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1. Can those liberals who are still defending ACORN please agree to the same proposition?

   Wait, what? What does ACORN have to do with Glenn Beck?

   Can you expand the parity you’re trying to establish, here? Glenn Beck is a loudmouth who lies to gratify his own prominence. ACORN is a volunteer organization that has done much to help and advocate on behalf of the poor, and also happens to contain 3 (out of hundreds) employees who were caught being stupid on tape by a conservative gonzo.

   — Chet · Sep 28, 06:13 AM · #

2. ACORN is a volunteer organization that has done much to help and advocate on behalf of the poor, and also happens to contain 3 (out of hundreds) employees who were caught being stupid on tape by a conservative gonzo.

   there’s something called wikipedia. look into it. it will lead you to sources which point out that ACORN is a highly problematic organization which lots of evidence of corruption and self-dealing on the part of the rathke family.

   — razib · Sep 28, 08:10 AM · #

3. Reading the various defenses and critiques of Glen Beck, I find myself remembering the SCOTUS decision in the 2000 Presidential Election. Being well indoctrinated in the mythos of our Great Nation, I had a very romantic view of The Court, or at least until the moment their decision came down I did.

   — Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 11:24 AM · #

4. Because I think you are a principled person, I read closely and pay attention to what you write about Beck, hoping to find something that explains how I can see something in Beck that you obviously can’t see. I see an imperfect human being who overcame personal problems and is doing his best now to make up for it — I see an entertainer/ political commentator who uses edgy humor and sensationalism to get his point across — I see an autodicact who has done a lot of work in an attempt to search for what is true rather than what the political class offers as truth — I see a man whose thinking changes as new information is gathered — a man who is not beholden to a politcal party, but what he thinks is right individually and for his country — I see a man who allows emotion to overcome reason at times, but a man who is willing to admit when he has gone too far — I see a man who so passionately hates the progressive agenda that he struggles with this passion in order to be fair to those who aren’t progressives but seem to misunderstand its danger — I see a man who is forced to defend himself because he is being attacked on all fronts, and being put in this position has to be difficult for anyone, and it can cause a little paranoia, but is it really paranoia when people are really out to get you?

   If you could give me some specific horrible things that Beck has done, after changing his life, and not just the problems you have with style and tactics — his wild and wacky style is part of who he is, so I can’t buy that as an ethical problem. Just give me one smoking gun where beck has intentionally done something unethical for personal gain that makes him a hypocrit and a liar — just one, and I will begin to see your side — otherwise it’s all just a disagreement based on some idea of proper behavior you have that I don’t buy.

   — mike farmer · Sep 28, 11:31 AM · #

5. In addition — I can’t speak for the blogosphere, but my defense of Beck as a valuable voice against progressivism is not based on what’s good for conservatives, but on the fact that he effectively portrays how the progressive agenda is detrimental to individual rights, morality and the free market. Ed’s problem is not that he’s no good for the left, it’s that he’s defending what can’t be defended by reason. A lot of this boils down to the ideas we choose. I think the libertarian ideas are closer to what creates human flourishing, while the progressive ideas are antithetical to human flourishing. I’m not too caught up in the argument about style — that’s subjective — but I am concerned about substance, and I think the substance argument is working against the progressives. This is why many people can criticize Beck’s style, but the basic libertarian substance of his arguments are solid. I would much rather read your take on the basic issues at stake, rather than what you think about Beck, but it’s your blog, your choice.

   — mike farmer · Sep 28, 11:59 AM · #

6. Conor:

   Just letting you know I’m here, reading your hateful screed, and reminding you and the rest of the commenters here of your past dishonesty with regard to Glenn Beck and David Horowitz.

   You are so wise to make the distinction between characterizing your opponents as evil rather than merely so awful.

   And I second Mike Farmer’s request for some specific horrible things that Beck has done, after changing his life, and not just the problems you have with style and tactics.

   Care to give an example of Beck being as over the top as Ed Schultz, while at the same time being as wrong as Ed Schultz?

   — jd · Sep 28, 12:20 PM · #

7. Conor:

   Guess what? I just followed your links to supposed dissing of Glenn Beck by Levin and Limbaugh. Levin disses Beck big-time (though why you would link to someone you hate so much is odd) but Rush doesn’t. Rush Limbaugh has not “turned” on Glenn Beck. Once again, your desire to make a point has inspired misrepresentation.

   — jd · Sep 28, 12:37 PM · #

8. If establishment conservative journalists like Conor are embarrassed by Beck, then they ought really to be embarrassed by themselves, because their failure to scrutinize the left in general and Barack Obama in particular is what’s given Beck a soapbox from which to speak. Everyone knows that Beck is a kook and a crank. But it’s a measure of how p*ss-poor a job that journalists both left and right have done done in examining Obama and the left that people are willing nonetheless to hear Beck out. They are willing to hear Beck out because he has some important things to say that no one else will, for fear of being labelled “racist” or whatever the fear. Those important things that Beck has to say have to do with Obama’s already long and ever-growing list of radical affiliations and the radical intentions for the country that those affiliations clearly show. If we had a fully functioning fourth estate in this country — either on the left or on the right — these radical affiliations and radical intentions would have been aired out years ago, and not left to a kooky and cranky former disc jockey to expose. So it’s the establishment membership of that dysfunctional, that incompetent, that incredible fourth estate who ought to be ashamed, much more than Glenn Beck.

   — TRB · Sep 28, 01:07 PM · #

9. If we had a fully functioning fourth estate in this country — either on the left or on the right — these radical affiliations and radical intentions would have been aired out years ago, and not left to a kooky and cranky former disc jockey to expose.

   Ironically, that’s one of Beck’s favorite lines. He constantly prefaces his rants with “I’m just a former alcoholic disc jockey” and then says something like, “why doesn’t the mainstream press see any of this stuff?”

   — jd · Sep 28, 01:27 PM · #

10. The problem, razib, is that the dedication to eradication of liberal institutions en masse by certain strata of the conservative machine makes it difficult to know when to take criticism of any particular liberal institutions as legitimate. The oppositional, “anti-left before pro-anything” nature of movement conservatism means it’s all going to come under equal fire, no matter what; it’s difficult to sort the veracity of any particular charge under such a mindless, aimless barrage.

    I’m willing to let go of ACORN as presently constituted. But there has to be a replacement, because it has fulfilled, to one degree or the other, a rare and important role in American politics, an advocacy group for the truly powerless. There simply are very, very few organizations that help people who don’t have the privilege of economic power in this country, and we need such organizations. For example, to oppose the documented and inarguable Republican strategy, implement for over a decade now, of working tirelessly to remove legitimate black votes from the rolls. We need an ACORN replacement that is less corrupt but has its focus on giving voice to the least powerful, moneyed or connected.

    — Freddie · Sep 28, 01:34 PM · #

11. Following up on jd, I’m guessing that a lot of Beck’s paranoia comes from being gobsmacked — along with millions and millions of others — that the fourth estate still refuses for the most part to scrutinize Obama, that the fourth estate still refuses even to question Obama at all. ACORN, Ayers, Blagojevich, Burris, Dohrn, Holdren, Jennings, Emil Jones, Van Jones, Khalidi, Meeks, Palmer, Pfleger, Rezko, Wright — none of it ever seems to ring any bells of alarm at all among the mainstream press. Which leaves people gasping for air and grasping at straws like Glenn Beck, who — however much of a kook and a crank he may be — is much less frightening in what he says than the mainstream press is frightening in what it refuses to ask or to acknowledge.

    — TRB · Sep 28, 01:53 PM · #

12. Conor,

    exactly right.

    jd/Mike Farmer:

    How about this? This is pretty odious, too.

    — rob · Sep 28, 01:55 PM · #

13. What’s alarming in all of this is how actual policy discussions are completely irrelevant— the question is just, “but is it good for our team?”

    It’s much more emotionally satisfying to imagine oneself “resisting the liberal/conservative agenda” that to set out intelligently what we support and oppose. When he claimed that the bailout was necessary under Bush, whereas he now claims that it is a travesty, what led him to these conclusions? Should the highest tax rate be at 36 percent, or 39 percent, or some other number? Why do we think that?

    Beck doesn’t know anything about anything. But “he has the right enemies,” and that’s enough, if your political allegiance is based on tribal ties.

    — the commentariat you wish you had · Sep 28, 02:26 PM · #

14. Farmer and jd want to know what bad things Beck has done since he “changed his life.” Interesting that that they are so credulous about Beck’s redemption. I have a pretty good feeling that in cases of jailhouse conversions, they’re big skeptics. In those cases, they recognize charlatanism. In Beck’s case, because he’s on board with their politics, they buy into his salvation.

    — turnbuckle · Sep 28, 02:30 PM · #

15. “If establishment conservative journalists like Conor are embarrassed by Beck, then they ought really to be embarrassed by themselves, because their failure to scrutinize the left in general and Barack Obama in particular is what’s given Beck a soapbox from which to speak.”

    This is bullshit.

    Glenn Beck seldom if ever breaks new information — he is merely the most visible, and occasionally the only, guy to air it on television. That is a failure of television journalism, but it isn’t a failure of those of us who use the written word. Find me a major Glenn Beck story that wasn’t researched and broken on the blogs or in print publications first.

    — Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 28, 02:55 PM · #

16. “Following up on jd, I’m guessing that a lot of Beck’s paranoia comes from being gobsmacked — along with millions and millions of others — that the fourth estate still refuses for the most part to scrutinize Obama, that the fourth estate still refuses even to question Obama at all. ACORN, Ayers, Blagojevich, Burris, Dohrn, Holdren, Jennings, Emil Jones, Van Jones, Khalidi, Meeks, Palmer, Pfleger, Rezko, Wright”

    Uh, all those questions HAVE been scrutinized. They simply haven’t been gone over and over and over and over and over and become fetishized in a manner that would make you happy. It’s pretty much the same as the media virtually never referencing the fact that Laura Bush once killed a guy or that George W. Bush spent a great deal of his life before 40 drunk off his ass.

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 28, 02:59 PM · #

17. I don’t want to defend Beck’s histrionics, but Conor’s attacks on Beck’s defenders are pretty disingenuous. Here is Goldberg in full, for example.

    Yes, I know some of my friends on the Right wring their hands about Glenn Beck. I don’t so much. Not only am I grateful for his support of my book, I like the guy personally. Moreover, while he can be bombastic and over the top rhetorically (and we don’t always see eye-to-eye), what makes his populism palatable to me (I’m not a big fan of populism) is that he’s fundamentally a libertarian populist. He’s not clamoring for the government to do more, he’s clamoring for the government to do less. And that’s the safest kind of populism there is. Meanwhile, he’s been absolutely fearless in going after stories and trends that even the rest of the conservative media have ignored. But we can have that conversation another time.

    It’s a defense, but not exactly an enthusiastic one. Further, the defense is not based on Goldberg liking libertarian populism (“he happens to hold or advance some of the same political tenets as you do”), but on Goldberg finding libertarian populism more “palatable” than populism generally, which he is “not a big fan of.” It’s certainly not because Goldberg and Beck are simpatico on the question of libertarian populism, as Conor paints it.

    Conor may be right when he says that Beck uses an unacceptable degree of misrepresentation to tar his opponents, but it’s distracting when the person making that argument uses much the same technique.

    — Blar · Sep 28, 03:04 PM · #

18. I’m not really interesting in defending Beck, but I do want to make two observations.

    1) Conor – why so much interest in attacking ranting conservatives? Ed Schultz or Michael Moore seem to be just as nuts as Beck and Levin and Libmaugh, and Olberman probably comes close. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to split your criticism to cover both sides?

    2) As to whether Beck helps or hurts conservatism. That’s a tough empirical question. I agree that he crosses way over the line, so if I had my druthers, we wouldn’t have him on our team. But if your specific question is whether he helps conservatism, well, it arguably helps to have a motivated base, even if we intellectuals aren’t comfortable with what motivates them. IMHO, it helps Jesse Jackson or Bill Clinton to be the more moderate outlet of concerns that are voiced intemperately by Farrakan and Sharpton.

    Whether “conservatism” loses more from the people who are turned off by Beck or gains more from the people who are energized by him is a question that requires first that you identify conservatism’s goals, then that you do some empirical analysis. Both of those elements are hard, so I will only say that the question is harder to answer than you might think.

    — J Mann · Sep 28, 03:08 PM · #

19. Glenn Beck seldom if ever breaks new information — he is merely the most visible, and occasionally the only, guy to air it on television. That is a failure of television journalism, but it isn’t a failure of those of us who use the written word. Find me a major Glenn Beck story that wasn’t researched and broken on the blogs or in print publications first.

    Translation: Beck doesn’t break stories, but he does disseminate them to the millions of Americans who don’t read blogs or papers but do watch cable news. If this was meant to convince us that Beck is less invaluable that his supporters think, it doesn’t quite do the job.

    Also, grouping blogs and print publications like that is remarkable sleight of hand. We all know by now that the ACORN-prostitution sting, Van Jones, and the NEA scandal were stories that likely would have languished in the blogosphere had Beck not helped make them national news. Print media published these stories only after they were Beck stories (This is also responsive to MB’s comment).

    — Blar · Sep 28, 03:12 PM · #

20. Coincidentally I was reading Orwell’s “Homage to Catelonia” (ironically one of the National Review’s “top 10 best nonfiction books of the century”) last night (it was mentioned in a review I saw here on TAS) and I was struck by this passage and it relevance to today’s conservative politics:

    To set this up, Orwell is writing about the Spanish Civil War and the stuggle for power between the POUM, a local marxist organization, and the PSUC, which was the run by the soviets.

    “On the surface the quarell between the Communists (PUSC) and the POUM was one of tactics. The POUM was for immediate revolution, the Communists not. So far so good; there was much to be said on both sides. Further, the Communists contended that the POUM propoganda divided and weakedn the Governent forces and thus endagered the war; again, though finally I do not agree, a good case could be made out for this. But here the peculiarity of the Communist tactics came in. Tenetively at first, then more loudly, they begain to assert that the POUM was splitting the Government forces not by bad judgement but deliberate design. The POUM was declared to be no more than a gang of diguised Fascists, in the pay of Franco and Hitler…. This implied that scores of thousands of working class people, including eight or ten thousand soldiers who were freezing in the front-line trenches and hundreds of foreigners who had come to Spain to fight Fascism, often sacrificing thier livelyhoods nad nationalities by doing so, were simply traitors in the pay of the enemy. And this story was spread all over Spain by means of posters, etc, and repeated over and over in the COmmunist and pro-Communist press of the whole world….

    This then, was what they were saying about us: we were Trotskysist, Fascists, traitors, murderes, cowards, spies, and so forth. I admit it was not pleasant,e specially when one thought of some fo the people who were responsible for it. It was not a nice thing to see a Spanish boy of fifteen carried down the line on a stretcher, with a dazed white face looking out from among the blankest and think of the sleek persons in London and Paris whoa re writing pamphlets to prove that this boy is a Fascist in disguise.”

    THe typical Communist belief that petty scruples over things like honesty and fairness were nothing when compared to the importance of achiving the overarching goal, was adopted by the mainstream conservative movement years ago. It only appears so grotesque now because the democrats, and Obama in particular, are in power and propoganda is the only weapon they have at this point. the thing is, propoganda works to some extent. Fox is to a frighteningly large degree the equivilent to one of those communist controled newpapers in europe. It has a large and faithful audience.

    — cw · Sep 28, 03:19 PM · #

21. Ed Schultz or Michael Moore seem to be just as nuts as Beck and Levin and Libmaugh, and Olberman probably comes close. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to split your criticism to cover both sides?

    Because Ed Schultz and Michael Moore have nothing close to the influence on the Democratic party policy apparatus, or on liberal practical philosophy, that Limbaugh and back have on the analogs on the right.

    — Freddie · Sep 28, 03:31 PM · #

22. Conor,

    When I say that journalists — liberal and conservative alike — have failed to scrutinize Obama as closely as they ought to have done, or as closely as Glenn Beck has done, that’s not the same thing (as you well know) as saying that Glenn Beck himself has broken any stories on Obama. I never said or implied that he had done that. What he has done, however, unlike most of the mainstream, mass-market media, is to acknowledge the many, many radical affiliations of Obama’s that have come to light, and to raise much-needed alarms about what implications those affiliations have for where Obama intends to take the country. I don’t see how the alarm that Beck is raising now about Obama’s radical and sometimes militant and violent friends is any different from the also-much-needed alarm that was raised about the neo-cons, the Straussians, et al, during the Bush years. Well, one way it’s different is that the mainstream, mass-market media will go to any length to silence any bells of alarm being raised about Obama on this sort of count, whereas it went to any length to amplify any such similar bells of alarm that were raised about Bush. Excuse me for failing to see how the take-away message from the Bush years is that dissent not only is not patriotic, but is also “racist,” and therefore we should always taken Presidents and their administrations exactly at their word, especially when they are proposing drastic and sweeping policy changes, and especially when they are surrounded by radicals, ideologues, militants, and even terrorists.

    — TRB · Sep 28, 03:34 PM · #

23. “Meanwhile, he’s been absolutely fearless in going after stories and trends that even the rest of the conservative media have ignored.”

    The problem is that those stories probably should have been ignored, or at least they didn’t deserve the attention that Beck brought to them. Take ACORN for example. It’s a perfectly legitimate scandal and deserves some of the media spotlight, but how much importance should corruption at a community organizing group be given compared to the scandals involving Blackwater or Wall Street?

    ACORN has been in operation for 38 years, yet I can’t recall any conservative ever complaining about it before this most recent election cycle. If ACORN is really such a monumental threat to the public, how did we survive so long in ignorance and why was the conservative media so stupid or lazy as to not uncover this awful peril before now?

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 28, 03:41 PM · #

24. I’ll second that, MBunge. What if the reason these stories are being “ignored” is that they’re simply not that big a deal to most Americans. I didn’t know ACORN existed two years ago. Obama hired Van Jones. Who cares? He wasn’t hired to conduct an investigation into the truth of the 9/11 attacks. And to say that the Bill Ayres and Jeremiah Wright connections weren’t properly scrutinized is absurd.

    The Beck/Limbaugh/Levin brand of politics requires regularly questioning the motives of its ideological opponents. And none of the pro-Beck commenters challenge this premise. In fact, they reinforce it. I appreciate Conor’s persistence in making this point. Because I too see it as the biggest hurdle to effective political discourse. I see no difference between Beck’s saying “Obama hates white culture” and Jimmy Carter saying “people hate Obama because they’re racists.”

    — GC from Virginia · Sep 28, 03:56 PM · #

25. I fail to see the logic whereby an extremely powerful, aggressive, ambitious, and partisan President surrounded by radicals, ideologues, militants, and even terrorists is no big deal and not worth even a mention in brief, but a former disc jockey with a cable-tv talk-show that airs during 5:00 rush our is the biggest deal of all, and the biggest threat to truth, justice, and the American way since Lex Luthor tried to blow up California, or maybe since the Serpent sidled up to Adam and Eve.

    — TRB · Sep 28, 04:07 PM · #

26. Of course you do…

    You also fail to see that describing the Obama as “an extremely powerful, aggressive, ambitious, and partisan President surrounded by radicals, ideologues, militants, and even terrorists” is not a factual statement, but an extreme caricature embraced by a narrow segment of the population.

    And you’re taking another big step in equating “I don’t like Beck, I don’t think he’s good for conservatives” with “the biggest threat to truth, justice, and the American way.”

    — GC from Virginia · Sep 28, 04:19 PM · #

27. GC,

    That Obama is powerful, aggressive, ambitious, and partisan, and that he is surrounded by radicals, ideologues, militants, and even terrorists is simple, irrefutable fact — or at least fact “refutable” only by a Humpty-Dumpty-style redefinition of the plain and commonly-understood sense of the words powerful, aggressive, ambitious, partisan, radical, ideologue, militant, and terrorist. The reason most of the mainstream, mass-market media won’t acknowledge these facts is precisely because they can’t “refute” them by any means but Humpty-Dumpty-style redefinition of terms. Most of the mainstream, mass-market media prefer to keep mum, prefer to play possum, prefer to tell Glenn Beck to shut up, where Obama is concerned, rather than doing their jobs. Any wonder then that the mainstream media’s market is diminishing in mass with each and every passing day?

    — TRB · Sep 28, 04:30 PM · #

28. Take ACORN for example. It’s a perfectly legitimate scandal and deserves some of the media spotlight, but how much importance should corruption at a community organizing group be given compared to the scandals involving Blackwater or Wall Street?

    It was receiving zero MSM coverage before Beck moved it to a national audience. I don’t recall a similar dearth of coverage on Blackwater or Wall Street scandals (are you talking Enron, or the more recent economic troubles? Either way, I think the media was paying attention).

    What if the reason these stories are being “ignored” is that they’re simply not that big a deal to most Americans.

    Once these stories broke they were a big deal, which is why it’s so galling that it took Beck to break them in the first place.

    By the way, I like this post, which is critical of Beck and the like on the grounds of his style, not on the grounds that his work is irrelevant. I’m open to the former, but the latter is a much tougher case.

    — Blar · Sep 28, 04:35 PM · #

29. “That Obama is powerful, aggressive, ambitious, and partisan, and that he is surrounded by radicals, ideologues, militants, and even terrorists is simple, irrefutable fact — or at least fact “refutable” only by a Humpty-Dumpty-style redefinition of the plain and commonly-understood sense of the words powerful, aggressive, ambitious, partisan, radical, ideologue, militant, and terrorist.”

    You are either a propogandist or sucessfully propogandized. Neither is a good thing to be.

    — cw · Sep 28, 04:45 PM · #

30. Yeah, he’s really making my point for me….

    — GC from Virginia · Sep 28, 04:51 PM · #

31. “Take ACORN for example. It’s a perfectly legitimate scandal and deserves some of the media spotlight, but how much importance should corruption at a community organizing group be given compared to the scandals involving Blackwater or Wall Street?

    It was receiving zero MSM coverage before Beck moved it to a national audience.”

    The question, though, is does it really deserve a lot of national attention? ACORN is a community organizing group that works with poor people. That there’s some corruption going on is certainly news, but it hardly seems like a story of such earthshaking importance that it needs the be the main thing a TV news guy talks about for weeks on end. Nor does it seem like it needs to be a major issue in our public discourse.

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 28, 04:55 PM · #

32. I’m sort of amazed that a lot of people seem to think that a good way to attack Glen Beck is to claim that the Acorn scandal wasn’t that big a deal, or that the scandal is mitigated by the good work Acorn does.

    — Blar · Sep 28, 05:09 PM · #

33. “By the way, I like this post, which is critical of Beck and the like on the grounds of his style, not on the grounds that his work is irrelevant. I’m open to the former, but the latter is a much tougher case.”

    I don’t think anyone is really arguing for censorship here. I was just challenging the notion that Glenn Beck’s top story must be everyone else’s. I think Beck serves a purpose – but I (like Conor and several posters here) wish his influence were more marginal. In my opinion, the stories he pushes (and his ideology generally) add very little to, and potentially detract much from, the national discussion.

    If the “CO” in ACORN didn’t stand for “Community Organizer” I think very few people would be surprised by or care that it has some corrupt elements. And to the extent it got in the news, I suspect it wouldn’t warrant a 24-hour “ACORN Watch” on the Fox News ticker….

    — GC from Virginia · Sep 28, 05:15 PM · #

34. A few points in response to various commenters:

    1) The ACORN story did not require Glenn Beck to make it to national prominence — in a world without Glenn Beck, it still would’ve received national attention, Fox News still would’ve been touting it, etc. I am not sure why Glenn Beck is given “but for” credit on that story.

    2) TRB writes, “I fail to see the logic whereby an extremely powerful, aggressive, ambitious, and partisan President surrounded by radicals, ideologues, militants, and even terrorists is no big deal and not worth even a mention in brief…”

    Um, every president is extremely powerful, aggressive, ambitious, and partisan. Every president is also surrounded by ideologues — those are the kinds of people who are rewarded by the political spoils system in this country. President Obama’s high level appointments have received coverage commensurate with the high level appointees in other administrations. His lower level appointments have received less attention, but I don’t think they’ve received less attention than the low level staffers of other presidents have faced.

    As for your assertion that President Obama is surrounded by militants and even terrorists — well, that you believe as much is a testament to the misleading effect that media figures like Glenn Beck have. To say that the president is surrounded by these folks implies at least four of them are around him, right? Okay, please name the four terrorists and militants that surround President Obama.

    3) Mike writes, “If ACORN is really such a monumental threat to the public, how did we survive so long in ignorance and why was the conservative media so stupid or lazy as to not uncover this awful peril before now?” That ACORN isn’t “a monumental threat to the public” is irrelevant — it is a corrupt organization that receives taxpayer funding, and that is enough to justify media attention. The conservative media didn’t uncover this story before now because it doesn’t include very many people who do actual reporting. Even if that weren’t true, though, the argument you’re employing would be pretty suspect. There are all sorts of nefarious things that journalists cover after they’ve been going on for many years.

    4) I don’t think I misrepresented Goldberg at all. He puts up with Beck because he is grateful to the man for plugging his book, and because they have overlapping political preferences — that is to say, both of them want to shrink the size of government.

    — Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 28, 05:38 PM · #

35. “I’m sort of amazed that a lot of people seem to think that a good way to attack Glen Beck is to claim that the Acorn scandal wasn’t that big a deal”

    Why is it a big deal? It’s a legitimate scandal and if conservatives want to point and go “Ha! Ha!”, there’s nothing wrong with that. But what, exactly, about this story merits or justifies the immense amount of time and the extremely intense focus Beck has brought to bear on it?

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 28, 05:41 PM · #

36. “Mike writes, “If ACORN is really such a monumental threat to the public, how did we survive so long in ignorance and why was the conservative media so stupid or lazy as to not uncover this awful peril before now?” That ACORN isn’t “a monumental threat to the public” is irrelevant”

    It’s entirely irrelevant as to whether or not the ACORN thing is a scandal and whether it deserved some media attention. It is and it does. But to the extent that Beck is trying to make ACORN the latest subject of a two minutes hate, I think it’s relevent to ask why exactly does this scandal deserve such intense focus.

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 28, 05:47 PM · #

37. Oh, jeez, just disagree with the man and move along — what frigging difference does it make? I am truly perplexed by this obsession with Beck/Limbaugh/Palin — they have points of view — so what? They are no danger to anyone. I hate Bill Maher, but I’m not obsessed with him — I wish all the success that comes his way. I think Jon Stewart is a fucking idiot, but I hardly ever think about him — I hope he’s successful, too — good for all of them — the battleground of ideas, let the games begin.

    — mike farmer · Sep 28, 06:06 PM · #

38. Conor, it is truth time.
    The intellectual old guard of conservatism is either dying off or has left the building.
    MIstah Buckley…he daid….and so are Mistah Kristol and Mistah Safire, just this week.
    The next generational replacement, the “Anti-intellectual” movement is all 40 somethings….Levin, Palin, Beck, Malkin (almost), Rush.
    The GOP is devolving to a white-evangelical-christians-over-40-from-the-south party.
    Becoming a religious party.
    Beck’s mentor is a mormon, btw.
    It is inevitable that older white religious anti-intellectuals colonize the leadership of the GOP.
    It is evolutionary theory of culture in action.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 28, 06:58 PM · #

39. I write

    Ed Schultz or Michael Moore seem to be just as nuts as Beck and Levin and Libmaugh, and Olberman probably comes close. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to split your criticism to cover both sides?

    Because Ed Schultz and Michael Moore have nothing close to the influence on the Democratic party policy apparatus, or on liberal practical philosophy, that Limbaugh and Beck have on the analogs on the right.

    I don’t see how we can test that claim. FWIW, I think you’re wrong. I think there are substantial interest groups in the Dem. party whose interests are congruent with Schultz and Moore, just as there are substantial interest groups in the GOP whose interests are congruent with Limbaugh and Beck.

    IMHO, Schultz, Moore, Limbaugh and Beck are popular because they’re saying what their audiences already want to hear more than they are driving those audiences’ preferences, but again, I don’t know how that’s testable either. I’d be open to suggestions.

    — J Mann · Sep 28, 07:09 PM · #

40. Whoops – that second paragraph was supposed to be introduced with “Freddie responds:”

    — J Mann · Sep 28, 07:10 PM · #

41. Conor,

    William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, John Holdren, Van Jones, and lord knows who else is yet to come to light.

    In any event, are two domestic terrorists, accessories to murder, and probable murderers themselves, a national-socialist eugenicist, and self-professed Maoist not enough for you?

    Granted, of course, that they’re nowhere near as much of a threat to truth, justice, and the American way as a certain chubby-cheeked, crew-cut cable-tv talk-show host who’s on during 5:00 rush.

    PS: Congratulations on your unexpected good sense in at least implicitly conceding that Obama is indeed surrounded by radicals and ideologues.

    Two out of four ain’t good, but it could be worse, and it probably will be, knowing you!

    — TRB · Sep 28, 08:11 PM · #

42. Since when is “the other guy does it too” a valid crit of Conor’s argument?

    On reading Mr. Beck’s defenders, I can’t help but think that their judgment and integrity are being corroded by politics. The ideological battle between conservatives and liberals has become for them the most important struggle in American life — in order to win it, they are willing to defend and count as allies anyone in their insular world who advances the appropriate side in what they regard as a two-sided battle for the country’s soul. The most honest among them are explicit in arguing that their ends justify whatever rhetorical means it takes to achieve them. Even worse, they are using this total political warfare as a litmus test — temperament and political philosophy are insufficient to be a conservative in their minds, because they’ve redefined the term such that it demands loyalty to a political coalition and even the particular tactics it employs.

    This approach wins no converts, no replacements.
    This demonstrates conservativism in the 21st century is an empty purse.
    The demographics you need to attract, youth, college educated, minorities, are repulsed by your standard bearers.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 28, 09:03 PM · #

43. TRB: What position, specifically, do Bill Ayers and Bernadne Dohrn hold in the Obama cabinet?

    — Chet · Sep 28, 09:07 PM · #

44. Conor’s beating the same old drum on his unique beat, (for which I’m in an odd way grateful for—somebody needs to keep the heat on the radio/cable populists, even if its some slighlty unsavory Conor combination of foibles and demons that generates that heat in this case.) But face it, farmer and blar are making way, way more sense.

    Has Beck never apologized for the miscarriage radio stunt? Has anyone ever ASKED him to apologize since he became prominent?..sincerely curious.

    The worst thing here, though, is Conor’s assertion that Levin believes what he says, whereas Rush and Beck do not. Conor apparently thinks he can look into the soul of these guys; he can review their surface words and deeds, and quickly suss out what lies below. And thus, in his estimation, it’s just fine for him to share these insights with his readers in his most authoritative tone. Well…

    Conor, please, spare us that sort of thing. We’re not your buddies in a bar. If this is to be one of your main beats, if you’re really called to hold conservative feet to the fire on this issue, then I say, more journalism, please.

    — Carl Scott · Sep 28, 09:17 PM · #

45. Mike Farmer wrote:

    Oh, jeez, just disagree with the man and move along — what frigging difference does it make? I am truly perplexed by this obsession with Beck/Limbaugh/Palin — they have points of view — so what? They are no danger to anyone. I hate Bill Maher, but I’m not obsessed with him — I wish all the success that comes his way. I think Jon Stewart is a fucking idiot, but I hardly ever think about him — I hope he’s successful, too — good for all of them — the battleground of ideas, let the games begin.

    Conor has been pissed off about people like Palin, Limbaugh, Beck (before that, Joe the Plumber) for one big reason. He thinks they don’t deserve the fame and its accompanying rewards. Only professional journalists should be able to do what they do. He has come close at times to suggesting that journalists and newspapers should be subsidized—they’re that important. And, of course, journalists who go to Columbia are the most important of all. His outrage over Beck is only matched by an equally disproportionate outrage over the waterboarding of three of the most horrible people on earth. I wonder what Conor thinks of partial birth abortion.

    Now he has the gall to suggest that the stories about ACORN and Van Jones would have gone viral even without Beck. What proof does he have of that? The ACORN story was broken by Andrew Breitbart, a guy that Conor also hates. Without Beck, that story would likely have gone nowhere.

    Perhaps he’s too young to remember when Matt Drudge was disdained as much as Beck. He’s probably forgotten that it was Drudge who broke the Lewinsky story when Michael Issikoff refused.

    I think what’s most troubling to me, is Conor’s unwillingness to see the truth about Obama and the people he has surrounded himself with. That’s what all this is about. His outrage over Beck, Limbaugh, Levin disregards the truth of what these guys have said.

    Somehow, Obama has come out of the most corrupt political machine in the country, having been associated with all manner of crooks, radicals, terrorists, Marxists, socialists, and kooks, all the while managing to convince the American people and Conor that his thinking is not at all like theirs. This is weird.

    — jd · Sep 28, 09:18 PM · #

46. Freddie wrote:

    Because Ed Schultz and Michael Moore have nothing close to the influence on the Democratic party policy apparatus, or on liberal practical philosophy, that Limbaugh and Beck have on the analogs on the right.

    It was Michael Moore sitting next to Jimmy Carter at the 2004 Democrat national convention—not Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

    — jd · Sep 28, 09:23 PM · #

47. “William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, John Holdren, Van Jones, and lord knows who else is yet to come to light.

    In any event, are two domestic terrorists, accessories to murder, and probable murderers themselves, a national-socialist eugenicist, and self-professed Maoist not enough for you?”

    Van Jones needed to go for the 9/11 petition, regardless of anything else. But on Ayers, Dohrn and Holdren…why is it only liberals who are held responsible for stuff they did and said 30 and 40 years ago? I’m pretty sure there are an awful lot of 60 year old GOP Congressman from the South who wouldn’t want their statements and behavior 40 years ago on race to define who they are today.

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 28, 09:24 PM · #

48. Somehow, Obama has come out of the most corrupt political machine in the country

    Washington D.C. is actually the most corrupt political machine in the country, but I notice you don’t seem to mind when Republican politicians have entire careers there.

    — Chet · Sep 28, 09:26 PM · #

49. All you Beck defenders are simply heartless. HEARTLESS!!!

    — Kermit the Frog · Sep 28, 09:28 PM · #

50. “Since when is “the other guy does it too” a valid crit of Conor’s argument?”

    This is also a tired argument – many times people are bringing up the obsession with radio talk show hosts on the right while remaining virtually silent regarding the lunacy of the left — it’s not that two wrongs make a right, it’s about the equal acknowledge of all wrongs and putting the serious danger of some wrongs in perspective. At least a lot of people on the right are taking a stand against progressive policies. I’m working on a post for my blog now making a comparison regarding social engineering starting with Hoover (actually before Hoover)leading to the Great Depression and what has been happening in the last decade — it’s chilling.

    If we read back over these posts 15 years from now, we may be embarrassed at spending so much time discussing Beck when the real problems are being ignored. I realize a lot of moderates voted for Obama, so they have an investment to protect, but it might be time to admit it’s not working out and address some serious concerns.

    — mike farmer · Sep 28, 10:27 PM · #

51. I like how Obama has surrounded himself with radicals and terrorists like Robert Gates and Greg Mankiw and Timothy Geitner and Ken Salizar.

    You Obamaphobics are totally retarded. You have been propogandized—which is another word for duped—by guys like Beck and Limbaugh who salute you and your ilk with fond amusment every time they look at their bank statement. The reason Beck et al are bad is becasue the confuse the retards for personal gain. And then the retards vote. They vote for people who pander to/further propogate their misguided beliefs for personal gain. You want to know one big reason we don’t have a rational healthcare system? Becasue there are too many “simple” folk out there so confused they couldn’t recognize their own personal interest if it bit them on the nose. The republican party/conservative movment is basically a racket through which groups of eager dupes are perpetually confused for profit. Unfortunately this country has a large enough segment of dupes to effect policy. Dupes like those ranting so idiodically about Obama above are instrumental in the current degridation of this country.

    — cw · Sep 28, 11:20 PM · #

52. Carl Scott writes: “The worst thing here, though, is Conor’s assertion that Levin believes what he says, whereas Rush and Beck do not. Conor apparently thinks he can look into the soul of these guys; he can review their surface words and deeds, and quickly suss out what lies below. And thus, in his estimation, it’s just fine for him to share these insights with his readers in his most authoritative tone.”

    I confidently assert that Beck and Limbaugh don’t believe what they say because I’ve listened to them enough to hear them 1) utterly contradict themselves by saying things both of which the same person cannot believe; 2) making claims so outlandish that it beggars belief that they regard them as true. (Take Glenn Beck saying that Obama hates white culture, and then being utterly unable to explain what on earth he meant. What do you conclude from that incident?)

    I’ve listened to a lot of Mark Levin, and although I can recall a lot of hyperbole that could be mistaken for number two, I can’t recall ever hearing the genuine article. It’s also kinda funny that Rush Limbaugh accuses Glenn Beck of saying stuff he doesn’t believe.

    JD writes: “Conor has been pissed off about people like Palin, Limbaugh, Beck (before that, Joe the Plumber) for one big reason. He thinks they don’t deserve the fame and its accompanying rewards.”

    Actually I couldn’t care less about their fame or compensation — what bothers me is their pernicious influence on public discourse. If you haven’t figured that out, you haven’t been reading very closely.

    “Now he has the gall to suggest that the stories about ACORN and Van Jones would have gone viral even without Beck. What proof does he have of that?”

    Well, I personally know a lot of journalists who started working on ACORN reactions after Big Government published the story, and before Beck kept hammering it.

    JD also writes of me: “He has come close at times to suggesting that journalists and newspapers should be subsidized—they’re that important. And, of course, journalists who go to Columbia are the most important of all.”

    God, JD, you’re such a maddening mix or ignorance and certainty — and luckily you’re easily proven wrong, seeing as how I’ve explicitly written against government subsidies for journalists, championed citizen journalism projects (even volunteering to work for a couple), and been quite critical of Columbia’s journalism school. I suppose you also think I attended Columbia, which is what you get for believing everything you read on Robert Stacy McCain’s site.

    — Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 28, 11:20 PM · #

53. “Becasue there are too many “simple” folk out there so confused they couldn’t recognize their own personal interest if it bit them on the nose.”

    Yes, it’s obvious you are a solid member of the intellectual elite.

    — mike farmer · Sep 29, 12:24 AM · #

54. “(Take Glenn Beck saying that Obama hates white culture, and then being utterly unable to explain what on earth he meant. What do you conclude from that incident?)”

    What I conclude is that he made a rash statement based on Obama’s years of attending Wright sermons, and Obama’s kneejerk reaction to the Gate’s situation where he obviously assumed fault on the white police officer’s part in the incidence before knowing the details. I think he probably meant it was a subconscious aversion to privileged white culture — Obama has lived in a political and philosophical environment which hasn’t been favorable to white culture — it’s not a stretch to imagine this has affected his value judgements on a subconscious level. It’s certainly affected even white liberals who were indoctrinated with progressive ideology. I know plenty of white liberals who have difficulty thinking objectively when it comes to the generalized topic of white culture. On an individual basis, they know it’s not the same, but when thinking in a group mindset, they have been subconsciously programmed by their education and peer group.

    — mike farmer · Sep 29, 12:36 AM · #

55. Mike,

    If there are any 60 year old (or 40 or 50 or 70 or 80 year old) Republican (or Democratic) Congressmen (or Senators) from the South (or the North or the East or the West) who were domestic terrorists involved in numerous bombings and several deaths, or if any of them called for forced sterilization of large swathes of the population, I also would not want to have the President, or even my local dog-catcher, have anything to do with them at all. There’s a thing called honor, a thing called character, a thing called conscience, a thing called integrity. My current dog-catcher seems to have it. Our current President does not. Shame on him and shame on those who cover for him, shame on those who apologize for him, shame on those who make excuses for him. Shame especially on those who attack those who, whatever their faults, have more honor, more character, more conscience, and more integrity than the President has.

    — TRB · Sep 29, 12:41 AM · #

56. Boy, TRB, it’s really going to blow your mind when you find out that President Obama was in the same room with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this weekend.

    — Chet · Sep 29, 12:53 AM · #

57. Chet,

    Is Ahmadinejad now Obama’s Czar for Jewish Community Affairs? Will he soon be a tenured professor in Chicago? We will he soon serve on the Woods Fund board? Will Conor soon declare him to be “mainstream” and “respectable?” Will Conor soon attack Glenn Beck for suggesting otherwise? Given how things have been going of late, I wouldn’t be surprised.

    — TRB · Sep 29, 01:40 AM · #

58. “If there are any 60 year old (or 40 or 50 or 70 or 80 year old) Republican (or Democratic) Congressmen (or Senators) from the South (or the North or the East or the West) who were domestic terrorists involved in numerous bombings and several deaths, or if any of them called for forced sterilization of large swathes of the population, I also would not want to have the President, or even my local dog-catcher, have anything to do with them at all.”

    So, I can assume you want nothing to do with Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and George W. Bush? Because by the loose standards of logic, evidence and moral culpability you’re promoting, those three would all undeniably qualify as war criminals of a high order.

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 29, 01:53 AM · #

59. “Obama has lived in a political and philosophical environment which hasn’t been favorable to white culture”

    White culture? Seriously, dude. You can’t even make the littlest effort and call it Judeo-Christian culture or European culture? White culture? Really?

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 29, 01:58 AM · #

60. jeebus, the TAS commentariat has gone completely mad.

    /matoko-chan backs slowly out of the room of crazypants while strenuously avoiding eye contact.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 02:16 AM · #

61. Conor wrote:

    I suppose you also think I attended Columbia,

    OK, OK, Berkeley, then…but you’re still pissed at that “awful” Glenn Beck and Joe the Plumber. I think your writing is getting very close to being a pernicious influence on the public discourse.

    M (that’s Mike) Bunge wrote:

    Because by the loose standards of logic, evidence and moral culpability you’re promoting, those three would all undeniably qualify as war criminals of a high order.

    Spent some time with the truthers, too, haven’t you Mike?

    — jd · Sep 29, 02:19 AM · #

62. OK, I got nothin’ useful here. But somebody help me out with this: this is genuinely a point of confusion for me. I accept there’s something profound I miss here. I’m going to free associate here so, sensible folk, don’t read below.

    When I lived in Berkeley my friends would get all frothing at the mouth about Bill O’Reilly. And it was prima facie stupid. I mean, I didn’t have a TV (and that’s not so uncommon there). When I got a TV as I got married, we got rabbit ears for it. We just now got “basic” cable. I mean, this has to be a look-uppable number but, how many Americans pay for cable news? Given eveything we hear about Americans not being much interested in any news? And how many in the “heartland”? And how many people in Berkeley watch Bill O? Why watch the guy just to bitch about something he said to other people who are also bitching?

    This is a skeleton “typical” day for me. Up at 5, maybe 30 min-1hr meditation, feed the pets, make breakfast, at work by 7:30. Home 5-6. Kids in bed by 8 so until then I’m not watching TV (unless Elmo’s in it), I’m with them, or cooking dinner for them, or eating with them, or taking them where they need to go. Maybe reading if they’re busy. I have ‘til 11 of free time. Some days I’m off to the gym (2 hr). Ideally I spend time with my wife: granted we’re married and have kids so often that means we watch Lost or a movie or something (don’t laugh, singles: “Inspector Lynley.”) Not to sound highbrow: I think Joe Millionaire was like the best thing ever. So if I want to read a book I got on average maybe 1.5 hr, 2.5 if I take it out of kid time but if I do that too often my wife will kill me. A lot of time I have work to do at home. Another hour of cleaning dishes and pet cages and vacuuming and gardening or whatever: and hour of chores a day seems about right. I need maybe 1-2 hours to read scientific journals and basically anyone who;s any kind of career professional will have something analogous.

    But people watch a lot of TV. OK, so the point of that boring schedule is it’s different from anyone else’s on this or that particular but it’s not way different, if you work a full time job and bring home a little work, which isn’t uncommon. Certainly if you have a family. You can massage it here or there to pull out some TV. But my concept there is if you pull out a little more TV, then you’re watching Everybody Loves Raymond or Survivor. Or if you’re some fucking nerd you’re watching The Wire or Mad Men, and raving about it to anyone who gives a shit. Or you watch a sport and that’s a lot of time right there! When I go in to talk to people around the water cooler it seems lik that’s what’s going on. I mean, there’s shit I’d like to watch (Dollhouse?). But it’s a pain.

    So right away, my observation is, if you watch Glenn Beck, you are (1) a member of the political commentary class who has to watch Glenn Beck, and/or (probably and) (2) a loser with nothing worth doing, to do. This observation has nothing to do with Beck’s politics. I watched an hour of Rachel Maddow at my parents’ once — they have this nifty fucked-up digital cable that scares me, it’s all menus when you turn it on — because people I like said she was cool. She was dressed up like a jockey having fun with the horserace for Republican party chair, and I thought, God, what kind of loser spends time watching this? I still think that (I saw O’Reilly once in a hotel room. It was when Bush was pushing for a more humane immigration policy. O’Reilly was on the side of the angels, and taking that side against some nutty xenophobe right wing guest. Between that and Terry Gross’ terrible O’Reilly interview, I’m skeptical of bad shit I hear about the guy, but I still think the show is for losers for the reasons above)

    So I think a lot about, who watches cable news? I work out in nice gyms now, and typically you got a few TVs: two or three on ESPN type channels, and inevitably one on FOX news. I never see anyone watching them (meaning, with FM radios tuned to get the audio: matters less I guess for ESPN). Especially now that the gyms have the cool treadmills with the built in TVs: far as I can tell it’s Everybody Loves Raymond type stuff. When I walk around a hospital I typically see TVs in waiting rooms turned to FOX news, until somebody on the staff with a brain (meaning me, because the rest is doctors) turns the thing over to Sprout or Noggin or something like that so it’s actually useful.

    Things I’m not saying: (1) that the content of what Beck or whoever says has nothing to do with manstream conservatives. It seems to me that when you talk to folks at work or the gym or whatever they always have some nutty idea about some secret government study they heard about Barack’s death panels or some fuckin’ thing. I guess they get that from somewhere. Maybe it’s originally Beck or O’Reilly; I’d be interested in hearing that argument but that doesn’t seem to be the issue. Maybe it’s alien mind control rays.

    (2) I’m not dissing news. For a lot of that day, Morning Edition is playing. I have joined the legions of guys torturing their kids with NPR. And I’ve worked a lot of shop floors with guys who liked right-wing talk radio. Radio, which you got in the background while you work if you do something mindless. And, yeah, I tune in Jim Lehrer at the gym sometimes if the time is right. I got the morning papers with my Lucky Charms and National Geographic on the toilet.

    (3) Michael Moore actually does bother me because these arguments don’t quite apply; far as I can tell lots of people watch the movies, and foreigners will ask Colin Powell about Moore’s ideas (it’s hard to figure they’re watching Beck). Then again my perspective is liberal/urban/coastal and maybe if I lived in Topeka I’d feel like there’s less Moore, or Moore less. Right now I do live in right-wing small town Southern environs, though, and Moore’s damn movie is in both the local theatres anyway.

    (4) These people do seem to put out a lot of el Crapola books. Right wingers seem to put out more of them. Presumably those are bought and read or “read.”

    That’s what I got. I’m not trying to be disingenuous here, I just really don’t get it, and Conor’s rants throw me and just seem unhinged to me because I keep getting hung up on this point: who the fuck watches Fox News? Is it just liberals wanting something to bitch about (and Conor)? And unemployed dudes or bitter stay at home parents? Do they vote? I guess I keep hearing from the commentariat that they matter. Do they?

    To me, every time I think it through, it seems like, QED, nobody cares. But there’s all this sound and fury from smart guys like Conor. Conor: why does it matter? Help.

    — Sanjay · Sep 29, 02:22 AM · #

63. Sanjay – A lot to process there. But I’ll try to address what I think was your point.

    Conor’s problem is that Fox News (along with talk radio and Drudge) has basically set the agenda for one of the only two viable political parties in this country. People watch it. A lot of people. Look up “9/12 rally” – that’ll be Exhibit A. Then take a look at news shows’ ratings – that’ll be Exhibit B. Then try watching it for a few hours when you get a chance – that’ll be Exhibit C. You really need to watch it to understand just how absurd it is.

    — GC from Virginia · Sep 29, 02:51 AM · #

64. “White culture? Seriously, dude. You can’t even make the littlest effort and call it Judeo-Christian culture or European culture? White culture? Really?”

    I was using the term to which Conor referred, genius.

    — mike farmer · Sep 29, 02:59 AM · #

65. But GC, I’m not saying nobody watches political chat shows. I’m saying losers with lots of spare time do (and NB this is nonideological — goes for left and right — and non sane-biased: going for over-the-top raving loon hosts and sort of sensible ones. This all applies to Maddow.)

    So there’s no problem with Beck. Just his audience. Stomp down Beck and the audience is still there, and another Beck shall rise. Excommunicate Beck from your political movement and the loser vote is still there, a mighty force to be courted. Why does Beck matter? If the problem is that the populace is dumb, why isn’t Conor bitching about that?

    — Sanjay · Sep 29, 02:59 AM · #

66. Sanjay-

    You’re just being dense for some reason. A boat load of people watch Fox news and they vote. They hold tea parties and they pressure their congressmen and they affect policy. If they are being shamelessly misinformed to fear and loath Obama and health care reform and whatever, then our country sufferes becasue they do not have adequate information to make rational choices when they vote and pressure. I mean there are lots of things to honestly disagree on about health care reform, but the existance of death panels is not one of them, for instance.

    Propoganda works. That’s why the republicans/mainstream conservative movement, like the communists before, spend so much time and money propogandizing.

    A better argument would be that FOx and right wing radio is just feeding these people what they want anyway. That they are looking for some reason to fear/hate Obama and fox and limbaugh supply it as a way to make a nice living.

    But in the end, politics is a numbers game. There are always people whose beliefs are in play. My mom for example. She watches fox and believes all this crazy shit, but then the other day she watched Obama’s health care speech and said to me, with surprise, “he made a lot of good points, he seemed pretty reasonable.” My mom votes. If she recognizes the disconnect between her impression of Obama and his arguments and the crazy shit she hears on Fox, then she might realize that she has been played for a sucker and maybe think about the issues a little more rigorously. So I believe Fox and talk radio matter.

    Mike Farmer-

    If being an elite means I haven’t ate a bunch of poisonous shit under the influence of 21st cetnury carnys, then I’m happy to be an elite. I’d be happy to be an elite anyway. Good education, good job, nice house in a fun city, eat in nice restaurants, travel, derive pleasure from literature and the arts, create things, have influence, wear cool shoes, not fooled by carnys… why wouldn’t I want to be an elite?

    — cw · Sep 29, 03:00 AM · #

67. Well Sanjay, if your point is that a lot of Americans, on both sides of the aisle, are stupid/dumb/something else, then even-handed Conor is probably not the guy I’d expect to make that argument. Of course, I certainly think you’re making a worthwhile point (a lot of people are dumb, a lot of people are smart; it’s the law of averages; it’s science).

    I personally can’t stand politics on TV. When I do have time to watch TV, I’m watching sports. But I suppose I must concede that commenting on blogs at 11 pm while desperately procrastinating the work that’s keeping me in the office late isn’t any cooler…

    — GC from Virginia · Sep 29, 03:12 AM · #

68. Will he soon be a tenured professor in Chicago?

    Fascinating. I had no idea that Barack Obama decides who gets tenure in Chicago!

    — Chet · Sep 29, 04:03 AM · #

69. Sanjay,

    Reasons I care/write about Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and MArk Levin, and sometimes a few others:

    1) The idiosyncratic project I care most about is having a robust public discourse that acts as a crucible for ideas. Over time I think a better discourse makes for a better country, and a worse discourse for a worse country. These guys pose as good faith participants in public discourse — but actually they behave in ways as corrosive to it as any figures I identify.

    2) I am from Orange County, California. My accomplished, kind, otherwise sensible grandparents listen to these people, and believe their disingenuous bullshit, and get scared for the future (for their future, but mostly for my future) more than is justified by facts. I abhor people who needlessly scare my grandparents.

    3) “Fox News (along with talk radio and Drudge) has basically set the agenda for one of the only two viable political parties in this country.” That is an exaggeration, but not by much. These folks also enforce various small-minded political orthodoxies on the right.

    4) I care more about, am more invested in, and pay more attention to the conversation on the right, broadly construed, than the conversation on the left, largely because I am more interested in and persuaded by conservative and libertarian insights — and it is the right that these folks are corrupting, that they are giving a bad name to, etc.

    Does that answer your question, Sanjay?

    — Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 29, 04:39 AM · #

70. “If being an elite means I haven’t ate a bunch of poisonous shit under the influence of 21st cetnury carnys, then I’m happy to be an elite. I’d be happy to be an elite anyway. Good education, good job, nice house in a fun city, eat in nice restaurants, travel, derive pleasure from literature and the arts, create things, have influence, wear cool shoes, not fooled by carnys… why wouldn’t I want to be an elite?”

    uh, cw, I wasn’t saying anything bad about elites. I think you missed the point. To give you a hint, it takes more than wanting to be one to be one.

    — mike farmer · Sep 29, 11:12 AM · #

71. I think a lot of people are underestimating the danger of progressive policies, and they are missing the fact that progressivism requires strong opposition and full-throated criticism. For me this goes beyond partisan politics. I would just as soon see moderates and liberals from the Democrat Party stand against government over-reach (and I believe we’ll see more of this) — it doesn’t matter which side the opposition comes from, but the worst thing we can do right now is pretend that powerful progressive forces aren’t at play, and that if they have their way, this country is in for years of suffering. Oddly, it was the intellectuals in the 30s who missed the progressive danger — they missed it at home and in Russia. As millions were dying in Russia, progressive intellectuals in the US were applauding the new way.

    Framing those who are fearful about the progressive direction as being misled, frightened sheep is patronizing and, considering history, foolish.

    One has to wonder — what is the proper response to progressivism? When the progressives are doing everything within their power to marginalize opposition, what is the proper response — be cool and let it pass? No big deal, it’s not that serious? They won the election, let’s see how it goes? When basically 25% of the population won the election, that’s not very convincing. The other 75% might have been irresponsible by either not voting or not demanding the right opposition candidate, but that doesn’t mean we have to stand by and watch 25% ruin the country.

    — mike farmer · Sep 29, 11:44 AM · #

72. Mike,

    Actually, no, I never wanted Cheney or Rumsfeld or Bush anywhere near the White House, anymore than I want Obama anywhere near it, given a lack of honor, of character, of conscience, of integrity on his part that reminds me a whole lot of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush, only, if anything, more so.

    It’s funny, given the logic of Conor’s initial post, that opposing Obama does not oblige one to support Beck, but either defending Beck in any way at all or opposing Obama in any way at all does oblige one to have supported Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush.

    That comes as news to me, since I’m an Independent who didn’t vote for Bush.

    Upthread, I mentioned already that I don’t see how the take-home message from the Bush years is that it’s unpatriotic and even “racist” to dissent from let alone to challenge an empty-suited President who’s surrounded himself with fruitbats — radicals, ideologues, and, in Obama’s case, militants and even terrorists.

    The Ayerses, the Dohrns, the Holdrens, the Jenningses, the Joneses, the Wrights, et al, of Obama’s world are Obama’s equivalent to Bush’s neocons and Straussians.

    I fail to see why Obama should be given a pass on such affiliations while Bush was not.

    — TRB · Sep 29, 12:01 PM · #

73. Sanjay, it my hypothesis that the GOP is becoming an exclusively religious party…white protestant/mormon to be specific.
    Beck is largely inspired by a mormon crank,
    A lot of the 912 stuff is recycled mormon nativism and theocratic principle.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 12:05 PM · #

74. Well, sort of, Conor. But I keep thinking, you don’t have a problem with Beck, you have a problem with the electorate. Which is fine. There is, as I’m saying, a substantial loser electorate. Beck’s peeps will still be there if Beck gets hit by a bus. I guess what I’d like to see is, if you had no Limbaugh, would the conversation on the right be different? Are you sure it would be? Because I can’t do the math — that’s what I’m trying to do there — and feel like, people are watching Beck with a lot of commitment. I just can’t make the numbers work. I’m trying.

    I think most of the left wing commentators there have a version of the same issue they’re bitching about how politicians echo Beck. OK, then your problem isn’t Beck, it’s Republican politicians.

    You seem to be arguing my side up there when you say, look, the media didn’t pick McCain, the voters did.

    — Sanjay · Sep 29, 12:06 PM · #

75. Yup Sanjay is exactly correct.
    Look at the candidates, 1 mormon 2 evangelical christians.
    As the GOP distills down increasingly to a core of white protestants, evangelical christians and mormons, Beck becomes increasingly representative.
    Beck is strongly influenced by Skousen in the commie/soshulists under every rock, the gub’mint is going to put us in FEMA camps and take our guns.

    The very next week, Bill Bennett appeared on Beck’s radio program and received the same question. “Are you familiar with Skousen?” asked Beck. When Bennett replied yes, Beck gushed. “He’s fantastic,” he said. “I went back and I read ‘The Naked Communist’ and at the end of that Skousen predicted [that] someday soon you won’t be able to find the truth in schools or in libraries or anywhere else because it won’t be in print anymore. So you must collect those books. It’s an idea I read from Cleon Skousen from his book in the 1950s, ‘The Naked Communist,’ and where he talked about someday the history of this country’s going to be lost because it’s going to be hijacked by intellectuals and communists and everything else. And I think we’re there.”

    Beck continued to mention the book during 2008, but his Skousen obsession really kicked in as the 912 concept began to take shape. Even before Obama’s inauguration, Beck had a game plan for a movement with Skousen at the center. On his Dec. 18, 2008, radio show, one month before Obama took office, Beck introduced his audience to the idea of a “September twelfth person.”

    “The first thing you could do,” he said, “is get ‘The 5,000 Year Leap.’ Over my book or anything else, get ‘The 5,000 Year Leap.’ You can probably find it in the book section of GlennBeck.com, but read that. It is the principle. Please, No. 1 thing: Inform yourself about who we are and what the other systems are all about. ‘The 5,000 Year Leap’ is the first part of that. Because it will help you understand American free enterprise … Make that dedication of becoming a Sept. 12 person and I will help you do it next year.”

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 12:53 PM · #

76. Only “losers with lots of spare time” watch political chat shows, says the guy who devotes whole chunks of his weekdays to reply threads at an obscure political/cultural website.

    — turnbuckle · Sep 29, 12:56 PM · #

77. Shorter Sanjay: Conor dear boy, you don’t need new pundits…..you need a new base.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 12:57 PM · #

78. someday the history of this country’s going to be lost because it’s going to be hijacked by intellectuals and communists and everything else. And I think we’re there.

    Behold cw Dark Sithmaster!
    intellectuals and communists are indistinguishable in Beckland.
    lol

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 01:03 PM · #

79. Conor, we must be on the same wave length. Your idea that conservatives are engaged in “total war” with liberalism, and what that means for the possibility of fruitful democratic politics that extends across the political spectrum resonated with me because just yesterday I submitted this post on Joan Walsh’s Salon column:

    To understand the mindset behind the “vast right wing conspiracy” it may be useful to borrow an idea from international relations: the concept of total, versus limited, war.

    Limited wars are fought for tangible stakes. Total wars are fought for complete supremacy. In limited wars, as Walter Lippmann reminds us, conflicts arise over specific grievances which are “capable of being rectified or compromised.” Total wars, on the other hand, “cannot end except by the destruction of the vanquished as an organized power in the major affairs of mankind.” Democratic theory pre-supposes that the vanquished party accepts the verdict of an election and becomes a loyal opposition until the next election. Yet, in an environment in which the mentality of total war prevails “men are doomed to fight incessantly. There are intervals of armed truce, periods of recuperation, rearmament and the regrouping of allies before the struggle is renewed but there can be no settlement. For total wars are fought not for specific objects, but for supremacy.”

    The Republican Party has been called, almost casually, the “Party of No.” On issue after issue it has shown a stubborn recalcitrance, voting in virtual lockstep against anything that the Obama administration has proposed. And this has occurred not during a time of peace and prosperity but at a time of domestic and international crisis when greater cooperation might have been expected from the loyal opposition.

    The question, therefore, is whether the indiscriminate opposition that we see from Republicans on health care, on the stimulus, on financial bailouts or foreign policy is merely the “limited war” tactical maneuvers of a party trying to gain a temporary political advantage, or whether it represents something deeper, darker, more sinister, more threatening to our democracy: a declaration of total war by the right wing against the legitimacy of any political regime in which the right wing is not supreme.

    The period that historians call the Century of Peace, extending from the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, was held together by a political framework crafted at the Congress of Vienna in which the legitimacy of each of the European nation-states was taken for granted, even the country that dragged the continent into war, once-revolutionary France.

    There were limited wars throughout the 19th century (Crimea, Franco-Prussian) but they were brief and fought for specific goals — much as in domestic politics today we are fighting over specific policies like health care reform. But about 1900, said Lippmann, Europe crossed a great divide. They entered what he called an epoch of “deadly struggle for mastery and survival” And in 14 short years all of Europe was consumed by mass slaughter in the mud and trenches of World War I.

    The question for us today is whether our Republican Party is content to fight limited wars over specific policies on the nation’s agenda as the historic conservative partner in our national democracy, or whether the GOP has stepped across Lippmann’s “great divide” and is now fighting for much higher stakes — those which cannot be summarized in a State of the Union Address or even spoken about openly since they involve matters of political “supremacy.”

    And does this explain the apocalyptic rhetoric we now hear from our spokesmen of the Right? Is this the source of all this talk about death panels, and watering the tree of liberty tree with the blood of tyrants, and taking America down the roads to socialism or fascism, and assaults against freedom and liberty?

    Is this why Karl Rove held the joint job title as both White House chief of politics AND chief of policy? Was that because the only real policy objective that Republicans had was what Rove openly called it: the quest for permanent political supremacy.

    And after the election of a liberal, black president does this then explain the extraordinary vitriol we have been hearing from the American right wing, which Bill Clinton spoke of on Meet the Press this weekend? Has the Republican Party, by its unwillingness to accept its defeats in 2006 and 2008 and play a constructive role as the minority party, given up on democracy?

    The record and rhetoric we have seen from the right since the election does not bode well for the country’s future, for as Lippmann reminds us: “When supremacy is the issue, the world is in a period of total wars in which there can be no decision except by the extinction of one of the antagonists as a power in affairs. This issue is not justifiable nor can it be compromised. When it exists, peace is only an armed truce during which the warriors prepare for the next battle. Then the normal condition is not that of peace, occasionally interrupted by a local war. When the question of supremacy is raised, there is a condition of continuing war with intervals in which there is no fighting.”

    — Ted Frier · Sep 29, 01:19 PM · #

80. Sanjay,

    I mostly agree with you. For me, the moment was when Jon Stewart showed up stoned on Crossfire and gave his famous “You’re hurting America” rant. I’m still not sure if Stewart was serious, but there were millions of people who thought he was (1) serious and (2) right. At the time, I thought: “Come on! 1/2 a million people decide to watch Crossfire instead of American Idol, because it entertains them. If Crossfire became Frontline overnight, they wouldn’t magically believe the stuff that PBS watchers believe, they would just change the channel.” My amateur reading of the anti-Beck crowd is that most of them are motivated by one or more of the following.

    1) Beck is becoming a news driver in the same way that the NYT is, or maybe Drudge. He takes blog stories and publicizes them, and he’s often the gateway to some mainstream media coverage of those stories. The Left Wing Noise Machine doesn’t want those stories covered, and want to be driving the news cycle themselves, so they find themselves getting angry at Beck, and then look for a way to rationalize their feelings.

    2) Confirmation bias makes all of us notice the doofuses and liars on the other side, since we each think that we are well-informed and perspicacious, so the only explanations for people who disagree with is that they are lieing doofii. Plus it’s fun to tease the other side by pointing to Dennis Kucinich every so often.

    3) Somehow, the Dems have the idea that they and everyone else who votes with them are all free-thinkers who carefully check everything Kos has to say to make sure it’s right, while people who disagree with them are all automatons who parrot anything El Rushbo tells them. They seem honestly to believe this, and there isn’t much percentage in making it up, so I mostly believe that they mostly believe it, but it sure seems wierd to me.

    4) I can’t really explain Conor. It seems that Conor also honestly believes that the right’s decision making process is dominated by lieing and or moronic opinion makers, but I’m not sure what his model for the left’s decision making process is. He writes as if he thinks that Code Pink and MoveOn and KosFiles readers either (1) are completely irrelevant to Dem decisionmaking or (2) make their decisions by consulting with the ghost of Senator Moynihan rather than by reading HuffPo, Kos, or watching MSNBC.

    — J Mann · Sep 29, 01:39 PM · #

81. J Mann, read this book.
    Beck is a ventrilloquists dummie for Skousen.
    It is not the same thing at all.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 01:56 PM · #

82. What J Mann demonstrates ^^ is exactly what Conor is talking about.
    No meme is too crazypants or too offensive or too false, because the other side owns Pick One or More [hollywood/teh MSM/academe/culture/the executive/the judiciary/the legislative ] and it is the only way “conservatives” get a forum.
    Conservatives are powerless.
    Beck is all they got.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 02:01 PM · #

83. Sanjay….pardon….but you are an intellectual.
    You are part of a tiny, tiny population fragment outlier with limit zero influence or weight.
    Read Skousen….you can see exactly where the commie/soshulist/evul gub’mint crazypants memes are coming from.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 02:11 PM · #

84. J Mann’s argument about the rough equivilance of Right/Left attraction for ideological media is undercut by the chest-thumping over ratings that goes on all the time on FOX and by Rush. Never a days goes by that O’Reilly and Company doesn’t remind us that they have twice the audience as their tormemtors over at MSNBC, or that Air America was a bust. Clearly, if the Right’s own spokesmen are to be believed, conservatives like their demagogues a whole lot more than liberals do.

    — Ted Frier · Sep 29, 02:20 PM · #

85. “3) Somehow, the Dems have the idea that they and everyone else who votes with them are all free-thinkers who carefully check everything Kos has to say to make sure it’s right, while people who disagree with them are all automatons who parrot anything El Rushbo tells them.”

    Well, sure. Everybody always thinks their side is the smart and independent one. However, when something like “trutherism” crops up on the Left, liberal elites almost entirely ignore it or actively discredit it. When something like “birtherism” or “death panels” comes up on the right, conservative elites largely embrace or actively promote it.

    Now, you don’t have to look that far in the past to find times when irrational thinking was more the province of the Left. But today, it’s much more an indulgence of the Right.

    Mike

    — MBunge · Sep 29, 02:27 PM · #

86. Ted, those things come and go in waves. Right now, I think the lefty nuts on the blogosphere are outdrawing the righty nuts online, but the righty nuts on radio and explictly partisan cable news are outdrawing the lefties. Film skews towards lefty nuts, mostly because Michael Moore is so dominant. Even in television, MSNBC is learning that the only way it can make a profit is by publishing lefty nuts, so there is obviously a decent market for that too.

    I’ll grant the possibility that the line between a party being a bunch of free-thinking Solomons and being dominated by nutty commentators is fortuitously set somewhere between Keith Olberman’s ratings and Glenn Beck’s ratings, but it doesn’t seem likely.

    I would have a lot more faith in Conor’s effort to raise the level of discourse if he picked say, one lefty nut to go after for every two righty nuts, or whatever you think the ratio is.

    — J Mann · Sep 29, 02:31 PM · #

87. MBunge writes:

    Everybody always thinks their side is the smart and independent one. However, when something like “trutherism” crops up on the Left, liberal elites almost entirely ignore it or actively discredit it. When something like “birtherism” or “death panels” comes up on the right, conservative elites largely embrace or actively promote it.

    Mike, with all due respect, I think you are subject to confirmation bias. I can find plenty of individual examples of lefty elites supporting trutherism and plenty of individual examples of righty elites condemning birtherism. It’s possible that your hypothesis is right but I honestly don’t think so. Of course, I could easily be the one suffering from confirmation bias, or, more likely, we both are, but I’m not sure how we can know.

    — J Mann · Sep 29, 02:34 PM · #

88. Matoko, are you saying that:

    (1) The GOP is a bunch of sheep being dominated by this Skousen guy, whomeever he is? Am I prey to his evil clutches, and if I read his book, will I fall more under his deceptive sway or less?

    (2) Alternately, are you saying that Beck is superior to Olberman because Beck comes from an intellectual tradition, however obscure, while Olberman is a sportscaster who suffered some kind of head injury that transformed him, into a ranting superstar?[*]

    [*] This, btw, would make an awesome movie. Anyone who wants to collaborate on a screenplay, e-mail me. I’ll even sell out and make the ranting superstar conservative, but you will need me to temper the points so it’s not too on the nose.

    — J Mann · Sep 29, 02:38 PM · #

89. Nope, I’m saying Beck’s nutty ideas come right from mormon conspiracy theory crank Skousen.
    And I am saying what Sanjay said.
    The GOP base is devolving to white strongly-religious over-forties, un-educated and rural, who are especially permeable to conspiracy theory because they are religious…..see cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer’s book Religion Explained.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 02:52 PM · #

90. Here is a thought experiment for you J Mann…..name one influential conservative pundit or GOP leader that doesn’t profess to Love Jesus.
    The GOP is a religious party now.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 02:59 PM · #

91. “uh, cw, I wasn’t saying anything bad about elites. I think you missed the point. To give you a hint, it takes more than wanting to be one to be one.”

    Uh, Mike, are you saying that now that I’m not a member of the Elite? Becasue I just made chai.

    — cw · Sep 29, 03:08 PM · #

92. I appreciate that many commentators here are disorientated, even a tad scared, at the results of the 2008 election. Not, I believe, because they’re out-and-out racists, but because what should have been a “winning ticket” (a maverick war hero Senator/elder statesman and a popular, libertarian governor/attractive woman) lost. That’s got to be disorientating to anyone who’s gotten used to things being a particular way – particularly after it turned out the Senator was less of a maverick than his rep, and the governor turned out to be unpopular and (to be very charitable about it) unseasoned – and its only natural they’ll reach for something reassuring and familiar to regain their bearings.

    Unfortunately, they’re reaching for Glenn Beck, which speaks volumes about what they consider “familiar”(read: “the way things should be”).

    Look, if one finds Beck satisfying entertainment, that’s one thing. A “Five Minute Hate” is actually a pretty healthy habit to develop. But if you’re looking for actual insight into the world, keep in mind the man describes himself as ‘a rodeo clown’ and engages in some less-than-circumspect behavior. Personally, I think you’d get more incisive commentary from watching a couple random episodes of Ron Moore’s reimaging of “Battlestar Galactica”.

    — iokannaninthewell · Sep 29, 03:16 PM · #

93. Here is a thought experiment for you J Mann…..name one influential conservative pundit or GOP leader that doesn’t profess to Love Jesus.

    Probably the Jewish ones, for a start. Reihan is muslim or agnostic, although I guess you could quibble with whether he is influental. George Will doesn’t really write about his faith, and my guess is it wouldn’t be hard to find other conservative figures who either are non-Christian or who don’t talk about their faith.

    — J Mann · Sep 29, 03:19 PM · #

94. “Uh, Mike, are you saying that now that I’m not a member of the Elite? Becasue I just made chai.”

    Then I stand corrected. Elite on with your bad self,brother man.

    — mike farmer · Sep 29, 03:43 PM · #

95. JMann: c’mon, man, it was from you I learned to skip over the makoto posts and now you’re fucking it up.
    I don’t quite agree when you sor tof equate liberal flakes and conservative ones. Yes, we have ‘em, but I think we have fewer screechy political ones (it tells you something that I had to equate Maddow — who seems clever and sensible although the show is still for losers — with Beck). Certainly they seem to produce fewer el Crapola books (NB, something like the Dark Side is not, to me, a ranty book but a serious one with a focused topic).
    My theory would be that left-liberal cranks and nuts tend to exhibit that flakiness predominantly in non-political speheres (e.g. vaccines and autism (now I will get stoned by the brainless)). And we have stupid actors, and for them the thing is necessarily kind of a sideline.
    All of which is irrelevant, because: “doofii.” I love it! Screw Beck, man, my life’s project is to promote the use of the word “doofii.”

    — Sanjay · Sep 29, 04:37 PM · #

96. my life’s project is to promote the use of the word “doofii.”

    A small request: if you’re going to promote it, at least change it to “doofi” first — the singular is doofus, not *doofius.

    — kenB · Sep 29, 05:11 PM · #

97. kenB:
    I couldn’t give a tapiocum.

    — Sanjay · Sep 29, 05:45 PM · #

98. It’s possible that there is more right-wing political crankery than left, although it certainly seemed to me that we spent the last 8 years with 10 books a year about how evil the Bush administration is and all the shadowy connections that explain everything. I put Beck and Levin’s books on a pile with Kevin Phillips’, in that they are books by people who aspire to be big thinkers.

    I’ve got Van Johnson’s book on my library pull list, but from the reviews, it certainly seems like left-wing crankery. (And before you argue that Johnson’s book isn’t politically influential, it appears to be the genesis for (1) Obama’s use of “green jobs” as a (scientifically illiterate) talking point in the campaign and (2) Van Johnson getting a policy position in the White House, which seems more influential than whatever it was that Levin wrote).

    kenB and Sanjay – I was literally laughing out loud.

    — J Mann · Sep 29, 06:28 PM · #

99. lol
    Reihan is a closet muslim.
    If he ever goes public on his faith his influence will deepdive into negative territory and he knows it.
    Beck IS influential, and he is a closet mormon that is channelling Extreme Crazy Guy Skousen.
    That should really scare the GOP just a little.
    Extreme Crazy is only appealing to a very limited section of the electorate.

    Since no one reads me anyways, I shall employ a rather sketchy statistical analysis of the current composition of the GOP…..using what my nonparametrics proff called “the farmer method.”
    The way the farmer’s almanac gets written.
    I estimate the GOP is currently approximately 80% evangelical christians, and 15% non-evangelical christians, and 5% other.

    — matoko_chan · Sep 29, 06:37 PM · #

100. Hey, Conor….did you know Glenn Beck is a MORMON?
     I think all of ‘Merica should view his testimony ….. specially these people.

     — matoko_chan · Sep 30, 03:44 AM · #

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