Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America

by Dana Milbank

  Other Beck advertisers include a provider of power generators and gold dealers.

  As with other parts of Beck’s message, there are similarities between his doomsday theories and Mormon theology. The prophet Joseph Smith, in his Articles of Faith, writes of a messianic age headquartered in the United States: “We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.”

  But Beck is so conversant with End Times theory that he also frequently brings in Muslim doomsday prophecies on his show. His favorite: “The Twelvers.”

  “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—this guy is a Twelver,” Beck told his viewers one night. “Not a 9/12er”—those are Beck’s followers—“a Twelver … You’re looking for the Twelfth Imam. It’s a radical Twelver. They were so radical they were banned by the Ayatollah Khomeini for being cuckoo.”

  Beck outlined their views: “You need to cause global chaos, because only in global chaos will the Mahdi come, so they believe that by blowing stuff up and starting wars and having global bloodshed, the promised one will come sooner.”

  The theme returned on another show. “When President Ahmadinejad says he wants to vaporize Israel, he’s not trying to trick people, it’s not a power bluff. He believes he’s fulfilling prophecy,” Beck explained. “What prophecy? This is—I’m not a theologian.” But he plays one on TV.

  He offered to explain it “off the top of my head,” and he put it in terms he knew his audience would understand: the Book of Revelation.

  “If you are a Christian, you know the world is washed in blood and Jesus comes back and splits the mountains,” he explained. “Theirs is very, very similar. The promised one comes—the Twelfth Imam comes and has to wash the world in blood … See if this sounds familiar to Christians. This would be the tribulation. Global government in Babylon. If you are a Christian, who is setting up the global government in Babylon? That would be the Antichrist. Who’s doing it? According to the Twelvers, the promised one.”

  Another night, he brought on a guest to analyze this news. “So the Mahdi, when he comes crawling out of the well, he is supposed to create a global government. He persecutes the Christians and he has them either submit or he cuts their heads off, right?”

  “Right,” replied the guest. “In fact, what’s more, the Islamic messiah is supposed to come with Jesus.”

  “He’ll testify to the Mahdi and he’ll say, ‘Hey, by the way, you guys misunderstood. I’m not the son of God. This is the man right here.’ Correct?” Beck inquired.

  “Right,” said the guest.

  “They seem to me to be a lot like End Times prophecy,” Beck observed.

  “It’s a mirror image,” the guest replied.

  The difference: Beck only promotes the Christian version on his show. “I’m not saying these things are true,” he said, offering his usual qualifier after floating a conspiracy. “But it’s important that you understand this.”

  Beck has been dabbling in (or, depending on your perspective, exploiting) End Times faith for several years. In 2006, he led off his CNN Headline News show with word that August 22 “is the day that Israel might be wiped off the map leading to all-out Armageddon.”

  “What I’m about to tell you nobody else is going to tell you,” he said of his “World War III” hypothesis. “Honestly, it gave me great pause today, because it’s verging on the edge of insanity. It really is. With that being said, the source is so good there’s no way I can’t tell you this news.”

  He attributed it to a Princeton professor predicting that “Islamic End of Times prophecies could be fulfilled” in a mere fortnight. More evidence: There are “eleven missing Egyptians with no visas” on the loose in America. “You’ve got to put the political correctness aside and let me show their frickin’ pictures on television,” he demanded. “We’re fighting not only for the existence of our country, but … possibly the existence of the entire planet.”

  August 22, 2006, came and went without incident.

  But the next year, Beck was back, interviewing a conservative pastor by the name of John Hagee, whose anti-Catholic views became an embarrassment for John McCain’s presidential campaign.

  “We’re living in the End Times—you believe that?” Beck asked.

  “I do indeed,” Hagee answered. “The Bible is very specific to the fact.” He then walked Beck through the prophecies.

  “Is the Antichrist alive today?” Beck inquired.

  “I believe he is,” Hagee answered.

  “End of the world as we know it in five years, ten years, twenty years?”

  “I don’t think we’ll get past twenty years.”

  “Putin, is he part of the biblical prophecy?”

  “I believe that he’s the man that’s going to cause Russia to unite the Islamic nations against Israel.”

  “What TV show would Jesus watch?”

  “He probably wouldn’t.”

  “Wrong answer,” Beck informed the minister.

  “Glenn Beck!” Hagee corrected.

  Not long after that interview, Beck posted an article on his Web site titled “ ‘Doomsday’ Seed Vault Opens in Arctic.” Europeans were storing seed samples inside a Norwegian mountain in case global warming destroyed crops.

  In one show, he brought on an investor who informed viewers that “debt implosion, which is what we’re in the process of realizing right now, is potentially even anarchy—anarchy and the society. And so individuals and families have to have the foresight, that situational awareness to perhaps consider, you know, maybe having a farm, maybe growing your own food. Maybe you need to take up arms if you have them and learn to protect your family. The period that’s emerging in front of us could be scary, very scary.”

  “He’s spookier than I am,” Beck rejoiced.

  On and on went prophecies of doom.

  On his radio show, he likened the economic situation to a “doomsday device” that guaranteed massive retaliation in a nuclear strike. “Socialist policies have tricked this system into thinking that we have started a war,” he told listeners. “Economies are starting to crash.”

  On a spring evening in May 2010, he likened the state of America to that of the Titanic, post-iceberg. “America, this is your third warning now that I’ve counted. This is the third time I’ve heard people say we’re just buying time,” he said. He told them of a quotation that “hungry people fighting over food don’t usually make real sound decisions,” and recommended, “You have to make yours now.”

  “This ship, it’s sinking now,” he continued, explaining his own preparations for the end. “I’ve been eating fruit all day because I realized—I got news for you, man. A world without cupcakes, I’m dead within two hours. I got to get into shape.” He also advised viewers to “turn to God and live.”

  But they apparently don’t have much time left to find God. “Is America going to survive?” he asked his viewers a month before offering them the Titanic analogy. “Or are we going to fundamentally transform into something that nobody can describe or identify?” The evidence, in Beck’s world, points to the latter outcome.

  One night he told viewers that Iranian leaders “are telling their people that these are the End of Days, setting them up for something, and there is something about the Persian Gulf turning blood red, and that is now happening.”

  The health-care bill, he said, “is the end of America as you know it.” The political system, he said, “is corrupt! And if we don’t fix it, we’re doomed.” As things stand now, he said, “We’re facing the destruction of our country in the next—I don’t even know—one year, five years, ten years. But it’s coming—on this course, it’s coming.”

  For one show he even brought out a Jenga building set and began to play with it to illustrate how the system would collapse. “The game that we�
�re playing right now is, how many of these can be taken out?” he continued. “How many of these problems and solutions can you slide out before the whole darn thing collapses?” After he finished the game, he told viewers that “before you know it, the whole thing will collapse … It will collapse on you and your family.”

  When Obama spoke about his cap-and-trade proposal for curbing greenhouse gases, Beck tore away papers pasted to his chalkboard. “You’re going to see a black and white world, man, that is nothing but destruction and ugly,” he forecast. “I don’t know why no one else will tell you the truth about all these things … It is only when you take down the mask of sunshine and lollipops that you will see the real thing, the real image: destruction!”

  Even Beck had to realize the apocalypse thing was getting a bit too much. One night, after his doomsday talk was mocked by Stephen Colbert, Beck brought his own “fear consultant” onto the show.

  “Now, I fully appreciate that you’re very worried about expanding government, Islamic fascism, the trampling of the Constitution, economic meltdown, socialistic policies, Mexico, North Korea, Pakistan, End Times, global unrest, Al Franken, street riots, cholesterol, salmon, yada yada,” the consultant said.

  “I’m actually not trying to be alarming,” said Beck.

  “No, you need to be more alarming, Glenn. Killer bees! … Black holes!”

  Alas, there was no stopping the march to Armageddon:

  “Your right to keep and bear arms is under attack.”

  “Your freedom of speech is under attack.”

  “Our freedom is under attack.”

  “Our Constitution is under attack.”

  “Families are under attack.”

  “Religion is under attack.”

  “Faith is under attack.”

  “The entire system is under attack.”

  “Talk radio is under attack.”

  “Fox is under attack.”

  “I’m under attack.”

  “I think everybody is under attack.”

  “We’re all under attack.”

  “God is under attack.”

  “We are under attack in almost every shape and form in America.”

  Okay, Glenn. We got the idea.

  “You know, I know we don’t know each other,” Beck told his viewers one night, “but I feel like I know you … I think you fear for our future.”

  How couldn’t they? They’ve been watching Glenn Beck.

  CHAPTER 5

  CRAZY LIKE A FOX

  Is Glenn Beck crazy?

  The question has been answered in the affirmative by no less an authority than Glenn Beck. He did this while interviewing himself.

  “There is a talk-radio host you may have heard of that many blogs around the country said was nearly driven to madness by a caller from Massachusetts, of all places,” Beck said on his TV show one evening. “Here he is.”

  The picture switched to … Glenn Beck! In shirtsleeves, doing his radio show.

  “Where is your logic?” a caller named Kathy is asking him. “What would you do? I’m asking you, what would you do to change this health-care system for the better? After all, every time you people bring up cost, you don’t care about the trillions of dollars to bail out the banks and all the credit card companies.”

  At this, Beck explodes. “Kathy, get off my phone!” Beck is pumping his arms in the air maniacally. “Get off my phone, you little pinhead! I don’t care? You people don’t care about the trillions?” Beck slips into a high-pitched screech. “I’m going to lose my mind today,” he shrieks.

  “That’s shameful,” the TV version of Beck said when the clip ended. Then, as he announced himself as his official guest, an image of the radio version of Beck appeared on the split screen, wearing a sweatshirt and a “TF” baseball cap for Bill O’Reilly’s show, The Factor.

  “Thank you for finally having somebody who disagrees with you, you know, on the air once in a while,” Radio Beck told TV Beck.

  “A lot of people say you’ve lost your mind,” TV Beck said to Radio Beck.

  “You know, I have lost my mind,” Radio Beck said. “You know, what’s the difference between me and you, you know what I mean? I’ve lost my mind. You’re a big fat fatty. You’re on TV all the time. But yes, I lost my mind. You know, are you watching the news? … I mean, the whole country is melting down. People aren’t even paying attention.”

  An understanding TV Beck replied, “And that’s why you were screaming ‘get off my phone’ to that lady because she wasn’t paying attention?”

  “Yes,” Radio Beck volleyed. “I think yelling at people and then hanging up on them is the only real way to save America at this point … Doing that to one person every day—it’s not enough,” Radio Beck continued, explaining that yelling at people should be worked into one’s daily routine. “You know, people are picking up a newspaper … What, are you crazy? ‘Get out of my newspaper!’ ”

  “You’re starting to sound a little nuts,” TV Beck informed his radio self.

  “Oh, I’m starting to sound crazy?” Radio Beck asked, offended.

  “Yeah, you are, just a little bit.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” crazy Radio Beck replied. “The magic bean in my pocket told me you would say that. Oh, I know who you are.”

  TV Beck moved to cut off the madman.

  “Get off my screen, you pinhead!” Radio Beck shrieked.

  It was pitch-perfect comedy, but the segment also said everything you need to know about Beck’s mental state. He may say and do crazy things, but that doesn’t mean he’s crazy.

  There are millions of Americans who fear their government, which usually makes them angry at their government. In Beck, they found somebody who will give voice to their paranoia.

  After Poland’s president was killed when his plane tried to land in fog in Russia, a caller to Beck’s radio show saw something darker. “Call me paranoid,” the caller said. (Okay, if you insist.) “I smell a rat in the destruction of the Polish government on that airplane.” The caller thought it might have been a plot by “the Ruskies.”

  Beck allowed the man to spin the conspiracy theory, then validated it. “I don’t put anything past a former KGB agent,” he said. “We are dealing with the powers of darkness … I don’t know if anybody had anything to do with this physically, but I’m telling you we are dealing with the powers of darkness in the world today.”

  But you don’t get three million viewers a night by merely validating existing paranoid delusions; you must also feed the paranoid new things to fret about. This is why Beck tells his viewers and listeners, day after day, that the government is out to get him.

  “Even with all the resources of Fox, the truth still can’t be fully exposed without you. I ask you, please help us. Meet us here every day,” he urged his followers one evening in May 2009. Conspiratorially, he continued, warning about an unspecified “they” and “them”: “The status quo is what gives them their status. It is what brings them to power and self-importance. Use your voice while you still have it. I tell you, with everything in me, I think they are going to silence voices like mine and Bill O’Reilly and Rush and everybody else. They will silence us. They can’t let us continue to speak out. When the government is trying to influence what kind of syrup a restaurant uses, do you really think they’re going to have a problem regulating opinion?”

  It was a dark and sinister plot Beck was outlining. But if he truly believed this, he recovered fairly quickly. A moment later, he was telling viewers, “You know what? We’re going to do some comedy on the road.” He directed them to his Web site for ticket information.

  Months later, “they” weren’t merely trying to silence him. They were trying to kill him. One night in March 2010, Beck was on a familiar topic, the evils of “social justice,” when he argued that the Obama administration and its supporters had violated three of the Ten Commandments: stealing, coveting, and bearing false witness. “And for those of you in the adminis
tration who are coming after me on this one—I mean, remember, you’ve broken three, let’s not make it four. Thou shall not kill.”

  In late May 2010, Beck appeared on Fox Business Network to speak about a plot by the White House and its allies that involved “targeting and destroying” him. “Isolate and destroy. That is their whole mantra. They tried to do it with Rush. They tried to do it with Fox. They’re just coming after me. They have been relentless. This kind of stuff is coming after me for over a year.”

  The host, David Asman, was concerned. “Does it have any effect on you personally, emotionally?”

  “No,” Beck said, before reconsidering. “When you have your children in jeopardy, which my children have been in jeopardy, when your family is under attack, when you have the death threats, when you can’t go anywhere without major security, because of these groups and what they say and how they distort and how they lie, yes, it affects somebody personally. You bet it does.”

  But brave Beck said he would press on—“until my dying breath.”

  The problem is, “they” are interested in killing more than just Glenn Beck. “They are building a machine that will crush the entrepreneurial spirit and the freedom that our Founding Fathers designed,” Beck warned another day. “This machine, whatever it is they are building, will crush it. Do not let them build another piece. So while I turn away, I want to make sure that I have at least ten million eyes watching—watching every single move they’re making.”

  “They,” Beck said at another point, “will gather strength and you will not be able to stand against them … They’re going inside our government … These people are thugs … I fear that there will come a time when I cannot say things that I am currently saying.”

  Beck frequently advises his viewers to fear home invasions. Sometimes these invasions come in the form of parenting advice. “You will have to shoot me in the forehead before I will let you into my house to tell me how to raise my children.” Sometimes they are to disarm the population: “You will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun.” Sometimes they are to silence dissent: “You will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and be silent.”