“IS GLENN BECK Bad for America?”, asks TIME, in what is clearly a rhetorical question for the Magazine. Better Beck’s “pox-on-both-parties populism” than nothing (or than TIME), is my reply.
“I don’t trust a single weasel in Washington. I don’t care what party they’re from. But unless we trust each other, we’re not going to make it.” This last bit of standard Beck fare is, of course, nonsense, to which TIME, not unreasonably, responds thus:
“How can we trust each other, though, when the integrated economy of ranters and their delighted-to-be-outraged critics are such a model of profitability?”
“Extreme talk, especially as practiced by a genuine talent like Beck, squeezes maximum profit from a relatively small, deeply invested audience, selling essentially the same product in multiple forms. The more the host is criticized, the more committed the original audience becomes. And the more committed the audience, the bigger target it presents to the rant industry on the other side of the spectrum. A liberal group called Color of Change has organized an advertiser boycott of Beck’s TV show — great publicity for the group and a boon to Beck’s ratings.”
“If it’s E pluribus unum you’re looking for, try American Idol.”
[SNIP]
The most disturbing thing about the “rant-racket” is in this snippet:
“Beck recently entered into a partnership with Simon & Schuster … to create a range of books for every audience, from children to teens to adults.”
…This as writers like myself struggle to find publishers for their books.
Kim Karsashian appeared on Sean Hannity’s ostensible news hour, and was praised by the anchor as a role model for “young girls” (read: budding sluts). With reference to this not unfamiliar sight on FoxNews, Richard Spencer, editor of Taki’s Magazine, Writes: “After this, Sean might wanna make some personnel changes in his Research department.” I think not. Has any one seen “the succession of vacuous, narcissistic, pig-ignorant panelists paraded on Sean Hannity’s ‘Great American Panel‘”? The cheap and nasty looking Kim Karsashian belongs on FoxNews, alongside that cable channel’s anchor ladies, and its chosen bimbo commentators who dress and behave a little like Karsashian.
For example, Geraldo is especially attached to a psychologist—a buxom, surgically altered, grotesque blond, who was once a playmate pinup. O’Reilly makes a mockery of the already ridiculous culture-warrior concept by dragging onto the set a very eager, slutty, East-European Internet exhibitionist to impart her “knowledge” of the English language, no less.
The girl on the screen could have been a Fox News anchorwoman, although she was by far prettier and less vulgar looking than the coarse loudmouths, whose lipstick-dripping mouths deliver, in fog-horn decibels, slogans like: “We Report, You Decide” and “Fair and Balanced.”
Appearing on “Your World” with Neil Cavuto, porn star Sunrise Adams attempted, rather touchingly, to play down her cheap hooker looks and sorry syntax with a pair of nerdy spectacles. But while she used the standard, dizzy, woman’s magazine self-realization routine to describe her occupation—“this is a pastime for me. This is just something for me to do and enjoy and to grow with”—it was her host, Cavuto, who was responsible for rolling out the welcoming waterbed for the porn star and her pimp, Steve Hirsch, co-founder of Vivid Entertainment.
But Fox is “sexing up” more than just news. It’s customary to see the skanky Jamison as a commentator on the E! Networks programs, but the news cable networks, with Fox in the lead, are not far behind. These faux-conservatives are certainly helping to mainstream society’s more dubious members. The class act that is Martha Stewart, for instance, is routinely derided on Fox. Their choice of ‘Lifestyle Guru’? The rotting flesh that is Gene Simmons of the band ‘Kiss.'”
FoxNews is full of big, mediocre egos who feel good around pea-brained, Jenna-Jamison lookalikes.
Update (August 24): Conservatives never tire of touting Miley Cyrus as another example of wholesomeness. They were furious with me for suggesting, in “Bomb Them With Bimbos,” that Miley Cyrus be exported to China:
What an excellent preemptive strike that would be. You just know that before long we’re going to be forced to partake in the awakening of yet another vacuous narcissist who flaunts her character flaws, and other folds, before millions of video voyeurs. A Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan in the making.
Admittedly, I know very little about “Hannah Montana” and her handlers. What I’ve seen of the overbearing, extremely precocious, brassy, and not very bright Miley Cyrus doesn’t conjure the “wholesome” descriptive. When I think of “wholesome,” I think of, say, Martina McBride. Miley in various states of undress, nestled in the arms of father Billy Ray Cyrus, gazing at him seductively—this may be cringe-making, but not surprising.
As for the whole blame Dad and Disney thing: Adopted by left and right alike, the paternalistic depiction of women as passive agents, demeaned by male-driven appetites, is feminist fiction. Miley Cyrus may be 15, but she’s a single-minded exhibitionist, propelled by the fame thing. She’s been raised like that. In all likelihood, Miley originated the idea of posing for Vanity Fair and would not stop pestering pappy until he relented. The typical American parent treats his teenager like a Delphic oracle. Any parent who has such a demigod under construction knows I’m right.
Those who persist in the he-done-me-wrong routine don’t have teenagers. Or are oblivious to the reversal in parent-child roles that has come to typify the dynamics in the American family.
In any event, as Lou Dobbs often exhorts, it’s time to get tough on China. I say let’s get dirty. Export Miley to China. What better way to addle the young minds of the competition?”
CHECK OUT this soft porn, suggestive, father-daughter tease. Tender, isn’t it? (NOT: this is twisted):
Kim Karsashian appeared on Sean Hannity’s ostensible news hour, and was praised by the anchor as a role model for “young girls” (read: budding sluts). With reference to this not unfamiliar sight on FoxNews, Richard Spencer, editor of Taki’s Magazine, Writes: “After this, Sean might wanna make some personnel changes in his Research department.” I think not. Has any one seen “the succession of vacuous, narcissistic, pig-ignorant panelists paraded on Sean Hannity’s ‘Great American Panel‘”? The cheap and nasty looking Kim Karsashian belongs on FoxNews, alongside that cable channel’s anchor ladies, and its chosen bimbo commentators who dress and behave a little like Karsashian.
For example, Geraldo is especially attached to a psychologist—a buxom, surgically altered, grotesque blond, who was once a playmate pinup. O’Reilly makes a mockery of the already ridiculous culture-warrior concept by dragging onto the set a very eager, slutty, East-European Internet exhibitionist to impart her “knowledge” of the English language, no less.
The girl on the screen could have been a Fox News anchorwoman, although she was by far prettier and less vulgar looking than the coarse loudmouths, whose lipstick-dripping mouths deliver, in fog-horn decibels, slogans like: “We Report, You Decide” and “Fair and Balanced.”
Appearing on “Your World” with Neil Cavuto, porn star Sunrise Adams attempted, rather touchingly, to play down her cheap hooker looks and sorry syntax with a pair of nerdy spectacles. But while she used the standard, dizzy, woman’s magazine self-realization routine to describe her occupation—“this is a pastime for me. This is just something for me to do and enjoy and to grow with”—it was her host, Cavuto, who was responsible for rolling out the welcoming waterbed for the porn star and her pimp, Steve Hirsch, co-founder of Vivid Entertainment.
But Fox is “sexing up” more than just news. It’s customary to see the skanky Jamison as a commentator on the E! Networks programs, but the news cable networks, with Fox in the lead, are not far behind. These faux-conservatives are certainly helping to mainstream society’s more dubious members. The class act that is Martha Stewart, for instance, is routinely derided on Fox. Their choice of ‘Lifestyle Guru’? The rotting flesh that is Gene Simmons of the band ‘Kiss.'”
FoxNews is full of big, mediocre egos who feel good around pea-brained, Jenna-Jamison lookalikes.
Update (August 24): Conservatives never tire of touting Miley Cyrus as another example of wholesomeness. They were furious with me for suggesting, in “Bomb Them With Bimbos,” that Miley Cyrus be exported to China:
What an excellent preemptive strike that would be. You just know that before long we’re going to be forced to partake in the awakening of yet another vacuous narcissist who flaunts her character flaws, and other folds, before millions of video voyeurs. A Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan in the making.
Admittedly, I know very little about “Hannah Montana” and her handlers. What I’ve seen of the overbearing, extremely precocious, brassy, and not very bright Miley Cyrus doesn’t conjure the “wholesome” descriptive. When I think of “wholesome,” I think of, say, Martina McBride. Miley in various states of undress, nestled in the arms of father Billy Ray Cyrus, gazing at him seductively—this may be cringe-making, but not surprising.
As for the whole blame Dad and Disney thing: Adopted by left and right alike, the paternalistic depiction of women as passive agents, demeaned by male-driven appetites, is feminist fiction. Miley Cyrus may be 15, but she’s a single-minded exhibitionist, propelled by the fame thing. She’s been raised like that. In all likelihood, Miley originated the idea of posing for Vanity Fair and would not stop pestering pappy until he relented. The typical American parent treats his teenager like a Delphic oracle. Any parent who has such a demigod under construction knows I’m right.
Those who persist in the he-done-me-wrong routine don’t have teenagers. Or are oblivious to the reversal in parent-child roles that has come to typify the dynamics in the American family.
In any event, as Lou Dobbs often exhorts, it’s time to get tough on China. I say let’s get dirty. Export Miley to China. What better way to addle the young minds of the competition?”
CHECK OUT this soft porn, suggestive, father-daughter tease. Tender, isn’t it? (NOT: this is twisted):
Thomas Fleming administers a dose of reality about our “Swedish American health-plantation,” the lying conservatives and their standard-bearers, Palin and Gingrich, an infantile and retarded under-class that makes for a sizable clamoring class, and most enjoyable: the good doctor cocks a snook at a servile, stupid, unfree people afraid to live or die:
“I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry,
And if whiskey don’t kill me, I‘ll live till I die.”
“The American medical system, however, teaches us to live each day in bondage to death. Not dying—as opposed to living well–is the big objective, followed only by being healthy. This is exactly like our educational system that is not at all concerned with training minds to be intelligent and creative but is only interested in propaganda, basic literacy and job skills. Since they cannot really improve the performance of the stupid, they create equality by stultifying the intelligent. The result of the American Health Education and Welfare State is three generations of Americans who are stupid, timid, and servile, incapable of appreciating anything better than Michael Jackson and Desperate Housewives. They cannot even roll their own cigarettes; indeed, they don’t smoke, not because it is a stupid vice but because it will cut short their entirely pointless lives. There is truth in what we used to say in the good old days, ‘Anyone can quit smoking, but it takes a man to face cancer.'” …
