Glenn Beck - Public Reception

Public Reception

"To his admirers, Glenn Beck has been a voice crying in the wilderness, a prophet who warns us that we have been wandering in darkness too long. To detractors, he is a clown and a buffoon, at best, a dangerous demagogue, at worst."

—  Lee Harris, The Weekly Standard, 2010

In 2009, the Glenn Beck show was one of the highest rated news commentary programs on cable TV. For a Barbara Walters ABC special, Beck was selected as one of America's "Top 10 Most Fascinating People" of 2009. In 2010, Beck was selected for Time's top 100 most influential people under the "Leaders" category.

Beck has referred to himself as an entertainer, a commentator rather than a reporter, and a "rodeo clown". He has said that he identifies with Howard Beale, a character portrayed by Peter Finch in the film Network: "When he came out of the rain and he was like, none of this makes any sense. I am that guy."

Time Magazine described Beck as "he new populist superstar of Fox News" saying it is easier to see a set of attitudes rather than a specific ideology, noting his criticism of Wall Street, yet defending bonuses to AIG, as well as denouncing conspiracy theories about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) but warning against indoctrination of children by the AmeriCorps program. (Paul Krugman and Mark Potok, on the other hand, have been among those asserting that Beck helps spread "hate" by covering issues that stir up extremists.) What seems to unite Beck's disparate themes, Time argued, is a sense of siege. An earlier cover story in Time described Beck as "a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies", proclaiming that he has "emerged as a virtuoso on the strings" of conservative discontent by mining "the timeless theme of the corrupt Them thwarting a virtuous Us".

Beck's shows have been described as a "mix of moral lessons, outrage and an apocalyptic view of the future ... capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans". One of Beck's Fox News Channel colleagues Shepard Smith, has jokingly called Beck's studio the "fear chamber", with Beck countering that he preferred the term "doom room".

Republican South Carolina U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham criticized Beck as a "cynic" whose show was antithetical to "American values" at The Atlantic's 2009 First Draft of History conference, remarking "Only in America can you make that much money crying." The progressive watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's (FAIR) Activism Director Peter Hart argues that Beck red-baits political adversaries as well as promotes a paranoid view of progressive politics. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has remarked that "Love him or hate him, Beck is a talented, often funny broadcaster, a recovering alcoholic with an unabashedly emotional style."

Glenn Beck was honored by Liberty University during their 2010 Commencement exercises with an honorary Doctoral Degree. During his keynote address to the students, he stated "As a man who was never able to go to college – I'm the first in my family that went; I went for one semester; I couldn't afford more than that – I am humbly honored." In June 2011, Beck announced he was to be the honored with the Zionist Organization of America's 2011 Defender of Israel Award.

Laura Miller writes in Salon.com that Beck is a contemporary example of "the paranoid style in American politics" described by historian Richard Hofstader:

"The Paranoid Style in American Politics" reads like a playbook for the career of Glenn Beck, right down to the paranoid's "quality of pedantry" and "heroic strivings for 'evidence'", embodied in Beck's chalkboard and piles of books. But Beck lacks an archenemy commensurate with his stratospheric ambitions, which makes him appear even more absurd to outsiders.

Particularly as a consequence of Beck's Restoring Honor rally in 2010, the fact that Beck is Mormon caused concern amongst some politically sympathetic Christian Evangelicals on theological grounds. Tom Tradup, vice president at Salem Radio Network, which serves more than 2,000 Christian-themed stations, expressed this sentiment after the rally, stating "Politically, everyone is with it, but theologically, when he says the country should turn back to God, the question is: Which God?" Subsequently, a September 2010 survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and Religion News Service (RNS) found that of those Americans who hold a favorable opinion of Beck, only 45% believe he is the right person to lead a religious movement, with that number further declining to 37% when people are informed he is Mormon. Daniel Cox, Director of Research for PRRI, summed up this position by stating:

The disparity between Glenn Beck's favorability ratings and how people feel about him as a religious leader suggests that people are more drawn to him for political reasons than religious ones. Many of Beck's strongest supporters, such as Republicans and white Evangelicals, perceive real differences between their own faith and Beck's Mormon faith, and this may become a liability in his efforts to lead as a religious figure.

Pete Peterson of Pepperdine's Davenport Institute said that Beck's speech at the rally belonged to an American tradition of calls to personal renewal. Peterson wrote: "A Mormon surrounded onstage by priests, pastors, rabbis, and imams, Beck one of the more ecumenical jeremiads in history." Evangelical pastor Tony Campolo said in 2010 that conservative evangelicals respond to Beck's framing of conservative economic principles, saying that Beck's and ideological fellow travelers' "marriage between evangelicalism and patriotic nationalism is so strong that anybody who is raising questions about loyalty to the old, lassez-faire capitalist system is ex post facto unpatriotic, un-American, and by association non-Christian.” Newsweek religion reporter Lisa Miller, after quoting Campolo, opined, "It's ironic that Beck, a Mormon, would gain acceptance as a leader of a new Christian coalition. ... Beck's gift ... is to articulate God's special plan for America in such broad strokes that they trample no single creed or doctrine while they move millions with their message."