* RADIO RANT: Beck & G.M.; Savage & Reality

I imagine a smoke-filled caucus room in D.C., of Democrats hunched around a hookah, muttering, "We gotta get outa 'Nam, man."
Glenn Beck, conservative compatriot of the "let's pooh-pooh global warming" movement, had to tread gingerly as he did an ad for one of his corporate sponsors yesterday (4/30/07). It seems that General Motor's new PR campaign emphasizes its enviro-friendliness, its great number (a relative term) of new vehicles that are flex-fuel capable and/or get > than 30 mpg. Beck's distancing from the (original) campaign's obvious attempt to address the global warming problem led to such embarrassing waffling as "For those who believe in global warming"—well, shucks, folks, these are the cars for you! Beck's own tone thus became a rather strange New Critical rhetoric of ambiguity and tension, as if unsure how far to take his own eternally cutesy ironic tone regarding a product/message payin' him the big bucks. (Of course, and maybe more disingenuous yet—given Beck's brainwashed listenership—GM probably doesn't even mind such waffling. . . .)

But at least Beck is semi-amiable in his non-pretentiousness. Michael Savage's tirades against the "Left" last night found him in especially fine form. For one thing, I don't even know what to make of his assertion that "[m]ost Democratic politicians are using psychotropic drugs"—if not "marijuana," then at least pharmaceutical depressants, etc. (Thank God Rush L. got off the pills so that Savage can't confuse him with the "mental illness" that is liberalism.) I imagine a smoke-filled caucus room in D.C., of Democrats hunched around a hookah, muttering, "We gotta get outa 'Nam, man—I mean—Iran. Er, Iraq. Yeh. Iraq. . . . Hey, Doritos and brie go pretty good together!"

But this is all status quo for Savage, a mere toss-off by the "good Doctor" that he can perform on auto-pilot. What really set me off last night was how his intolerance & hypocrisy achieved a notable crescendo that epitomized his modus operandi. He defended his own right to be controversial (indeed, incendiary) by giving his brow-beaten audience a lecture on "FREEDOM OF SPEECH"; and "if you don't understand that [concept], you can move to Somalia or [another third-world country]." (Your tolerance, Michael, of my freedom to question your definition of "freedom of speech" is stunning.) Furthermore, the ACLU and other seditious liberal activists "need to be thrown out of the country." (Ah, we'll have true freedom, then—an oligarchy of reactionary talking heads & their dittohead acolytes.) Hmmm. Psychotropic drugs are startin' to look pretty good right now. . . .