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Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
October 2010
On Sale: October 5, 2010
272 pages
ISBN: 0385533888
EAN: 9780385533881
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank takes a fair and
balanced look at the unsettling rise of the silly Fox News
host Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that “the tree of Liberty
must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” In America
in 2010, Glenn Beck provides the very refreshment Jefferson
had in mind: Whether he’s the patriot or the tyrant, he’s
definitely full of manure. The wildly popular Fox News host with three million daily
viewers perfectly captures the vitriol of our time and the
fact-free state of our political culture. The secret to his
success is his willingness to traffic in the fringe
conspiracies and Internet hearsay that others wouldn’t touch
with a ten-foot pole: death panels, government health
insurance for dogs, FEMA concentration camps, an Obama
security force like Hitler’s SS. But Beck, who is, according to a recent Gallup poll, admired
by more Americans than the Pope, has nothing in his
background that identifies him as an ideologue, giving rise
to the speculation that his right-wing shtick is just
that—the act of a brilliant showman, known for both his
over-the-top daily outrages and for weeping on the air. Milbank describes, with lacerating wit, just how the former
shock jock without a college degree has managed to become
the most recognizable leader of antigovernment conservatives
and exposes him as the guy who is single-handedly giving
patriotism a bad name.
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