Remainders: Beckfest

Time to catch up on some issues I would have blogged about last week had I not been on vacation. First up—the Glenn Beck Extravaganza. I’ve watched a fair amount of Beck over the past two years, and it’s clear that the man is a charlatan. Anyone who watches his TV show or listens to his radio show and takes it seriously is making him- or her-self much worse informed about American history, politics, and public policy. Any conservative politicians or intellectuals who care at all about the well-being of self-identified conservatives in America would urge his ideological confreres to ignore this fool.

All that said, there are a lot of charlatans in life and they come in different ideological vintages. The interesting question about Beck is that he at this point certainly appears to have much more practical influence than any kind of left-wing crank or, indeed, than any right-wing crank had during the Bush years. Admittedly, with the GOP in full-tilt rejectionist mode, that’s a claim that’s a bit hard to evaluate. But John Boehner is very likely to be Speaker of the House of Representatives starting next year and then we’ll really start to see the degree to which Beck is able to sway events in Washington.