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Dana Milbank -- Tears of a clown
==================================

Entertaining, outlandish, and dangerous.

What good are facts if you can't make them do what you want?

Beck is entertaining, and he tells his audience what they want to
hear.  When you do that, you do not have to be very careful with
truth and accuracy.  When you can tell them what they want to
believe, you do not feel much need for fact checkers.

Beck is very good at the use of "facts" and at suggesting a layer
of research so as to give his claims a veneer of respectable truth.

Beck comes close to irresponsibly inciting violence, but does it
with "plausible deniability".  "Now I'm not saying that you should
...".  That same linguistic construction or a variation on it ("I'm
not saying that ...".) is used to present some outlandish claims to
those who want to be entertained and with the anticipation that
some in his audience *will* actually believe those claims.

One key to Beck's effectiveness is his ability to mobilize and
harness a large collection of volunteers who uncover, track down,
and provide him with the facts he needs and wants.  Beck uses these
facts to support his claims, but what they really prove is that on
the Internet you can find support for almost anything you want to
claim.

Beck's audience fits a particular pattern or finger print.  That
demographic, according to Milbank, is almost entirely white, mostly
elderly, often in debt and financial trouble, full of suspicion and
hate, susceptible to belief in conspiracies, and apocalyptic
(believes the economy will disintegrate, buys gold because the
economy will crash, believes that U.S.  government will impose
martial law, etc).

Beck has searched the Mormon religion for the most extreme and
outlandish theories, conspiracies, and fables, then promoted them. 
But, that only proves that if you search widely enough and long
enough, then you can find the fantastic claims and stories to meet
your needs.

Beck promotes a number of end-of-times, dooms-day scenarios.  And,
he has the sponsors that provide the gear to go with those stories. 
Gold and survival gear are favorites.

There are a few people that Beck loathes; Barack Obama and Woodrow
Wilson are among them.  That makes Beck the one to ride the Tea
Party wave.  The connection is, I suppose, the claim that both
Wilson and Obama are taking away our freedom.

Beck is a terrific show-man.  He can make his claims entertaining
and even plausible.  And he has the ability to cry whenever needed,
with a bit of help from Vicks-Vaporub, apparently.

Beck can be viewed, according to Milbank, as trying to create a
religious movement: he is providing a belief system, a set of
claims that can or almost have to be taken on faith, and a leader
for his followers.

Beck attracts those who fit the paranoid style.  These are people
who are angry and are easily convinced that someone is out to get
them.  If you want to know more about "The Paranoid Style in
American Politics" and Richard J.  Hofstadter's article about it,
look to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics.