Well, we don't call Glenn Beck the Fearmonger In Chief for nothing. Yesterday on his show, he compared the Ship of State to the Titanic, featuring a clip from the movie of the same name (made, incidentally, by a director who despises him).
It's pretty much standard Beck-style apocalypticism: incoherent, raving, arm-waving nonsense. Yawn. Like we haven't seen this act before?
Indeed we have. Last November, he used the exact same analogy, except that he was more explicit about who was to blame:
Beck: So as I tell you these things, know that there is hope on the other side. But we are about to walk through a wall of fire! We are about to be baptized through fire.
It's because we weren't protecting liberty. But let me tell you -- let me tell you we have a choice ahead of us. I see -- I see America as the people on a boat. The boat is the Titanic. We've had a crew and a captain who took this ship and rammed her right upside the iceberg. She's been takin' in water for awhile, all the while the captains, the crews, they've been comin' and goin' and they say, 'Don't worry, don't worry, it's the Titanic, it's unsinkable.'
Then we elected a new captain and crew, and they took that thing and they backed it up, and now they are ramming it into the iceberg! Now they're taking this ship and they're taking it and they're -- with health care, and cap and trade, and stimulus -- they're doin' the same amount of damage that all the other crews did, just faster!
All the while they're telling all the passengers, you just go back into your stateroom, everything's just fine, you go ahead in the salon. There's some drinks up there for you, you go listen to the music, everything's fine.
Let me tell you something. Each and every one of us are here, and wide awake. Each and every one of us are a passenger on this ship, and it's our damned ship!
Truth is, the whole schtick is getting worn out and tedious. Indeed, that's the best word to describe Beck's show these days: an extended exercise in wide-eyed tedium.
Which is what makes this analogy so ironic: It would be much better applied to Beck's fast-sinking ship of a TV show, as Eric Boehlert observes:
It's getting difficult to even remember when Beck's show was averaging three million viewers each night, even though that was just four short months ago. These days, Glenn Beck is more likely to draw two million viewers, which means that yes, the Fox News host has lost one-third of his audience already this year.
Not only that, but there are increasingly days where Beck no longer hits the two million mark. Like on April 9, when, according to Nielsen data, the show drew 1.97 million viewers, which set the year's low mark. Then on April 22, the show dipped down further, to 1.82 million viewers. And now Glenn Beck has set yet another ratings low: May 14, the show attracted 1.77 million viewers. That is almost exactly half the audience the show was getting at its peak in late January.
Wow.
Beck might do better if he started featuring explosions of monster truck rallies. Something like that.
