Mock them if you want, but these people will be in power soon, because it's a two-party system and whether incumbents retain power or not depends largely on the state of the economy.
Well then I guess we'd better mock them while we still can!
Stewart's Beck impression is pretty good. It's too bad he'll be forced out and jailed when the Yay America Party rebounds.
I suspect this would be a lot funnier if I had ever seen Beck's show. But why would I want to subject myself to that?
4: He's nailing Beck's mannerisms with aplomb. Like, eerily spot-on. Cf..
That was the problem I had with the clip - never seen Glenn Beck! And I refuse to start. So fuck you, John Stewart, that wasn't that funny!
Although I'm sure it was.
max
['"When the sole voice of reason and sanity is Patrick Buchanan, you know you're in trouble." - js']
It occurs to me than I may have watched more Glenn Beck clips than your average bear.
Dammit, Stanley, we're trying to reconfigure our society into two separate hermetically sealed echo-chambers here.
I've certainly never watched a Glenn Beck clip. Life is depressing enough already.
I don't think you need to see much Beck to get it. I've only seen clips here and there that played on the Daily Show or Colbert.
I watched the clip linked in 5 with the sound off and that was enough to get the general idea.
There was a period there when I felt like every time I went to an airport, Glenn Beck was on the TVs so helpfully tuned to CNN at every gate.
I liked that they included "purity of essence" on the blackboard.
I'd seen maybe two Beck clips before this, one with the sound off and the other very short, and that was apparently enough to enjoy this.
I was really hoping to hear more about how Van Jones and "photosynthesis?" tied into this. Environmentalists are correpting Beck's precious bodily fluids to turn him into a solar power generator?
More elaboration on how the Feynman diagram on the right fits into the story would also be nice.
It seems to be an update of this Feynman diagram.
I thought leaving random crazy stuff on the board without talking about it was a nice touch, but that oligarhs clip suggests it would have been more "accurate" to have stuck strictly to the board, whatever it said.
I could probably watch Glenn Beck clips all night. It's a weakness.
Actually, the clip in five is funnier than Jon Stewart's spoof. To anybody skipping over it cause you don't want to get depressed, go back, it'll make your day.
20: A little painful to watch. But not nearly as painful as Olbermann's response, in which he cracks himself up while utterly failing to be funny.
Nothing, I just love that that's the way the caption ends.
"Then one radiates a gluon" is gonna be the next "then I found five dollars", I'm telling you.
I am finally watching They Live. Partway through, I realized that I'd seen some of it before on tv a long time ago.
I'll say it, even if nosflow won't: fuck gluons. Gluons suck.
I found it hilarious, and I think the fact I haven't seen more than 30 seconds of Glen Beck actually made it funnier. So often with parodies, the things that are the craziest are actually just straight copies of the original. Seeing them without seeing the original means that you are watching someone acting silly just out of the blue.
My ginourmous quarks have great charm, laydeez!
20: I could probably watch Glenn Beck clips all night. It's a weakness.
That explains it, Stanley! I used to watch CNN when, ya know, it started. And then it pretty much went over the top (as far as I was concerned) during Gulf War I. After that I drifted off to Headline News, which was better than the local stuff which seemed to feature nothing but dead bodies. But that was annoying in its own way, so eventually, I just drifted away to the net in the late 90's, somewhere. Particularly after HNN turned into, well, CNN, which turned into Fox, or something.
After 2001, right about the point we 'won' in Afghanistan, turning on the cable TV news started feeling like sitting back with a fresh six-pack of Lobotomy in a Can. I found not watching (except for the every-two-year ritual of election night) does wonders for the ability to think.
9: Dammit, Stanley, we're trying to reconfigure our society into two separate hermetically sealed echo-chambers here.
Hey! I read WND! And a few others, here and there. But it's all trivia. All your hardcore (substantive) winger action is in econ and military crud. Well, and in the Broderite factions (shhhh! They're bipartisan!). They ain't got nothin' else, except the few (American) high tory conservatives with no audience. That's why all this shit is so goddamn dumb.
27: They Live was great.
'I am here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum.'
max
['Wrestling's entire cultural contribution right there.']
31. last-1 is my favorite movie line ever.
The best thing about Glenn Beck is hearing my Texan friends praise Beck's petty resentments, like having to tip at restaurants, as the voice of the people. That never gets old.
33: My "favorite" in that vein was when he went off on Braille signs while still on CNN.
On his CNN Headline News program, in discussing the "politically correct world we live in," which, he said, will not allow "stereotypes or sensitive questions" to be broached, Glenn Beck claimed that Braille on walls (used to identify rooms for blind people) "drives me out of my mind."
I do wish Stewart had highlighted Beck's Vapo-rub crying trick.
I had read about the OLIGARHY episode but never seen it. It's funnier than I'd imagined. Beck is such a weird huckster; his affect in that clip is giving me a strange sense of deja vu, but I can't figure out exactly where it's coming from. Some blend of vegematic salesman, mediocre teacher, and corporate motivator.
33: The best thing about Glenn Beck is hearing my Texan friends praise Beck's petty resentments, like having to tip at restaurants, as the voice of the people.
With whom are you friends with, man?
35: Some blend of vegematic salesman, mediocre teacher, and corporate motivator.
...$cientologist?
max
['Koo-koo-kook-khu.']
It's commonplace for progressives to wish they had a figure like Beck, but I don't believe I could respect somebody who shed crocodile tears over whatever might be the liberal equivalent of fear of fluoridation and frotted himself on whoever might be the liberal equivalent of David Baldacci.*
* Seriously, have you ever read one of Baldacci's novels? The contempt and anxieties of the petit bourgeoisie are probably welcome fodder for Beck and his fans, but for anybody else they're creepy as hell.
$cientologist?
Unfortunately, my people got to Beck first. But there's something familiarly Elmer Gantry about the man.
Beck's emotinal hucksterism isn't uniquely Mormon, but it's very common within Mormonism.
The clip in 5 is far funnier, and the clip in 20 far stranger, than anything in Stewart's parody. We've been over this before, but these guys moved beyond parody several years ago. Stewart's trying hard, but it's unfortunately a lost cause.
40: How so? I'm too ignorant to be able to pose a more precise question, but curious.
Possibly related: when visiting Utah, I have been recurrently struck by the number of University of Phoenix-type places, the stacks of sales-method books in the SLC airport and the many cars and trucks that bear signs and decals advertising some work-from-home multilevel marketing scheme or other. It's kind of depressing.
42: This is a start at explaining it, particularly the section on Mormon masculinity. When Beck cries, it's like he's "bearing his testimony," something that all Mormons learn to perform -- and it's much better if you can summon tears. The Beck clips where he writes crazy things on chalkboards or makes a huge deal out of symbolism in art feel exactly like an Elders' Quorum lesson: basically Sunday School for the men of the congregation, taught by a lay member. Elders' Quorum teachers love to use cute pedagogical techniques like the "oligarh" acrostic.
And yeah, Mormon culture, especially in Utah, is completely pervaded by that icky, vaguely dishonest multi-level-marketing atmosphere. I'm not sure what explains that. Certainly a lot of higher-up Church leaders are former businessmen and are much admired. There's also a relentless middle-classness to Mormonism that those kinds of schemes appeal to. Maybe most importantly, committed Mormons are really good at remaining uncritical about what people with the trappings of authority say; there's a certain selection for gullibility or responsiveness to authority that creates fertile ground for scam artists.
43: Thanks. That is really interesting. Also, kind of creepy, but I suppose that is not a little due to my subconscious bedrock conviction that the only respectable religion is Congregationalism, as practiced in New England from roughly 1950-present.
Mormon culture, especially in Utah, is completely pervaded by that icky, vaguely dishonest multi-level-marketing atmosphere.
Similar to L.A., where it feels like half the population is working on a screenplay or some other aspect of getting into show business. Instead of show biz it's home business/investment idea/real estate/multi level marketing or whatever the latest flavor is.
Check out the second picture in this CT post. The image of the sword-to-ploughshare guy looks like it's a rendering of that ominous Soviet gift to Glenn Beck's Communist-Fascist-Progressive Rockefeller United Nations, but this time on an anti-communist poster in a church behind the Iron Curtain. MY HEAD ASPLODE.
The TAL episode from last night, "Bait and Switch," had an excellent little segment on Christian evangelical hucksterism, with a preacher who has decided that people don't actually appreciate being lied to, manipulated, and treated like they're stupid. I agree, but Glenn Beck does actually sort of have an audience, right?
I love that Soviet Realist style. Unfortunately, original posters of the prime era (1920s - 1940s) are butt expensive ($7-800 and up, last time I checked.
