{"id":4266,"date":"2009-02-23T08:01:55","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T13:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4266"},"modified":"2009-03-01T00:34:57","modified_gmt":"2009-03-01T05:34:57","slug":"beck-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4266","title":{"rendered":"Jeremiah Shrugged"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows one; the neighborhood Jeremiah.<\/p>\n

He’s the guy who hangs out at the hardware store, stocking up on the one hand, ranting about the “Trilateral Commission undercutting our currency” and proclaiming that “in five years the United States’ll be like Red China” on the other.\u00a0 He was a survivalist before the term became a dirty word; he’s positive <\/em>that the end of civilization is nigh, and he never stops talking about it.<\/p>\n

Or should I say, never stopped<\/em>.\u00a0 Because you knew him during the Carter and first term of the Reagan Administration.And though you last talked with him twenty years ago, and wonder if American Idol <\/em>isn’t evidence that he was at least partially correct, you still recall the sense of crushing fatigue his harangues left wafting over you.<\/p>\n

Glenn Beck does that to me.<\/p>\n

Allahpundit talks about Beck:<\/a><\/p>\n

Even before watching this, if you\u2019d asked me which media star\u2019s most likely to turn survivalist, move to the mountains, and start doing his show from a lead-lined bunker, there\u2019s no doubt what the answer would have been. There\u2019s something \u201coff\u201d about Beck in a way that\u2019s not true of other chat-show hosts, although that\u2019s not necessarily a criticism: O\u2019Reilly and Hannity can be tiresome in more than small doses but this guy I find watchable even at a stretch. Partly it\u2019s the sheer bravado of the performance, partly it\u2019s the challenge of trying to figure out what\u2019s going on in his head to make him the way he is. As big an audience as he has, I\u2019m surprised it\u2019s not bigger. He\u2019s one of a kind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Look, don’t get me wrong; it’s always prudent to be prepared for emergencies; putting extra food by is just plain smart; anyone who doesn’t have guns and ammo laid in isn’t really all that<\/em> American anyway.<\/p>\n

And he’s right, in the sense that all <\/em>real conservatives are right; this country has painted itself into a corner, with endless entitlement spending and the stupid, neo-socialist policies of the past ten years that privatized the fruits of greed but socialized the results of stupidity.<\/p>\n

But – how do I put this – Glenn Beck bores me just as silly as his equally-nutty, slightly less listenable forebears in nuttiness do. This nation is in a bind – and this current trough in the business cycle is just the beginning – and The One’s policies seem sure to keep the bind going for a nice long time.<\/p>\n

But more than any other talk show host – more than O’Reilly, vastly more than Hannity or Limbaugh or anyone in the Salem or TRN stables of hosts – when I listen to Beck, I feel like I’m listening to someone who regards the whole mess as less than a blight on the nation he loves and the society that allows him to earn a living doing what he does than as material. <\/em>
\nI know he has fans out there.\u00a0 Let me break this down for you; stop.<\/p>\n

Whenever I bag on Beck, his fans write in to defend him. Feel free.\u00a0 But be advised; you’re wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows one; the neighborhood Jeremiah. He’s the guy who hangs out at the hardware store, stocking up on the one hand, ranting about the “Trilateral Commission undercutting our currency” and proclaiming that “in five years the United States’ll be like Red China” on the other.\u00a0 He was a survivalist before the term became a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-talk-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}