John Avlon of The Daily Beast, whose specialty is exposing the nonsensical political rhetoric on the left wing and right wing, has written a tongue-in-cheek farewell to Glenn Beck.
Here’s his opening line: “The nightly nervous breakdown will not be televised.”
Fox News’ decision to part ways with Beck marks a remarkable reversal of fortune for a man who earned $32 million last year, “teaching Americans how to fear-monger for fun and profit,” Avlon said in his newest blog.
With his ratings down nearly 50 percent and advertisers bailing out, Avlon noted, “Beck’s apocalyptic shtick has been getting rancid fast.”
It’s hard to believe that just last August he turned out a huge crowd on the Washington Mall for one of his signature political events. Some on the far right even mentioned him as a potential presidential candidate.
So, what happened? Beck essentially wore out his welcome with to many conservatives and drifted into the far right lane as he slowly faded away.
Here’s Avlon: “A talented broadcaster, Beck used his perch to echo old narratives straight out of the paranoid style in American politics — sinister plots to impose one-world government, the intentional subversion of the Constitution, the oppression of the faithful at the hands of a secular socialist elite hell-bent on replacing the American experiment with tyranny. ‘The Glenn Beck Show’ is the closest the John Birch Society has ever come to having their own national program, reaching millions and poisoning political debate in the process.
Glenn Beck was the boy who cried wolf, constantly ratcheting up the rhetoric to get attention and ultimately becoming a parody of himself.”
Avlon, whose 2010 book, “Wingnuts,” featured Beck, Keith Olbermann and Sarah Palin on the cover takes a moment to consider this: Perhaps in just one year’s time the paranoid politics and incitements by extremists might be coming to an end, allowing the “vast, vital center” to take hold.
He concludes his blog this way: “What a difference a year makes — now Keith Olbermann is off the air, Glenn Beck is slinking that way, and Sarah Palin’s poll numbers have imploded to the point where her prospective presidential campaign already sounds like a bad old joke.
“It is a heartening turn of events — a reaffirmation that the American people are smart and instinctively distrust the ideological extremes of left and right. The Howard Beale howl (in the movie ‘Network’), ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,’ has been turned on its head — as a sign at the Jon Stewart ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ happily predicted: “‘You’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!'”
