Thumb Jig

"Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information."

-- John Erskine

I was looking through the archives at Media Matters, just to see what I may have missed by way of loony ring-wing commentary, and I found this guy, Glenn Beck. For those of you who have never heard of him, he's CNN's latest acquisition/public embarrassment. This radio-blowhard-turned-cable-news-info-monkey is of course an unabashed conservative in pursuit of Rush's ratings crown, but he's also so much less. At first I didn't think too much of Beck, he displayed all of the usual affectations symptomatic of the punditsphere: thinnly veiled racism; outlandish, unsupported allegations cloaked in opinion; sinister humor about as subtle and funny as a sledgehammer to the face. None of this was very surprising. However, what I stumbled across that did surprise the bejesus out of me is this, Beck attempting to recast his own hateful statements regarding Katrina and 9-11 victims (and quite badly at that, as far as world-class backpedalers go, he's probably in league with Jon Lovitz's "Liar" character from SNL). What's really bad news for Beck is he's not that interesting, and its for this reason that the plug is going to be pulled faster than he can say "Ahmadinedjad". Americans can forgive bigotry, sexism and wild finger-pointing - in fact we're willing to embrace all three - just as long as we're entertained.