Um...Let me guess. Nancy Franklin is somewhat less than enamored with Glenn Beck. In fact, she downright hates and despises him as you can see in her New Yorker article. Ironically Franklin accuses Beck of spreading venom in her incredibly venomous story which concludes by comparing him to the character of Lonesome Rhodes in the excellent 1957 film, A Face in the Crowd.
A few of the "love notes" tossed in Beck's direction:
Glenn Beck, the energetically hateful, truth-twisting radio and Fox News Channel talk-show host, was absent from the airwaves for a week...
The persona that Beck has cobbled together over the past few years combines a determination to draw attention to himself, because what he has to say is so important, with an outsized, in-your-face show of modesty...
Beck looks cherubic, with his boyish crewcut, his rubbery, expressive face, his wide eyes, and his seemingly innocent smile, but he has a wizened heart and a sulfurous outlook on American life and politics.
Beck’s negative, regressive take on politics is expressed with raw-throated outrage, smiley sarcasm, and, occasionally, a display of hurt, even tears.
Wow! So what is it about Glenn Beck that you DON'T like, Nancy? ...Just kidding!
The strangest thing about Franklin's attack on Glenn Beck is her accusation that he uses "irresponsibly edited video clips" to criticize administration officials...but then admits that the unedited video validates Beck's criticisms:
Throughout the year, Beck has gone after Administration officials, repeatedly showing irresponsibly edited video clips, in which they say things that make them easy marks.
And then this Franklin admission in the very next sentence:
Sometimes, though, the clips really do raise questions about someone’s judgment or self-awareness, even when you hear a longer version of the comments.
Which means Beck was correct in his critiques but Franklin can't bring herself to admit that. She even grumbles that the Obama administration should have done a better vetting job on its appointments because that oversight provided fodder for Beck such as in the Van Jones case:
The Administration should have known that some of Jones’s speeches, and other questionable parts of his record, would be made public; the Internet-savvyness of the Obama Presidential campaign seemed to vanish not long after the election.
So what was Beck's crime here? Accurately quoting Van Jones?
And here is the conclusion of Franklin's poison pen hit piece with a comparison of Glenn Beck to the character of Lonesome Rhodes:
A headline at the top of Beck’s Web site announces what he thinks he’s selling: “the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.” If by this Beck means that his product is radioactive, he’s got that right. We can only hope that its toxic charge will fade over time. But that seems unlikely. At the end of the Elia Kazan–Budd Schulberg movie “A Face in the Crowd,” the Arkansas opportunist and petty criminal who has been repackaged, by a radio broadcaster, as a guitar-playing professional hayseed called Lonesome Rhodes (played brilliantly by Andy Griffith), and who has been consumed and ruined by fame, shows his true colors when he bad-mouths his audience over an open mike. The nation abandons him, and, as the movie ends, he’s shouting, unheard, into the night. These days, because of the Internet, it’s not so easy to get rid of a demagogue. Long after Beck leaves radio and TV, his sound bites will still be with us.
Why do I get the feeling that one of Franklin's big fantasies is to somehow become a latter day version of the Patricia Neal character in that film who opens up a mike to expose Glenn Beck while he (in her fervid imagination) secretly bad mouths his audience.
Oh, and Nancy, would it make you feel better about Glenn if he were to serenade you with his version of Mama Guitar? ...Better brush up on your baton twirling skills.
