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Is Glenn Beck that different from Obama?
By Tommy Felts
Contributor
Published October 20, 2009
It started hours before he even arrived.
The crowd — eventually 75,000 deep — gathered and stood there ... staring at an empty stage in eager anticipation.
As they waited, members of the throng began to chant.
“Oh-baw-muh! Oh-baw-muh! Oh-baw-muh!”
That was a year ago — Oct. 18, 2008 — less than a month before the presidential election and the first time I (and tens of thousands of other folks) saw Barack Obama in the flesh.
As we stood on the grounds of Kansas City’s Liberty Memorial, the crowd grew more and more excited the closer it got to Obama’s expected arrival.
“Fired up! ... Ready to go!” people in blue Obama-Biden shirts, strategically placed around the area, began hollering.
“Fired up! ... Ready to go!” The rest of the audience roared back.
As an outsider (not an Obama fan) looking in, it seemed creepy.
Here was a massive crowd acting as an orchestrated mob — albeit a polite one at this event — chanting slogans, snatching up T-shirts and buttons emblazoned with Obama’s image and doing all they could to worship at the altar of the would-be next president.
That enthusiasm was put to use by Obama’s team throughout the campaign to fend off criticism and attacks on the candidate. The masses of Obamaphiles who so eagerly chanted his name were just as quick to blindly defend him against anything his opponents offered up.
And it all came with the haughty attitude of “How dare you insult Obama like that? Don’t you know what he represents?”
Republicans, of course, wasted no time, before or after the election, mocking the idea that Obama was somehow beyond typical scrutiny and criticism.
But are conservatives’ attitudes about their own really any different?
Along with Obama’s recent declining popularity has come the rise and rebound of certain star conservatives — people whom many on the political right seem to feel deserve the same unflinching, unquestioning respect and loyalty that Obama gets from many of his supporters.
Take legendary radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, for example.
Limbaugh went a little crazy after Obama was elected. Realizing the potential to regain the political relevance he had during the Clinton era, the commentator began throwing everything he could at the wall to see what would stick. Some of it — aimed at Obama and the Democrats — was rather vile.
When I dared point that out in a column, the response from conservatives was immediate and nasty.
I got a similar reaction this summer when I questioned then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision to resign from her top post. Conservative readers (some apparently staunch Palin supporters) were livid that I would criticize her actions and motives.
But nothing quite compares to the feedback I’ve gotten about radio host and Fox News personality Glenn Beck.
Beck, of course, is the new darling in some conservative circles. He’s gained a ton of influence over the growing anti-Obama crowd and become what many believe is the voice of resistance in an America that’s changing far too fast.
After making passing mention of Beck in a couple recent columns (one of which had some mildly critical things to say about him), I discovered just how powerful Beck’s influence has become.
“Stop bashing Glenn Beck!” one reader e-mailed. “He’s the only one who wants to question Barack Hussein Obama! He’s the only one trying to stop him. He’s our only hope.”
Let’s pause for a moment to examine the irony of those statements ...
We can’t criticize or question Glenn Beck because he’s the only one criticizing and questioning Barack Obama? He’s the one now offering “hope?”
Wow.
If a person had asked my thoughts on Beck a year ago (who back then was still on CNN’s Headline News channel), I would have told them flat-out that I thought he was an idiot. His show was bizarre, often non-sensical and was painful to watch.
Today, however, he’s blossomed into an insightful, thought-provoking critic of the president ... but he still usually acts like a buffoonish, overly theatrical clown.
Now, if that last statement bothered you, if you’re beginning to boil with rage and already formulating the hateful e-mail you’re going to send, ask yourself why.
You likely don’t know Glenn Beck. You’ve probably never met him. He’s just a guy you listen to on the radio, see on TV or whose words you read in a book.
And maybe you usually agree with him.
But like Obama, that doesn’t make Beck — or Limbaugh, Palin or anyone else for that matter — infallible. And that doesn’t mean he’s beyond criticism.
When 75,000-plus Obama opponents marched on Washington D.C. Sept. 12, many of them were there because Beck told them to show up — proof that he’s galvanized the conservative and center-right like no other leader since Obama took office.
That was clear when you listened to members of the crowd, many of whom chanted the name of their hero.
“Glenn Beck! Glenn Beck! Glenn Beck!”
It seemed a little creepy.
Barack Obama and Glenn Beck, as well as their most spirited supporters, have more in common than they might think.
Tommy Felts is an award-winning freelance columnist based in the Kansas City area. He can be reached by e-mail at tommyfelts(at)hotmail.com.
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