GLENN BECK'S TORTURE PORN

I don't know what happened in Glenn Beck's early life -- I haven't read his novel, though I know his publisher says that the Beck-surrogate protagonist experiences a "dark and painful journey on the road to manhood." I know Beck is a recovering alcoholic. I also know he weeps a lot. I sense that he's someone who's really, really damaged.

Having said that, I want you to watch a sick clip from his show I've posted below.

If you come in in the middle and you just listen to the audio, it's garden-variety right-wing bombast, a wearying catalog of the alleged recent sins of President Obama (including some Obama had nothing to do with, like the Congressional Black Caucus trip to Cuba).

But the depraved twist is that Beck first imagines himself being shot by Obama:

Maybe I'm alone, but I think it would just be faster if he just shot me in the head. How much more -- how much more can he disenfrachise all of us?

After this remark -- which, to me, hints at fantasies of suicide by cop -- Beck introduces a studio guest ("Let's say Bill is the average American here and I'm President Obama") ... and then simulates dousing him with gasoline so that he can set him on fire.



I don't care if this done with big smiles. I don't care that a note appears on the screen saying, "It's water, I promise!" I don't care that the victim is from that idiotic Fox political "comedy" show Red Eye. I'm convinced that there's something real and visceral to Beck about this drama of psychopathy. Here's the most even-tempered president we've had in my lifetime -- and Beck is imagining him as a movie psychopath played by Dennis Hopper, or some antihero of torture porn. What is it in Beck's life that makes this idea occur to him? And what is it in Beck that makes him want to be the sadist he's accusing of abuse?

Fox should change the name of the show to Glenn Beck: Criminal Mind.

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UPDATE: Media Matters and Hunter are thinking pretty much what I'm thinking.


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MORE: David Neiwert reads the Beck rant literally, and misses any subtext:

Barack Obama wants to burn Joe Q. Public alive....

That was pretty much what Glenn Beck told his Fox News audience yesterday....

Yes, but it was Beck's fantasy that Obama was burning him (and the rest of the public) alive -- so why wasn't Beck the one sitting there being doused? Simple: He wanted to act out this sadistic act of homicide -- and project it onto Obama. Only his therapist knows why.

By the way, what's up with all the apocalyptic imagery from right-wing fearmongers this week? You know the lyrics -- "No more water but the fire next time"? Well this week we got the water and the fire -- the latter from Beck, the former from that anti-gay-marriage ad:

"There's a storm gathering. The clouds are dark, and the winds are strong, and I am afraid...."

The American right is an apocalyptic death cult -- true or false?