picks out anywhere from 3 to 6 things to connect from a random set of pieces of paper in a bowl. After he picks out these 3 to 6 names, places, events, political parties, ideologies, etc., he then gets to work. It doesn't matter if he draws: Stalin, Obama and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or cornfields, Harry Reid and thunderstorms or even Nancy Pelosi, a firetruck and gravity. He will find a way to connect those dots and convince his audience that the Democrats are out to get them!

This is why most or all of conspiracy theories don't work to a T. There may be components of some theories that may hold some potential validity, but for a full conspiracy to work, every event, every connection made within the conspiracy has to be valid in order for the theory to work. This is nearly impossible. Mathematically speaking, it may not be impossible, but more than likely, next to impossible. So, when Beck tries to link three to six (or so) different people and events to one another, he may have a point with regard to one link, but for him to draw multiple links as he tends to do results in an utterly ridiculous theory. This is why I have to laugh at his rhetoric sometimes. His theories are so off-the-wall preposterous, my immediate reaction is that of laughter. Unfortunately, there are many whom don't laugh when Beck speaks and actually believe his every word. How anyone could believe this man's every word is beyond me. Perhaps he has a history of distributing spiked kool-aid to people and through this, is able to brainwash his supporters. In any case, I really hope people stop believing this clown and he winds up being just a phase. Even for how slanted Fox News is to begin with, Glenn Beck brings them to a whole new level partisanship and ridiculousness.