Overview

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank takes a fair and balanced look at the unsettling rise of the silly Fox News host Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. In America in 2010, Glenn Beck provides the very refreshment Jefferson had in mind: Whether he's the patriot or the tyrant, he's definitely full of manure. The wildly popular Fox News host with three million daily viewers perfectly captures the vitriol of our time and the fact-free state of our political culture. The secret to his success is his willingness to traffic in the fringe conspiracies and Internet hearsay that others wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole: death panels, government health insurance for dogs, FEMA concen-tration camps, an Obama security force like Hitler's SS. But Beck, who is, according to a recent Gallup poll, admired by more Americans than the Pope, has nothing in his background that identifies him as an ideologue, giving rise to the speculation that his right-wing shtick is just that--the act of a brilliant showman, known for both his over-the-top daily out-rages and for weeping on the air. Milbank describes, with lacerating wit, just how the former shock jock without a college degree has managed to become the most recognizable leader of antigovernment conservatives and exposes him as the guy who is single-handedly giving patri-otism a bad name.

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[A] droll, take-no-prisoners account of the nation's most audacious conspiracy-spinner...Milbank is pitch-perfect in describing a typical Beck performance. He has watched and listened to more Beck programs than I believed possible for the human mind to absord...Milbank is also superb in describing how Beck manipulates his listeners... -- David Oshinsky for The Washington Post Train-wreck fascinating...Milbank's obsessions about Beck's obsessions can be contagious. -- San Francisco Chronicle Milbank's fast-paced chronicle of Beck World ably details the meteoric rise of a low-rent radio shock jock to national phenomenon in less than a decade. --The Christian Science Monitor

[A] droll, take-no-prisoners account of the nation's most audacious conspiracy-spinner...Milbank is pitch-perfect in describing a typical Beck performance. He has watched and listened to more Beck programs than I believed possible for the human mind to absord...Milbank is also superb in describing how Beck manipulates his listeners... <br>-- David Oshinsky for The Washington Post<br><br> Train-wreck fascinating...Milbank's obsessions about Beck's obsessions can be contagious. <br>-- San Francisco Chronicle<br> <br> Milbank's fast-paced chronicle of Beck World ably details the meteoric rise of a low-rent radio shock jock to national phenomenon in less than a decade. <br> --The Christian Science Monitor<br><br>

Author Information

DANA MILBANK is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post and a prize-winning White House reporter. He has written three books, including the national bestseller Homo Politicus. He lives in Washington with his wife and daughter.

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