It's a nose pincher, but you can get through it without actually tossing your cookies. The New York Times magazine has posted a profile of Glenn Beck. A gloss:
He has the grandiosity of an alcoholic.
“I think what the country is going through right now is, in a way, what I went through with my alcoholism,” he told me. “You can either live or die. You have a choice.”
He doesn't quite stuff socks down his pants but if some tea partyers win some races, I wouldn't be surprised if he announced, "Mission accomplished!" But wait, he's not interested in the tea party.
He showed little interest in the results from primary elections held the day before — upsets in Delaware and New York for Tea Party candidates whose followers often invoke Beck and Palin as spiritual leaders and even promote them as a prospective presidential ticket in 2012. “Not involved with the Tea Party,” Beck told me, shrugging.
Oh. Instead, he says, he's a "principles-and-values guy." And, by golly, he has a handle on reality.
Communists in the White House are bent on “fundamentally transforming” the country; progressives speak of putting “the common good” before the individual, which “is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany” ...
Beck -- it's hard to see him as anything but an alcoholic. The symptoms are all there and the real nose-pincher is his self-absorption.
There is something feminine about Beck — the soft features, the crying on the air, the reflexive vulnerability.
"Don't hurt me and don't get mad at me if I hurt you. I deserve special consideration at all times." Familiar territory for the spoiled boy.
Beck is constantly admitting his weaknesses and failures, which he wields as both a crutch and a shield.
Much more of this and I'll have to put the article down. The size of the man's ego leaves one stifled, panting for fresh air.
He is acutely conscious of his personal safety. He feels targeted. Security guards trail him on the street. He wears bulletproof vests at public events. He wanted to build a six-foot barrier around his estate in New Canaan, Conn., running him afoul of local zoning ordinances.
And:
...He never seems far from the precipice of something. It is all precarious.
Hard to take much more of this and we're only on page 3 of 10. Let's slip through the bio... Wait, here's an insight: Reality isn't a big deal for Beck, it's having a story.
His characteristic chalkboard lends his show an air of retro-professorial authority, despite the fact that Beck did not attend college and says that before Sept. 11, 2001, “I didn’t know my butt from my elbow.” He recommends books. He recently started “Glenn Beck University,” a special collection of “classes” on GlennBeck.com to go with Beck’s daily tutorials. Pat Gray said Beck was “America’s history professor.”
“Beck offers a story about the American past for people who are feeling right now very angry and alienated,” says David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and editor of the conservative Web site Frum Forum. “It is different enough from the usual story in that he makes them feel like they’ve got access to secret knowledge.”
This is so American. We all have our own versions and we're all absolutely right! I'm okay, you're okay! There's money to be made off our certainties!
Beck often speaks of — and is teased about — his “bunker,” where he will retreat after the social fabric rends and the economic system collapses. Some of his most devoted advertisers include companies that could thrive in a period of total collapse — makers of emergency power generators, for instance, or “survival seeds” (allowing citizens to grow their own food).
I asked Beck if he actually had a bunker. No, he said, there is no bunker. He does keep a great deal of food in reserve, although he says that predates his fear that the world would melt down.
I'm sorry, but I'm seeing Glenn Beck less as a person than as a collection of symptoms.
He sleeps little: three, maybe five hours a night if he is lucky, Beck told me. His Mormonism forbids coffee, but he consuumes a lot of Diet Coke and chocolate.
That could be a big part of the Beck's problem.
For Fox News, Beck is the problem. Fox News' is worried about its "legitimacy."
When I mentioned Beck’s name to several Fox reporters, personalities and staff members, it reliably elicited either a sigh or an eye roll. Several Fox News journalists have complained that Beck’s antics are embarrassing Fox, that his inflammatory rhetoric makes it difficult for the network to present itself as a legitimate news outlet.
Page 9. Almost over. Chris Wallace asks a good question.
No one seems to quite know what to make of Beck these days. On “Fox News Sunday” the day after the “Restoring Honor” gathering, Chris Wallace asked him, “What are you?”
I could answer Wallace's question. But onward and upward. Page 10.
He is fragile, on the edge. There is no template for him or for where he is headed. “I have not prepared my whole life to be here,” Beck told me from his plush couch, his face turning bright pink. “I prepared my whole life to be in a back alley.” I expected him to cry, but he did not.
