Dana Millbank continues exposing Glenn Beck for the ignorant fraud that he is. All the same, I am less than moved by the series. Even acknowledging, as Bob Somerby does, that this kind of thing should be rewarded with a certain level of praise as the proper role of functioning journalism, I am left frustrated because of one simple fact - anyone paying attention has known for quite some time that Beck is a crank, a kook, purveyor of conspiracy theories that don't even have the single virtue of some facts behind them, and an ignoramus miseducating two million people nightly.
After the Bolshevik Revolution was secure, Lenin and Trotsky turned their attention to the west. Lenin decided that it was necessary to coddle the socialist parties in western Europe, calling them "useful idiots". Hardly revolutionary, these participants in the democratic process (as it existed in Europe in the 20's) became lightning rods for capitalist rage. Lenin figured that, as long as the ruling class focused their ire on these parties, the real revolutionaries, the real threats to the capitalist order - the communists - could make their way to power unencumbered by official attention. Obviously, that isn't what happened, but the idea of using front groups to disguise the workings of very real threats to the social and political order became embedded in the practice of politics.
Funny enough, the group that aped this particular practice was the rabidly anti-communist group The John Birch Society. Encouraged to do whatever it took to fight the impending communist takeover, orchestrated from above by no less a communist sympathizer than Dwight Eisenhower, the Birchers included creating front groups with innocuous-sounding names and bland mission statements to encourage greater participation in the defense of "freedom".
Oligarchs are far better at this sort of thing than independent actors with neither power nor influence. While not orchestrated consciously, the emergence of various figures to distract and entertain people is a recurrent reality.
We are currently in the throes of our greatest social, political, and economic crisis in nearly a century. It has been made suddenly very much worse by the revelation that banks, continuing their fraudulent, illegal behavior when they should have rested, quietly chastened, may have expropriated thousands, maybe millions, of homes illegally. Now sold at bargain-basement prices, the ownership of these homes can now become a matter of legal wrangling that may never be untangled.
For all that, what dominates so much of our public discussion? Christine O'Donnell's casual relationship with the truth. Whether an aide to California Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown thought calling Republican candidate Meg Whitman a "whore" was a good campaign tactic. Finally, after last week's long piece and today's shorter one, we have Glenn Beck. Lachrymose, dramatic, Beck draws the attention of millions of people with his overwrought "discoveries" such as the American purchase of Alaska in the 1950's (it was purchased from the Russians in 1867) and the connivance of Barack Obama and George Soros to enrich the latter while empowering the former.
Hazarding a guess, I think this attention Beck is finally receiving, while a good thing, also indicates a certain wariness on the part of both his employers at News Corp. and the larger political class, regardless of party, at the attention and following he has. While not a member of the Tea Party, he certainly has his followers. His August rally at the Lincoln Memorial showed that, while not nearly as large as claimed by his dedicated fans, he does have disciples who are working to bring to office people who think and believe as he does. Rather than useful, the legions of Tea Partiers, encouraged by the notion that there really is someone who gives easy answers to the questions they face in the midst of strife, a name and a face to the enemy, now pose a threat to the real seats of power. The Establishment is waking up to the possibility that their creation will, New Prometheus-like, break its chains. Like Mary Shelley's fictional creature, who educated himself by stealing books by Goethe and others from a peasant (nice touch, that), Beck and his followers are armed with the auto-didact's wonder at worlds revealed through sources never dreamed. Except, alas, the sources upon which Beck and his followers rely are woefully bad.
It would have been far better had Beck's work been exposed two years ago or more. Not just Beck, however. Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Levin - the whole panoply of right-wing publicists who peddle fake notions and potions have certainly been exposed by Media Matters for America, among other websites. They preach to the choir, and there has been a real need to speak out to a far larger audience about the political snake oil on offer. It has been needed not for years, but decades.
While commendable, Millbank's piece is just too little, too late.
