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Why Glenn Beck is a popular news figure

by John Rixey

Created on: August 14, 2010

Remember that kid in school who lived for attention? He wasn't a good student. He probably had some problems at home which deprived him of the attention that a youth so desperately craves. He then turned to school as a source for this attention. You remember the kid - he would do just about anything for the attention. In grade school he was the one who took the dare and ate the horrible sludgy concoction of school lunch leftovers as we sat staring, wondering why anyone would subject himself to this. In middle school, he rebelled against teachers, reveling in the attention, the thrill of which made the possibility of consequences irrelevant to him. In high school he did drugs and drank large quantities of alcohol to the delight and amazement of his peers. Remember that kid? Whenever the spotlight was specifically put on him, he milked it for all it was worth.

One of those children has gotten older, found an alternative to alcoholism and drug addiction in the form of prescription pills, and was given a national platform from which to whore himself for attention. Glenn Beck has an audience of over two million people, which is almost 1% of America. This audience is the oldest audience of any cable channel and, no doubt, the whitest. In this audience, Glenn Beck has found the ultimate source of attention.

America elected a brown President. This, along with the steady increase in the number of non-white citizens, the tendency of younger people to look favorably at the governing policies of European nations, and the FoxNews' audience's fear of their impending deaths and the sense of loss one must feel as he looks out at a nation which appears less and less like the America he grew up in - all give Glenn Beck the perfect opportunity to score some more of that sweet, sweet attention.

The elderly, afraid of leaving behind a nation they are beginning to no longer recognize, tune in to Glenn Beck to learn the real story about what's "happening to the republic." They suspect the blacks - as they always have - and Glenn Beck is there to verify their suspicions. It is the racist black president. It is the Black Panthers. It is black preachers and the socialism they have preached to the very people who are now controlling the nation and, indeed, your life. The elderly have suspected the communists and the socialists for a while. Through Glenn Beck's daily improvisational fear-mongering, those suspicions are finally validated. 

He is not doing it for the money, though $32 million a year must be nice. He does actually believe that a vast conspiracy of socialists, Marxists, and/or communist-Nazis have infiltrated the government and are planning to take away everyone's freedom and liberty, whatever those terms might mean to him, Mr. $32 million....But as little Glenn Beck gobbled down that horrible sludgy concoction of school lunch leftovers, he surely believed he was tasting a delicious, attention-laced chocolate milkshake.

Learn more about this author, John Rixey.
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