Apocalypse soon
Obama
and his followers are out to get you, Glenn Beck warns the faithful. 'Where you
run is to God'
By Allen
Abel
'I think what's
coming is horrific. I don't even want to say it. I hope that I'm wrong. I pray
that I'm wrong ...
"Well, that's
good for the ratings! Back in a minute."
The Glenn Beck
Program – "the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment" – is luring
me through the lowlands of colonial
"You cannot
imagine the size of the army that is arrayed against you ...
"You have to be
prepared to take rocks to the head. You have to be prepared to lose everything
..."
The man at the
microphone is a widely acclaimed, often defamed, self-proclaimed beacon of
Light and Truth on the cliff-side of an ocean of liberal lies. The
"army" against which Beck musters his tens of millions of adherents
on AM, FM and satellite talk-radio, his viewers on the Fox News television
network, the attendees at his sold-out stadium shows, patriotic rallies,
religious revivals and business breakfasts, and the readers of his best-selling
fiction and non-fiction books, is the Obama-Democratic-East-Coast-left-wing
blitzkrieg of bigger government, secular humanism, "progressive"
internationalism and Beck's especial bugbear in recent weeks, "social
justice."
My destination today
is a personal appearance by Beck himself, in company with fellow conservative
commentator Bill O'Reilly, on stage at
To a caller:
"You're exactly right, Tyrone. There isn't any place to run.
"Americans are
not going to be popular in the coming years.
"Where you run
is to God. There's protection there."
In 2009, Beck's
incessant, impassioned touring, writing and broadcasting earned $32 million for
this Mormon father of two small children, according to Forbes magazine, a
salary befitting an all-star outfielder or a subprime mortgage trader at
Goldman Sachs. For a 46-year-old former "morning zoo" shock jock and
recovering alcoholic and drug user out of Washington state – nearly as far
beyond the Capital Beltway as Sarah Palin's Wasilla, Alaska – the ascent of
Obama has been very good business, indeed.
"Don't call me a
Nazi. I'm not the one saying 'limit speech.' I'm not the one saying 'tax
speech.'
"Warning.
Warning. "Sigh.
(Pause.)
"Sponsor this
half-hour is Freedom Works."
"If things
really start to melt down, can we come across the border?" Beck once asked
Michael Buble.
Not all yokels
On my way to the
arena, I stop at the
"I think he's a
very deep-feeling person," Carmen Bittinger says of Glenn Beck. "He's
passionate about his beliefs, and I believe that it really comes from deep
inside. He does his research and he connects the dots and he's not afraid to
say 'I have faith.' My fear is that if we lose too much faith, we'll lose the
blessings that this country has been given.
"We're walking
on eggshells because we're afraid of offending anyone. Everything is 'racist,'
or 'profiling.' We've got away from what this country was founded on. The
secular movement is trying to take God out of everything. I'm a believer, but I
don't stuff it down anyone's throat. But these days, the liberals criticize anyone
who has any religious beliefs at all."
"Do you think
he's right when he says 'I think what's coming is horrific?'" I ask the
couple.
"I'm not a
psychic," Charles Bittinger replies. "But it could. It could. I see
very bad things ahead for my clients. It all goes back to when Obama was
running for president, and he said, 'I intend to fundamentally change the
So does Glenn Beck,
at least for public consumption, whether out of deep conviction or out of
fealty for sponsors that include marketers of gold bullion, emergency
generators and life-sustaining supplies of food and seeds.
(Last week, on a day
when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was plummeting by more than 350 points,
Beck invited O'Reilly to his radio program to promote their "Bold and
Fresh" tour. The multimillionaire asked how O'Reilly was spending his own
considerable assets, "while I take some of my extra money and I buy food."
"I'm buying
beat-up stocks right now," O'Reilly said. "Not a lot. Not a lot. But
certain stocks that I believe certain companies that are well-run and have a
future in the marketplace, I'm buying them now. I'm not an Armageddon
guy."
"I know,"
said Glenn Beck. "I am. I'm looking for the mountains to split."
"Isn't he just
making a good living by fearmongering?" I ask the Bittingers.
"If you're on
the Titanic," Charles says, "and an iceberg has just been struck, and
you tell people to put on life-jackets, I don't think that's
fearmongering."
"So," I
wonder, "Is your cellar stuffed with gold bars?"
"No,"
Carmen smiles. "But our kids do call the basement 'Mom's grocery store.'
"
"I am not a
journalist," Glenn Beck often shrugs.
"I could give a
crap about the political process," he told Forbes last year.
"The time has
come for a second American Revolution," he writes in a 2009 work entitled
Glenn Beck's Common Sense: the Case against an Out-Of-Control Government.
"Bring your passion, but leave your muskets at home."
He took his children
to see Cirque du Soleil in
Academic interest
only
So there are forces
arrayed against Beck, to say the least. On Aug. 28, with a rally at the Lincoln
Memorial in
"Does he scare
you?" I ask Michael Clemons, PhD, director of the Institute for the Study
of Race and Ethnicity at Old Dominion. We're in his office across the street
from the coliseum where Beck and O'Reilly will speak.
"No, he doesn't
frighten me," the scholar replies. "To me, he's the manifestation of
a certain segment of American society that's been around since the Civil Rights
movement. Plus, there's been a major downturn in the economy, and along with
that came a lot of fear. And remember, he comes on at 10 o'clock in the
morning. Who's got time to be listening to the radio at that time?"
Clemons admits that
he does, once in a while, but purely out of academic interest.
"He quite
brilliantly is exploiting these conditions for the sake of promoting his
show," he says.
"I'm not sure
that everything that comes out of his mouth is what he believes, but he is very
sharp at the marketing of his products. He clearly understands how an
evangelical perspective, combined with conservatism and libertarian values, can
have a powerful effect on a demographic that's been somewhat deprived of
leadership."
"Do you see him
as an evangelist?" I ask.
"No. But if you
ask me, do I see him as the leader of a congregation, I might."
"Is there any
middle ground in this country any more?" I wonder.
"Perhaps Obama
is," Clemons says.
The arena roars and
rises when Glenn Beck takes the stage and launches into a series of penis jokes
about a Congressman named Weiner, who has been criticizing Beck's hawking of
solid gold as a hedge against the Apocalypse.
Then comes a bashing
of Obama's condemnation of Arizona's new immigration law and a mocking of the
president of Mexico – complete with a Speedy Gonzales accent – that is somewhat
ironic in a hall whose concession stands are named Nacho Villa.
"I've never seen
a president come out and bash
Mixing metaphors –
"they have built a house of cards and they will fall like dominoes" –
and hitting all his standard notes, Beck plays the packed house like a
virtuoso. He gives the audience (older, whiter, perhaps politer than the
American median, though with many young people, Navy ratings and a very few
Asian and African-American faces in the mix) precisely what they came to hear.
"Read the
Constitution!" he cries. (But not literally. None of his famous teardrops
soak the stage tonight.) "Know who the Founders were. And get back to
church!"
Hushed tones now, and
talk of God.
"Think how
tolerant He has been. Think of His mighty hand, and how he wants to say
'Enough!' "
The rafters shake.
"Don't you want
to live in the country we thought we lived in?" demands Glenn Beck.
(Click to enlarge)
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