Below is a series of answers to an online discussion in the NY Times about Glen Beck on Fox News and his apparent declining popularity. The subject brought a huge wave of comments to the Times, so The TerryReport responds to some of those comments. First this one:

             "It (what Beck says) makes me curious enough that I would like to see other news sources such as the Times discuss it as well and see if there are more "roots" to it."

This is what the audience is supposed to do. You are supposed to pay attention and find the contradictions in what you are being told. If you don't have enough facts at your command to understand whether you are being told the truth or a pack of half lies and truth, then you should not listen. If you hear something that strikes you as being untrue, make a note and check for facts afterward (not on Beck’s website or some obscure political site, however).

As for more formal refutation, it would take a staff of ten or more people, working full time, to deal with all the facts,    non-facts and outright slop being served up each day. This is part of the Beck method: there is too much there to deal with on a reasonable basis, so the viewer becomes sort of overwhelmed, For me, when I read or hear someone making an argument and I can see that one or more of the basic arguments are unsound or based on distortions, I am done listening or reading. I can’t trust that source, so I want nothing to do with them.

ANOTHER:

"I for one am glad that he is out there...showing us with his many chalkboards the history of how we got here..."

The problem is that his many chalkboards are wrong. He doesn't have his facts straight and his conclusions about the problems facing the country are not based on careful analysis of history or the current situation. He is involved in pseudo teaching about pseudo facts and he knows the conclusions he will reach before he gets there.

ANOTHER:

"Interesting about Beck, I've never heard the man ever say, this is the answer. He always says that the listener must do the research yourself and make up your own mind."

This, again, is part of Beck's masterful propaganda technique. It is a sly way of backing out of responsibility for what he says, just like when he shouts, "Hey, I'm just saying..." (Essentially a meaningless sentence that isn't even a complete sentence, for that matter.) Beck discovered that he can insinuate that something is true and most of the audience will accept it as truth, whether it is or not. He knows that you, the viewer, don't have time or the resources to "do the research". Neither does he. He knows that he can point you in a particular direction and get you to say, "Yeah, that sounds about right", and the next time you hear something like that you will believe it is absolutely right because the thought was previously planted in your brain.

ANOTHER:

"He is mentally ill."

An argument can be made that Beck is unbalanced, but professional people in the field of mental health don't make public pronouncements on people in the news, as a general rule, so we are just dealing with opinion. If, however, we were to judge from his demeanor and the thrust of what he says day after day, I would have to say the notion is worthy of some consideration. He lives in a world where all that is decent is constantly under attack, where the efforts to take away what is good about our country date decades and decades in the past, yet always link up, in his mind, with events of the present. Let others be the final judge on this idea.

ANOTHER:

Woodrow Wilson. Mentioned very often on Beck and in these comments. Beck picks Wilson because he knows that most Americans know nothing about this president; he knows most people slept or day dreamed through most of their history classes and he can put anything he wants on this straw target. If you believe what Beck says, go read any decent, non-biased history book, go back to the Beck show and laugh in his face.

ANOTHER:

"Beck has continuously exposed socialists, communists, Maoists, and Marxists within the Obama Administration..."

Oh, dear, we are in deeper trouble than I ever imagined. There are Maoists in the Administration? Plus, "communists" AND "Marxists". Please turn off the television set and go to bed. You need some rest.

ANOTHER:

"I think the NYT would have done well to explore some of his claims and either confirm or disprove them in this story. But anyone...(watching) Beck can usually tell pretty quickly for themselves that he's often off - way, way off - on his historic facts."

Agreed. But, there are other online media efforts at refuting what Beck conjures up. Further, there is ample evidence in the comments made online to the NY Times that many people don't want to hear or read that Beck is waaaay off the mark and would see ANY effort to deal with his factual lapses as nothing but part of the same conspiracies he weaves on his show. We believe what we want to believe and the rest is just clouds in the sky, passing by.

Would the "fair and balanced" news network give someone, anyone, an hour, one single hour, to show where Beck is off the tracks? Hell no.

In the end, his is a propaganda forum masked as opinion and reasoned argument. "Don't take my word for it..." as he often says. Why are you watching if you can’t take his word for “it”? Why is he saying it if he isn’t confident of what he is saying? If this is where you want to get your news and information, you are never likely to find your way out of this jungle. All you can do is look for your next fix of conspiracy by whomever pops up next.

Doug Terry, 3.7.11

AN AFTER NOTE:

It has been suggested that those who are critics of Beck should be able to refute his arguments with counter facts. Aside from picking out various points and showing that they are false (which would not convince believers in any case), it is not generally possible to show that his arguments are wrong. Why? Because they are based on supposition, fear, interpretation and the tying together of things that are not part of the same phenomena.

Here is a hypothetical example: If I call you on the phone and tell you there are twelve armed men headed down the road to your house and they are going to your front door, you can look outside and see if what I am saying is true. Or, you can wait and see who shows up based on my assurances that they will be there within a certain time. If I prove to be an alarmist and wrong, then you might never take another call from me.

If, on the other hand, I call you and say, in the dark of night, that there are twelve armed men scattered in the 40 acre woods all around your house, what are you to do? Suppose you have another friend who has always been careful about what he says and always concerned for your well being. You call that friend and say, “Can you prove to me that there aren’t twelve armed men scattered in the woods around my house?”. The friend says no. Does that mean you conclude that the first call was correct? No, the second call proves nothing except the difficulty of finding twelve armed men in the dark, scattered around forty acres of land.  Glen Beck is always careful to talk about the twelve armed men in the dark, scattered through the woods, not the ones coming down the road who could be seen.

How can anyone prove that Woodrow Wilson was not part of some vague, internationalist conspiracy to take away individual rights? You can’t. The belief that he was, however bizarre, is a supposition based interpretation of other’s writings, some of which could be true, some of which could be false.

There is an underlying, unspoken problem that makes such conspiracy theories worth considering, if barely: bad ideas are difficult to get out of society. Marxism and Nazism, to name just two, are ideas that should have died natural deaths decades  ago, yet they remain forces in the world. The fact that these horrid ideas were put into circulation, however, does not mean that they are the potent threats they once were.

While it is difficult to rid ourselves of a lot of really bad  ideas, we are capable of refining and redefining ideas and concepts as time goes along. A bad idea, used in a limited way, might be turned into a good one with the passage of time and the richness of human experience. I would argue, for example, that the women’s movement of the 1970s and ‘80s had many bad, unfortunate ideas at its center, but the results for our society  have largely been beneficial. In other words, we, as a society, take corrective action to weed out the worst ideas as we move forward. Some people still believe the bad ideas, but most don’t.

Beckism is based on the idea that all of the worst ideas remain and are a central part of the belief system of people 90 and a 100 years later. All these bad ideas somehow gather themselves into the heads of the evil left thinkers as they try to destroy America. And, you have to also believe that it all marches forward like an organized column of tanks into battle, with no one in disagreement or challenging the beliefs.

If you like Glen Beck and watch or listen to him, my suggestion would be don’t swallow it whole. Listen carefully to what you are hearing and see it if it makes sense. Is there some internal logic that fits together? Does he throw out a point and then say, “I’m just saying....” to take back the point? Does he say, “I’m no expert in this...” and then try to sound like he is an expert? Is he making points that simply cannot be tested or verified by anything other than his grand conspiracy theories? If so, what is his value to you?

Doug Terry, 3.25.11

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AFTER NOTE, SEE BELOW