The Glenn Beck Phenomenon

How is one to explain the spectacular rise in popularity of a man, who, until recently, had not attracted inordinate attention with his middling morning talk show (1), a popular but mostly unexceptional tenure on CNN Headline News and guest appearances on ABC’s Good Morning America?   Beck was already well known, to be sure, but his was hardly a household name.  Today it is.
After little more than a year at Fox News, The Glenn Beck Show attracts more viewers than CNN, MSNBC and HLN combined.  In itself, that would have been amazing, but considering that his program occupies a ‘graveyard’ time-slot for political commentary, (2) it is nothing short of phenomenal.  It is fair to say that Beck now ranks among the very best-known conservative spokesmen in America and has a substantial following abroad.


In my view four things account for Mr. Beck’s current popularity: hard work, experience, talent and timing. Beck would add (or begin with) his religious faith.


The hard work should be obvious, even if one considers only the daily demands of four hours’ performance time on radio and TV.  That ignores prep time and the fact that he has written eight books (five best-sellers) in less than a decade, makes frequent public appearances, runs a successful high-traffic blog, a media company and puts on a twice yearly one-man comedy show.


Regarding talent, Beck is entertaining.  He can be (and too often is) downright silly – especially on his syndicated radio show, but he is more often genuinely funny.  Sometimes resembling Shultz’s Carlie Brown in profile, he is pleasant looking, has a good voice (aside from falsetto parodies) and comes across as sincere, honest and credible.  He is a good interviewer, reads widely and displays a decent command of history, political systems and America's founding principles. He brings energy, enthusiasm and a sense of humor to all his work.  But he is deadly serious about issues of liberty, civil society, corruption and good government.


Glenn Beck has years of broadcast experience.  His career in radio began in his teen years, and he seems to have reached full stride in his very popular Glenn Beck show in Tampa, Fla.  He is competent and comfortable as a media figure, and he has honed the skills and knowledge – interviewing, show preparation, understanding his audience and knowing what sells – carefully along the way.


In no way to disparage hard work and talent, I think timing may be the factor that best explains Glenn Beck’s dramatic rise in popularity.  A coming together of thoughts, perceptions, frustrations, anger and events that propelled constitutional conservatism to the fore in middle America; all crystallizing, as I believe, in the Tea Party Movement.  I am reminded of the adage articulated by Earl Nightingale that “luck is when preparedness meets opportunity.”


For some years, mostly unnoticed by old media, there has been a steadily growing popular constitutional movement.  I cannot say when, exactly, it began as a coherent movement but I would guess it was around four decades ago (perhaps in reaction to the Nixon presidency) that ideas began to circulate leading to the formation of the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and other conservative think tanks.  Hillsdale College and the Claremont Institute likely were influential.

When and how it originated, aside, it has been apparent during the last decade that a new, popular ideological support for constitutional government and founding principles was growing – especially, but not exclusively – among conservatives. The American polity had re-discovered the Constitution, and in it they found answers to vexing questions -- answers that explained and accounted for the nation's long slide toward dissolution.  Almost all of the serious problems in the country -- social, economic and political -- could be attributed to a government that had failed to follow the Constitution and to the population that had allowed it to happen.


Glenn Beck, like Rush Limbaugh (many years earlier) and others seemed to have developed an abiding interest in the Founders, Enlightenment thinkers and, for Beck especially, it became a primary focus.

That, together with Beck’s propitious move to Fox News, the emergence of the Tenth Amendment initiatives and the Tea Party popular awakening would seem to have joined preparedness with opportunity.  He was in the right place at the right time with the right stuff.


Since I mentioned Limbaugh along with Beck, it seems appropriate to posit some comparisons.  Although their beliefs have much in common, their styles and approaches are quite different.  In Beck’s case it may be innate.


Rush Limbaugh examines political stories in great detail and tends to limit his analyses to the natural scope of the story.  That is not to say that he ignores the broader context, but rather that his focus is largely on detail.  Beck, who says he’s been diagnosed with ADHD (3), probably commands details with more than average difficulty, and perhaps for that reason, seems to be more enamored of the larger American narrative. (4) Though they both reason from the particular to the general (inductively), their difference is a matter of focus.


Like Sarah Palin, (5) Glenn Beck, is often 'misunderestimated' and written off as an intellectual lightweight.  To be sure, a tally of the best conservative thinkers (6) would not include either Beck (or Palin), who in matters of gravitas -- levels of detail, analysis, discipline, rigor and scholarship -- fall well shy of the mark.  On the other hand, he has a respectable familiarity with their writings and he is able to combine them, after a mix-and-match sort of fashion, into a compelling, polemical narrative that is easily accessible to his audience.  He popularizes the work of the thinkers, and he does so well enough that he is very often cited by many of them in their own writings.  Beck's skill in the articulation of  'big' ideas with clarity and urgency in the style of a good teacher is his great strength and the primary source of his popularity.  He is a conduit for principles and ideas that already animate and reinforce the spirit of the Tea Party movement and those who support it. 

Beck is often cited in conservative blogs in Western Europe where there is a nascent popular movement that may eventually achieve Tea Party proportions. (7)  That movement seems to be in reaction to two (related) factors -- the enormous encroachments by the EU on personal liberty and local sovereignty, and the government-sponsored growth of unassimilated, hostile Muslim immigration.  In Eastern Europe (as well as among refugees from Venezuela and Cuba) there is praise and gratitude for the fact that Beck publicizes, as the media rarely do, the misery, poverty and murders that took place under communist totalitarianism.  An example of this sentiment is expressed in this testimonial.


Predictably the liberal media, political elites, academic, coasties and entertainers have -- singly or in unison -- risen to the call.  This screed in Time (though relatively innocuous) illustrates the point.  Equally predictable are the visceral attacks that eschew debate on the issues and ideas raised; a viral reaction to Beck, widely circulated on the web, is the simple demand that he STFU.(7) The most common charge from progressives is that he is "dangerous" and a populist. (8) 

Now having given my best effort to explain the 'Beck Phenomenon', the reader might inquire as to the opinion of this humble writer regarding Glenn Beck.  Fair enough.  I like him; I like to watch him of Fox, though his radio show strains my patience more often than not.  I find him entertaining, at times inspirational, and I admire his gift for integrating seemingly disparate ideas.  Further, I salute his fidelity to the ideals of constitutional conservatism.  He is a fine showman.  But he is more than that.

He has made important contributions including his aggressive publicizing of ACORN scandals, incompetent and subversive Obama appointments and in exposing the pernicious role of progressive control-freak meddling (10) in undermining the nation's political and social institutions.

Still, I have reservations.  I am skeptical, as a matter of principle, of grand narratives, whether found in history books or in polemics; they are rather too neat -- too glossy, too certain.  Facts are inherently messy and there is always a temptation, in fact an instinctive need, to yoke them to the structure of a tale well-told.  It is one thing to create a template from the facts (while recognizing there will never be a perfect fit), and quite another, as was apparently the case in AGW research, to begin with a template and force the facts into it.  Regarding Beck, I am less confident of his grounding in fact, than I am of, say, Rush Limbaugh, whom I view as more deliberate and careful.    I remain cautious, but I have found little to quarrel with.  In sum, Glenn Beck, so far, so good.





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1. Certainly not an overnight wonder Glenn Beck is a journeyman broadcaster who began in radio as a teenager.  The Glenn Beck Program has been successful since its inception in Tampa, Fla.

2. 5-6 PM EST is traditionally a good slot for human interest (Dr. Phil), comedy re-runs, cartoons and early news, but not political talk.

3. This condition was once known to elementary school teachers simply and sensibly as short attention span and/or over-activity.  Medical practitioners, like shamans, believe that power resides in (clinical) names.

4. The American Narrative of national exceptionalism, though it has mythical aspects, is one that acknowledges the essential success and goodness of civil society organized under founding, constitutional ideas.  It is also one that has been deliberately co-opted by liberal/progressive historians and other academics, entertainment media and public education.

5.  In this paragraph I don't mean diminish the worth of Sarah Palin.  While she seems limited in her ability to articulate the principles she is wedded to (a limitation she will overcome), she clearly understands them and applies them in the political, commercial and private world.  She is a doer and a leader, not an academic; that is not a bad thing.  What I admire so much about the Founders is that, in contrast to many of today's intellectuals, they were men of action as well as ideas.

6.  The conservative thinkers -- past and present -- that spring to mind would include: Samuel Huntington, Charles Murray, Victor Hanson, Bastiat,  F.A. Hayek, William Buckley, Thomas Bertonneau, American Founders and many others.

7.  In Western Europe the prospects for a successful popular movement are in doubt.  First, because institutionalized political correctness has the force of law, and free speech is its most important casualty, as the prosecution of Geert Wilders attests.  Second, the EU has effectively usurped local sovereignty, so that the link between popular sentiment and official accountability has been broken.

8.  Readers who follow this link will be interested in reading the comments attacking Beck but offering no challenge to whatever ideas may offend them.

9. Populism, for the left, is always invoked as a pejorative term that conjures up images the likes of Elmer Gantry or the Pied Piper.  The history of populist movements, though, is a mixed bag.  Many have been in the service of liberty and civil society.
10.  The desire to meddle in the lives of others -- to control the behavior of others -- is a constituent part of human nature, and it will always be with us.  We can organize our society in such a way as to discourage it, but we can no more defeat it than we can change human nature itself.  Progressivism, like all its collectivist, utopian, big government cousins is about the human need to control and dominate.  Vigilance is the price we must pay to guard against.  More, here and here.



















Glenn Beck is nothing if not animated and passionate in his views about America's founding principles. And I think this comes close to the heart of the matter of his success. He focuses on the ‘big issues’