From Clive Crook:
Doubtless it marks me out as a member of the uncomprehending godless elite, but I find the popularity of Glenn Beck very hard to understand. Sarah Palin's popularity, I think I do understand. However much of an illusion it may be -- all politicians deal in illusions -- she projects an appealing, proud, self-sufficient ordinariness that makes her a credible spokesman for many Americans. Beck sets himself up not as a spokesman so much as an inspirational teacher and guide, blackboard and all. There he stands, with the answer to everything, gravely propounding his theories of life, the universe and everything that surrounds it. Wrapped up in his own psychodrama, his self-regard seems limitless.
He strikes me as a huckster drunk on his own pitch, a true believer in his own cult, ready to hurtle off the rails at any moment -- and all of this seems obvious. Yet he, not Palin, was very much the star of the rally in DC on Saturday. They love the guy.
And so many of them. It is a sign of something I suppose that the National Park Service no longer does head-counts for events like this. (They were accused of deliberately understating the turn-out for the Million Man March in 1995. No doubt they would have been accused of bigotry if they had tendered a disrespectfully large number for Beck's event.) Reports cautiously said tens of thousands. It looked like 250,000. A huge area of the Mall was packed.
As I say, I find Beck a tragi-comic figure. And as an atheist (I didn't deny being godless) I do not thrill when a speaker says, "America today begins to turn back to God".
Commenter Sajwert responds:
The minute anyone says "God, flag, and Founding Fathers" I begin to get nausea. I know what they are going to spout before they finish their spiel. What is that thing Sinclair Lewis is supposed to have said: Facism will come wrapped in a flag and carring a cross.
Economist Paul Krugman writing not about Beck but about politics and the economy nonetheless seems to be alluding to Beck (or Beckishness, or Beckitudes) when he writes:
...The important thing is that all signs are that the next few years will be a combination of economic stagnation and political witch-hunt.
This is going to be almost inconceivably ugly.
Blogger Steve Benen points to the appearance of an uneasy tension within the Tea Party that yesterday's religious jollities may exacerbate:
The Tea Partiers' agenda has always been rather fluid, but at a minimum, their priorities have tended to emphasize secular issues like taxes, debt, entitlements, and health care reform. These activists not only showed less of an interest in religious issues, in many instances, they deliberately ignored them. Indeed, for over a year, the theocratic elements of the conservative movement were openly disgusted by the shift in focus.
"There's a libertarian streak in the tea party movement that concerns me as a cultural conservative," the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer said in March. "The tea party movement needs to insist that candidates believe in the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage."
Yesterday didn't tell us much in the way of substance, but the rally certainly wasn't about taxes and the deficit. The question then becomes whether far-right activists are comfortable with being footsoldiers in Glenn Beck's army, bringing America to Glenn Beck's vision of God.
Also at Political Animal is an interesting survey of how many (souls) attended the rally. I'd heard something along the lines of 300,000, a number traveling around the mainstream media.
But apparently AirPhoto (they take the picture, actually count the actual heads ... fun!) "gave its estimate a margin of error of 9,000, meaning between 78,000 and 96,000 people attended the rally. The photos used to make the estimate were taken at noon Saturday, which is when the company estimated was the rally's high point."
Beck claims 500,000. Again, over in Tea Party land, the distance between fantasy and reality is amazing. Makes you want ask all over again, "What's the matter with Kansas?"
