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When did Glen Beck change so much?

 
 
 
J

Jolly_Penguin

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I just watched Glen Beck on Rubin's show. I hardly recognized him. He not only looks very different, but he speaks very differently with an entirely different calm collected attitude. He's not ranting at a chalkboard. He's not arguing for a totally crazy whckjob extreme position. He's arguing for the centre and talking about people on both fringes, and how to get them to stop being so polarized. Yes, he is still on the right of centre, but he is kind of coming across as a hippy Deepak Chopra type in a way. Rubin is the one steering things rightward here, especially near the end.Beck takes that bait and agrees but then steers things back off of partisanship again. This is weird. When did this happen with him? Am I remembering wrong, or did Beck used to be on par with Alex Jones?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIln7WXTk_w[/youtube]
 
Maybe he found the right medication doses or something. I’m glad he’s feeling better - watching clips of that guy’s show was worrisome.
 
Jolly_Penguin said:
I just watched Glen Beck on Rubin's show. I hardly recognized him. He not only looks very different, but he speaks very differently with an entirely different calm collected attitude. He's not ranting at a chalkboard. He's not arguing for a totally crazy whckjob extreme position. He's arguing for the centre and talking about people on both fringes, and how to get them to stop being so polarized. Yes, he is still on the right of centre, but he is kind of coming across as a hippy Deepak Chopra type in a way. Rubin is the one steering things rightward here, especially near the end.Beck takes that bait and agrees but then steers things back off of partisanship again. This is weird. When did this happen with him? Am I remembering wrong, or did Beck used to be on par with Alex Jones?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIln7WXTk_w[/youtube]
Click to expand...
What are you surprised about? Beck was more of a persona than anything else. After 9/11 he started selling the newer persona because it sold well. Prior to 9/11 he was less like that. Beck is likely looking at the market and "flat out fucked up" has been saturated by even the likes of Sean Hannity who went from right-wing asshat to authoritarian propagandist. So Beck shifted to a lesser sailed route.

And he is a fraud.
 
He admitted the errors of his ways, sort of. He has rejected political parties, conspiracy theories and wacky claims, and came around to treating left and right the same.

But he is still a wacky theist.
 
I didn't take the time to watch the video...sorry.

But I do know a couple of people who have been in Beck's orbit. And I don't know if he's really changed. When I say "orbit" I mean literally. Glenn believes that he is the sun, and that the people around him are planets in orbit around his personal gravity. That was the analogy he used with the staff on his old morning show.

I also get the impression that the trajectory of his career - from being a rising star in the conservative talk show world to being an also-ran with a failing network - has humbled him to an extent. Not that he's thinking that he needs to be more personally humble, but that his angle needs to be "I've been humbled" in order to climb back to the middle of the heap. He's kind of been left behind. Hannity rules the roost at Fox. Alex Jones pushed the nutter envelope in a way Glenn never could, and The Blaze wound up being a budget Breitbart without the benefit of sliding into the Trump administration like Bannon did.

Beck needs a new angle, and this whole "hey I'm not crazy" thing might work, but it is still an angle. He's not sincere. Just trying to salvage what's left of his brand.
 
My read has always been he has been mostly a showman and an act. There is a clip of him when he was in bed in a hospital with something minor. He acted like he was on the verge of dying.
 
Ford said:
Beck needs a new angle, and this whole "hey I'm not crazy" thing might work, but it is still an angle. He's not sincere. Just trying to salvage what's left of his brand.
Click to expand...

I don't doubt this. It also doesn't bother me, and I'd encourage it if it meant he had anything interesting to say. He sort of does, but nothing brilliant. Its a marked improvement.
 
Jordan Peterson strikes me as a snake oil salesman to a large degree, but he keeps stumbling into excellent points and illustrations of them (Cathy Newman interview; Eric Dyson debate), while also unintentionally demonstrating and illustrations some serious logic traps (Harris interview where he came across like Deepak Chopra, reading meaning into nothingness; Debate with Matt Dilihunty showing how the religious fail to understand atheism). Peterson is worth following for these reasons. Beck, I'm not sure if he's done a lot of the same. I'm just noting here how much he has changed.
 
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