Last month, syndicated radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck's appearance at a book signing at Borders in Tampa brought in more than a thousand people, who each got about five seconds of face time with the media sensation, as he maintained a perpetual smile while scribbling his initials on the title page of his latest New York Times best-seller, Arguing With Idiots. His visit later in the day at the Villages retirement community north of Orlando brought in more than 25,000 people. That's where he made his much-hyped announcement about his "100 Year Plan" that will kick off next year, featuring voter-registration drives, a series of seven education rallies and a grand finale demonstration in Washington in late August.
For the conservative "everyman" whose popularity has skyrocketed over the past year, the Tampa appearance represented a return to his radio roots: From 2000-2002 he was an afternoon talk-show host on 970 WFLA-AM. Picked up nationally after 9/11, he progressed from radio and TV to books, DVDs, concerts and The 9/12 Project, the initiative that helped spawn the "Tea Party" movement earlier this year, bringing conservatives together against the excesses of both the Democratic and Republican parties (a favorite Beck theme), though in many cases the events seemed to be showcases for bashing Barack Obama.
Now Beck plans to out-Obama Obama: He wants to be a community organizer. Which leads to a series of questions, such as: How serious should he be taken? Is the Mormon Libertarian's full leap into advocacy for conservative leaders ultimately good or bad for the Republican Party? Or has he, as the phrase goes, simply jumped the shark?
As the line snaked outside the parking lot at Borders and past Comp USA running south on Dale Mabry two Saturdays ago, CL visited with several people to try to understand the Beck phenomenon. We learned something rather quickly: Even though Beck has been nationally syndicated on the radio for nearly eight years and has been featured nightly on cable TV since 2006, his brand only truly soared this year as two major events lined up in harmonic convergence for the self-proclaimed "Rodeo Clown."
One was his debut January 19 as a host on the Fox News Channel. The other happened the very next day, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the nation's 44th president.
In line at Borders, Anne Rochester from New Port Richey was sitting on the asphalt parking lot balancing two handwritten signs that promoted Arguing with Idiots. She said she had only become familiar with Beck this year, especially when he began promoting his 9/12 Project. "I went to a tea party. That was excellent," she said. "He says what he feels and he says it like it is. He's not afraid to tell the truth like the other stations are, and that's why I like Glenn Beck."
Jack Fallon from Tarpon Springs said of Beck, "He tells the truth. He gives you the figures and asks you make up your own mind."
Phyllis Tropea from Palm Harbor on Beck: "He's wonderful. He scares me, but he's wonderful." When asked what was particularly frightening about Beck's message, she replied, "Well, if you hear what he says and you listen to him, you understand the trouble America is in."
One of the few persons of color I noticed in line was a Pasco County man named Leroy, who said, "I like his openness, the way he brings everything to you, very informative, very personable. He's kind of my favorite. … I say the way he brings his show to the people really makes it interesting."
A young woman named Kristen from Sarasota initially said that she was reluctant to be speaking to CL, since "it leans left." But after a momentary pause she then began listing a number of programs that President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress are considering, including a cap and trade energy policy that she derisively referred to as "cap and tax." As she looked up and down at the hundreds of people in line she said, "These are the people who can change that. They're standing in line right now. We are the people who can change." It took a few seconds before I registered how similar the line sounded to the one that Obama and his supporters began using nearly two years ago on the campaign trail: We are the ones we've been waiting for.
As polls show President Obama's approval rating dropping just below 50 percent for the first time (and Congress' hovering at barely half that), it's apparent that there's a strong anti-government mood amongst the populace that hasn't been felt so prominently since the early 1990s and the candidacy of Ross Perot. That discontent began with the bipartisan $700 billion bailout plan for the nation's financial institutions (hated in many quarters by both liberals and conservatives) and President Obama's huge stimulus bill (the most expensive piece of domestic legislation ever), then spilled over with the government takeover of the auto industry.
Mix with this volatile brew an escalating federal deficit and an unemployment rate that's the highest since leg-warmers were hip, and what you have is a modern-day Howard Beale, reborn in the persona of Glenn Beck — though his critics say his shtick is nothing more than a manifestation of paranoia.
His most egregious comment in a year of controversial statements was his off-the-cuff remark on the morning program Fox & Friends, when during the Henry Louis Gates/Beergate controversy, Beck called the president a racist and said "he has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture."
Led by protests and a campaign targeting Beck's commercial sponsors by the group Color of Change, no fewer than 80 advertisers left his television program in the wake of those comments, and a viewing of his 5 p.m. program recently showed that they haven't returned. Ads from The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal and the National Highway Traffic Safety administration were featured on a recent broadcast.
Other Beck comments criticized by liberal media watchdog group Media Matters include his statement that "Everything that is getting pushed through Congress, including this health care bill" is "driven by President Obama's thinking on … reparations" and his desire to "settle old racial scores." Media Matters also cite Beck's warning that the White House and progressives are "taking you to a place to be slaughtered."
Perhaps that's what Beck's fans mean when they say that his appeal lies in his ability "to tell it like it is."
But other observers say that Beck's easy-going, at times humorous normal-guy persona is why some of his fans are drawn to him in a more immediate way than to fellow travelers like Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh.
Cl contributor Tom Bortnyk is the author of the conservative blog Informed-Dissent. He says what distinguishes Beck from other conservative voices is that "Beck is different because he is aware of his shortcomings and does not try to hide his flaws. In this way, he seems more human, and people can more easily relate. His daughter is a special needs child, his mother committed suicide when he was younger, and he was an alcoholic/drug addict for much of his life."
Beck has been known to talk about those family issues extensively (some say shamelessly) in a way that journalist Alexander Zaitchek says that, for better or worse, one can't imagine somebody like Sean Hannity ever doing.
Zaitchek is a journalist working on a book about Beck that will be published next year. He came to Tampa earlier this year to research the beginning of Beck's ascendancy. ("This is where it all began," Beck told his audience at Borders.)
Beck has been a writing machine since 2003, cranking out six different books in that time, but Zaitchek says one shouldn't be that impressed by the cable star's literary prowess.
"He admits his last book had 11 writing credits," says the correspondent, who recently wrote a piece for Salon.com about Beck's favorite writer and thinker, the late "right-wing crank" W. Cleon Skousen. "[Glenn Beck's] Common Sense had a ghostwriter listed on the title page. I don't think he's capable of putting together a sentence. He's self-educated."
Beck has already announced that his education rallies next year will climax August 28 in the National Mall in D.C. (on the anniversary of MLK's "I have a dream" speech) with the release of yet another book that will "provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps" to launch "a new national movement to restore our great country."
Will Beck influence next year's elections? Some Democrats say he could and that they welcome it, pointing to similar comments made in recent weeks by Beck and his (unelectable in their view) ideological soulmate Sarah Palin.
Mitch Kates is a Democratic political consultant in St. Petersburg. He calls Beck a "flash in the pan," saying that right now he "might be riding a crest of popularity … but at some point he's just going to flame out."
Kates doesn't believe that Beck (or Palin) is attracting any new followers to the cause. He admits that the current mood of the country is pessimistic, but says that "change has never been easy, and the people who are supporting over-the-top individuals like Beck and Palin, they've never been supporters of change, or to progress or the progressive movement or individuals, so it's not like they're gaining a new audience, it's just that their audience is getting ginned up."
Beck has ginned up some people to run for office already, like Eric Forcade, running for Congress in Pinellas County's District 10 next year if longtime Representative Bill Young finally calls it a day and opts not to run for another term. Forcade says he's been inspired by Glenn Beck, tea parties and the whole 9/12 movement.
In his speech at the Villages describing his "100 Year Plan," Beck said that "our Libertarian friends never win elections because they always stand up and say that on Tuesday I'm going to abolish the IRS and on Thursday I'm bringing all of our troops home from around the world, and honestly, it can't be done. … Some of the stupid stuff we can do … but the rest of it may take 2 years, 4 years, 10 years. We need to start thinking like the Chinese for a 100 year plan for America!"
The folks at Media Matters don't appreciate the new advocacy stances. Press Secretary Jess Levin told CL, "Glenn Beck has always had trouble acknowledging that his show is on a news network. Last week he erased the line between journalism and political advocacy. He wasn't technically wearing his Fox hat when he spoke in Florida, but he sounds more like a presidential candidate than a television personality. If he's not running in 2012, I don't know what he's doing."
Glenn Beck running in 2012? How about with Sarah Palin? The author of Going Rogue laughed when asked about that possibility by the conservative website Newsmax, but said, "We'll see." With Democrats already worried about their own community organizer's re-election chances, Palin/Beck could be a dream ticket for conservative activists.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2009.