Free Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America by Dana Milbank

sinking now,” he continued, explaining his own preparations for the end. “I’ve been eating fruit all day because I realized—I got news for you, man. A world without cupcakes, I’m dead within two hours. I got to get into shape.” He also advised viewers to “turn to God and live.”
    But they apparently don’t have much time left to find God. “Is America going to survive?” he asked his viewers a month before offering them the Titanic analogy. “Or are we going to fundamentally transform into something that nobody can describe or identify?” The evidence, in Beck’s world, points to the latter outcome.
    One night he told viewers that Iranian leaders “are telling their people that these are the End of Days, setting them up for something, and there is something about the Persian Gulf turning blood red, and that is now happening.”
    The health-care bill, he said, “is the end of America as you know it.” The political system, he said, “is corrupt! And if we don’t fix it, we’re doomed.” As things stand now, he said, “We’re facing the destruction of our country in the next—I don’t even know—one year, five years, ten years. But it’s coming—on this course, it’s coming.”
    For one show he even brought out a Jenga building set and began to play with it to illustrate how the system would collapse. “The game that we’re playing right now is, how many of these can be taken out?” he continued. “How many of these problems and solutions can you slide out before the whole darn thing collapses?” After he finished the game, he told viewers that “before you know it, the whole thing will collapse … It will collapse on you and your family.”
    When Obama spoke about his cap-and-trade proposal for curbing greenhouse gases, Beck tore away papers pasted to his chalkboard. “You’re going to see a black and white world, man, that is nothing but destruction and ugly,” he forecast. “I don’t know why no one else will tell you the truth about all these things … It is only when you take down the mask of sunshine and lollipops that you will see the real thing, the real image: destruction!”
    Even Beck had to realize the apocalypse thing was getting a bit too much. One night, after his doomsday talk was mocked by Stephen Colbert, Beck brought his own “fear consultant” onto the show.
    “Now, I fully appreciate that you’re very worried about expanding government, Islamic fascism, the trampling of the Constitution, economic meltdown, socialistic policies, Mexico, North Korea, Pakistan, End Times, global unrest, Al Franken, street riots, cholesterol, salmon, yada yada,” the consultant said.
    “I’m actually not trying to be alarming,” said Beck.
    “No, you need to be more alarming, Glenn. Killer bees! … Black holes!”
    Alas, there was no stopping the march to Armageddon:
    “Your right to keep and bear arms is under attack.”
    “Your freedom of speech is under attack.”
    “Our freedom is under attack.”
    “Our Constitution is under attack.”
    “Families are under attack.”
    “Religion is under attack.”
    “Faith is under attack.”
    “The entire system is under attack.”
    “Talk radio is under attack.”
    “Fox is under attack.”
    “I’m under attack.”
    “I think everybody is under attack.”
    “We’re all under attack.”
    “God is under attack.”
    “We are under attack in almost every shape and form in America.”
    Okay, Glenn. We got the idea.
    “You know, I know we don’t know each other,” Beck told his viewers one night, “but I feel like I know you … I think you fear for our future.”
    How couldn’t they? They’ve been watching Glenn Beck.

CHAPTER 5
CRAZY LIKE A FOX

    Is Glenn Beck crazy?
    The question has been answered in the affirmative by no less an authority than Glenn Beck. He did this while interviewing himself.
    “There is a talk-radio host you may have heard of that many blogs around the country said was nearly