Glenn Beck looks like shit. His fat gut has a sadly defunct Twitter account. It’s kind of like he and early 2000s Drew Carey swapped bodies. And then there is his look which can best be described as unpopular college professor chic. It makes you wonder, what happened to Glenn Beck?
Many people think Glenn Beck is some sort of soulless, conservative mouthpiece who is only on this earth to promote easily disprovable conspiracy theories to people too stupid to know any better. And to a certain extent that’s true.
Look, there is no defending a lot of the dumbass ideas and viewpoints he tries to proliferate. But in many ways, he is a caricature of himself. Beck became a personality to entertain and promote some of his world views. However, the personality consumed those views and created the Darth Vader-esque figure we see today. In order to understand what happened to Glenn Beck, you have to follow the money.
American Tales: Long live the State of Jefferson, the almost 51st state
What happened to Glenn Beck…
…he got paid, son. If you look at Beck’s career, you see dude has followed the money. He took a few of the beliefs, amplified his personality to 11, gained a better understanding of what his audience wanted to hear and started printing cash. Fair play to him for doing that.
He started by building up a following on Fox News with his TV show. Once that was cultivated, Beck then created TheBlaze to monetize this group himself. You don’t have to agree with someone to recognize his or her business savvy.
When he first burst onto the scene in 2009, Beck did strikingly honest interview with the New York Times. He referred to himself as a rodeo clown and even admitted you shouldn’t take what he says as gospel. The problem is his fans refuse to accept that reality.
Instead, they kept throwing dollars at him and forced Beck to become nothing more than a caricature of himself. The beliefs he passionately defended on Fox News became secondary to the empty calorie content his paying subscribers demanded. They wanted more conspiracy theories, more non-sense and more commentary on stuff that Beck isn’t concerned about at his core.
The rodeo clown routine became a street performance where he would rant for change on the sidewalk. Considering he’s pulling in tens of millions of dollars, it’s not the worst job in the world. And yet, there is something about Beck that just feels hollow. He’s no longer a personality passionately sharing beliefs but a puppet whose strings are being tugged on by some of America’s dumbest people.
You can’t help but wonder what happened to Glenn Beck when you watch him these days because he is a shell of his former self: fat, dressed up like a professor from the college he wishes he could have attended and dancing for dollars like a stripper.
More Non-Sense: Here’s where idiots are getting their bad COVID-19 facts
The glimmer of hope inside Glenn Beck
I hate Tucker Carlson. I hate Rush Limbaugh. I hate nearly all conservative pundits because they don’t give a shit about the world. I don’t hate Glenn Beck. I mean I hate a lot of the stuff he says, but I also know that much like Darth Vader, there is a glimmer of good in him.
There are two things I’ve always admired about Beck. Firstly, he is a real person. Real people say stupid things, make mistakes and have issues. We are a society that too often expects perfection when we aren’t perfect ourselves.
Secondly, Beck’s ideal world and mine aren’t that different. He wants a world where everyone can be happy, prosperous and live free of unnecessary interference. It’s something I, and most people, also want. Now we have wildly differing paths on how to get there and that’s fine. It’s actually quite American.
However, he has lost his way. Much like Darth Vader was tempted by the dark side. Somewhere inside Glenn Beck and his propensity to go after low hanging fruit is a man who believes in something good. The world will probably never see it again. And considering his healthy bank account and easy job pandering to morons, why would he even bother?
And that’s what really happened to Glenn Beck. He stopped trying. And if you stop trying in life, you almost always become a fat sack of shit.
