We'll Be Right Beck

Just when you think that life in these United States was bleak and getting bleaker, along comes some good news.  Oh sure, you still have this Congressman Ryan trotting out his roadmap for America's future, but when you finally unfold the map, it turns out that America's future runs right through 1929, so no one will want to be on that road for long.  Mr Ryan will soon enough learn that people don't really want to cut back on all the benefits of being an American - they only want to cut back on what Charlie down the street is getting.  Here in Maryland, there used to be an annual political folly known as "trying to pass a law requiring people over a certain age to be re-tested if they want to keep their driver's license."  It makes sense to see if a man whose reflexes and reactions were sharp at age 16 still can stomp on the brakes at 106, but this was voted down after spirited debate year after year.  They don't even bring it up any more, which is why you can still see all sorts of Buicks being driven in all sorts of manners on all sorts of Maryland roads.  So, don't even think about cutting back on other things.  Nice try, though, Mr Ryan.  Maybe you can be on FOX News more often.

But you'll have to hurry to get on the Glenn Beck show.  Former wacky morning DJ Beck, who once graced Baltimore's airwaves with his drug-crazed prattle, got a show on FOX News in January 2009, and has spent the last 27 months becoming more and more like Father Coughlin from the 1930's.  Father Charles Coughlin was a priest from Michigan who somehow got a radio show during the Depression and soon turned it into an unending anti-Semitic soundbox.  It got so bad toward the end that he actually broadcast words of sympathy for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, because of their enmity towards Jewish people.  

Beck has gone off on a similar tangent lately, blaming "the bankers" and the reform rabbis for the sorry state of our world.  Beck claims that a worldwide conspiracy of bankers set up the Federal Reserve System, which was set up in 1907 to protect us from bank failures and unethical practices.  He has also been touting the views of conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who claims that the anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” “accurately describes much of what his happening in our world today” and that  “present-day political Zionists are promoting the New World Order.”

Whenever I hear people speaking bad about the Jewish people, I always want to offer to meet them at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall or one of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Cancer Institute buildings or one of the dozens of other eleemosynary functions set up around here by people of the Jewish faith to benefit members of all faiths, so we can discuss their issues.  Stereotyping, race and faith baiting: so dumb.

And I keep hearing about this New World Order, and I can't even get my New Dinner Order delivered properly, so I'm not fretting about it.  

But FOX is letting go of the Glenn Beck show. Oh sure, both the FOX bosses and GB himself are claiming he wants to be rid of the daily grind in order to focus on occasional specials for the "news" network, but can you imagine the disgrace inherent in being fired by FOX for being too nutsy?  Does this remind anyone else of when Steven Adler was fired by Guns 'N' Roses for taking too many drugs?

Well, Izzy or isn't he?

Which gives me a chance to recall that Guns 'N' Roses has a guitarist named Jeffrey Dean Isbell, who performs under the nom de guitar Izzy Stradlin.  It makes me wonder about Beck: is he straddlin' the thin line between lunacy and paranoia?