Becking Order

You've likely seen the footage of Glenn Beck on The View where Whoopi and Babwa confront him about his manufactured version of an Amtrak encounter, one designed to make him look like some common-man victim of rich, liberal media elites.

One thing that struck me: Beck will not engage with Whoopi, but he's very apologetic and deferential toward Babwa. Now maybe this is about race, but I think it's more likely that it is about authority. The Whiny One instinctively bows before old, white exemplars of authority while he can't even make eye contact with critics he deems non-authoritative.

Loquacious McD pointed out something else about that interview. When asked to describe the "principles" for which he stood, he couldn't actually name any. Instead, he said "God," "George Washington," and "Thomas Jefferson," dropping names as totems of authority without offering any attempt at explaining what those figures themselves might have stood FOR. And "God," of course, is the ultimate symbol of the "authoritative individual" in whose reflected freedom Beck is vicariously basking. Since such authority is necessarily singular, it could never occur to Beck that there might be conflicts between them, say b/w an authoritarian God and the man who famously said, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." You'd hope a Mormon like Beck would have some appreciation for such sentiments, but then there's the tension b/w the history (one defined by persecution) and the doctrine (one defined by theocracy). Turns out, it's all good if you're in the Pantheon. He's got many gods and they all agree. How convenient.