Why Glenn Beck Lost It

By Dana Milbank, The Washington Post

10 April 11

n Friday, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent, as businesses added jobs for the 13th straight month.

On Wednesday, Fox News announced that it was ending Glenn Beck's daily cable-TV show.

These are not unrelated events.

When Beck's show made its debut on Fox News Channel in January 2009, the nation was in the throes of an economic collapse the likes of which had not been seen since the 1930s. Beck's angry broadcasts about the nation's imminent doom perfectly rode the wave of fear that had washed across the nation, and the relatively unknown entertainer suddenly had 3 million viewers a night - and tens of thousands answering his call to rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

But as the recession began to ease, Beck's apocalyptic forecasts and ominous conspiracies became less persuasive, and his audience began to drift away. Beck responded with a doubling-down that ultimately brought about his demise on Fox.

He pushed further into dark conspiracies, urging his viewers to hoard food in their homes and to buy freeze-dried meals for sustenance when civilization breaks down. He spun a conspiracy theory in which the American left was in cahoots with an emerging caliphate in the Middle East. And, most ominously, he began to traffic regularly in anti-Semitic themes.

This vile turn for Beck reached its logical extreme two weeks ago, when he devoted his entire show to a conspiracy theory about various bankers, including the Rothschilds, to create the Federal Reserve. To make this case, Beck hosted the conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who has publicly argued that the anti-Semitic tract "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" "accurately describes much of what is happening in our world today."

Griffin's Web site dabbles in a variety of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including his view that "present-day political Zionists are promoting the New World Order."

A month earlier, Beck, on his radio program, had described Reform rabbis as "generally political in nature," adding: "It's almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way."

A few months before that, he had attacked the Jewish billionaire George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, as a "puppet master" and read descriptions of him as an "unscrupulous profiteer" who "sucks the blood from people." Beck falsely called Soros "a collaborator" with Nazis who "saw people into the gas chambers."

Fox deserves credit for finally putting an end to this. Its joint statement with Beck's production company, claiming that they will "work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects," is almost certainly window-dressing; you can be confident Fox won't have Beck reopening what his Fox News colleague Shepard Smith dubbed the "fear chamber."

In banishing Beck, about whom I wrote a critical book last year, Fox has made an important distinction: It's one thing to promote partisan journalism, but it's entirely different to engage in race baiting and fringe conspiracy claims. Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity may have their excesses, but their mainstream conservatism is in an entirely different category from Beck.

Fox has rightly, if belatedly, declared that there is no place for Beck's messages on its airwaves, and Beck will return to the fringes, where such ideas have always existed. Because his end-of-the-world themes will no longer be broadcast by a mainstream outlet, there will be less of a chance for him to inspire off-balance characters to violence.

There are, happily, signs that the influences that undermined Beck are doing the same to other purveyors of fear. The March Washington Post-ABC News poll found that Sarah Palin's favorability rating among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents had dropped to 58 percent from 70 percent in October and 88 percent in 2008. Her negative ratings among Republicans are higher than those of other prospective Republican presidential candidates.

In another indication of abating anger, a CNN poll released last week found that the percentage of the public viewing the Tea Party unfavorably had increased to 47 percent, from 26 percent in January 2010. Thirty-two percent have a favorable view.

Beck, in losing his mass-media perch, is repeating the history of Father Charles Coughlin, the radio priest of the Great Depression. Economic hardship gave him an audience even greater than Beck's, but as his calls to drive "the money changers from the temple" became more vitriolic, his broadcast sponsors dropped him. He gradually faded from relevance as his angry themes lost their hold on Americans and his anti-Semitism became more pronounced.

It is a sign of the nation's health and resilience that Beck, after 27 months at Fox, is meeting a similar end.

Right-Wing Bullies Hold Nation Hostage

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

09 April 11

Why the Right-Wing Bullies Will Hold the Nation Hostage Again and Again

hen I was a small boy I was bullied more than most, mainly because I was a foot shorter than than everyone else. They demanded the cupcake my mother had packed in my lunchbox, or, they said, they'd beat me up. After a close call in the boy's room, I paid up. Weeks later, they demanded half my sandwich as well. I gave in to that one, too. But I could see what was coming next. They'd demand everything else. Somewhere along the line I decided I'd have to take a stand. The fight wasn't pleasant. But the bullies stopped their bullying.

I hope the President decides he has to take a stand, and the sooner the better. Last December he caved in to Republican demands that the Bush tax cut be extended to wealthier Americans for two more years, at a cost of more than $60 billion. That was only the beginning - the equivalent of my cupcake.

Last night he gave away more than half the sandwich - $39 billion less than was budgeted for 2010, $79 billion less than he originally requested. Non-defense discretionary spending - basically, everything from roads and bridges to schools and innumerable programs for the poor - has been slashed.

The right-wing bullies are emboldened. They will hold the nation hostage again and again.

In a few weeks the debt ceiling has to be raised. After that, next year's budget has to be decided on. House Budget Chair Paul Ryan has already put forward proposals to turn Medicare into vouchers that funnel money to private insurance companies, turn Medicaid and Food Stamps into block grants that give states discretion to shift them to the non-poor, and give even more big tax cuts to the rich.

There will also be Republican votes to de-fund the new health care law.

"Americans of different beliefs came together," he announced late last night. It was the "largest spending cut in our history." He sounded triumphant. In fact, he's encouraging the bullies onward.

All the while, he and the Democratic leadership in Congress refuse to refute the Republicans' big lie - that spending cuts will lead to more jobs. In fact, spending cuts now will lead to fewer jobs. They'll slow down an already-anemic recovery. That will cause immense and unnecessary suffering for millions of Americans.

The President continues to legitimize the Republican claim that too much government spending caused the economy to tank, and that by cutting back spending we'll get the economy going again.

Even before the bullies began hammering him his deficit commission already recommended $3 of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase. Then the President froze non-defense domestic spending and froze federal pay. And he continues to draw the false analogy between a family's budget and the national budget.

He is losing the war of ideas because he won't tell the American public the truth: That we need more government spending now - not less - in order to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

That we got into the Great Recession because Wall Street went bonkers and government failed to do its job at regulating financial markets. And that much of the current deficit comes from the necessary response to that financial crisis.

That the only ways to deal with the long-term budget problem is to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes, and to slow down soaring health-care costs.

And that, at a deeper level, the increasingly lopsided distribution of income and wealth has robbed the vast working middle class of the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going at full capacity.

"We preserved the investments we need to win the future," he said last night. That's not true. The budget he just approved will cut Pell grants to poor kids, while states continue massive cutbacks in school spending - firing tens of thousands of teachers and raising fees at public universities. The budget he approved is cruel to the nation's working class and poor.

It is impossible to fight bullies merely by saying they're going too far.

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including "The Work of Nations," "Locked in the Cabinet," "Supercapitalism" and his latest book, "AFTERSHOCK: The Next Economy and America's Future." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.