Well, the cornerstone of the Glenn Beck's 'We Surround Them' event, an event predicated on everyone going to a bar, restaurant, barbecue or senior center and listening to Glenn Beck whine for an hour, has already passed. Being safely in my bunker, I could not liveblog it as it happened, so here are my own notes for pseudoliveblogging. It's just like liveblogging, only not live.
+20 mins in or so: this is already just plain... sad. It's the Conservative Sad Emo Porn Hour: my only conclusion is that Glenn Beck is seriously nuts. He's got a Troy McClure, Planet of the Apes vibe going, and I keep expecting him to break into song.
"Oh my God! I was wrong!
It was earth -- all along!
Oh they finally made a monkey
(yes we finally made a monkey!)
Oh they finally made a monkey
out of meeeeeeee!"
+whatever more mins: Oh, c'mon? Chuck Norris? Really? I can tell you right now, I could have both legs cut off, be trapped in a ditch, wolves closing in on me, every one of those wolves with a Rick Astley CD tied around their neck, and I still wouldn't want lifestyle advice from Chuck Freakin' Norris. Of all the hundreds of American figures in history I admire, he is... not among them. I like my heros to be heroic in the real world, not in the comfortable confines of a fictional, long-since-dead television series. If you're part of a movement that can't stop bitching about Hollywood being too involved in politics, then stop looking for patriotism lessons from freakin' Hollywood actors.
+50 mins or so: Well, I have no idea what the overall "plot" of Beck's little program is supposed to be, other than John Galt Pity Party.
Seriously -- how did this happen? How did the party of fuck-you-all, we're-in-charge turn into such a whiny-ass group of losers? And what the flying monkey hell is he rebelling against? As far as I can tell, the only thing he actually gives a crap about is that maybe his freakin' taxes will get raised a few percent, back to (shudder) pre-Bush levels, and that's such a f'ing affront to the very republic that it causes him to burst into tears and sob about how we've let all the troops down by "redistributing wealth" from rich assholes like him to a few kids needing free school lunches.
So basically, it's all about using the memory of 9/11 and dead American soldiers to justify bitching about his taxes. That's his freakin' "movement".
He's like a televangelist, either right before or right after the obligatory I-have-sinned-against-you-and-had-teh-buttsex speech. I can't even make fun of him, it's just too sad. He's still the same belligerent, self-centered, fearmongering screw-you goon as always, but he's been so badly gutchecked by a single election that didn't go his way that he's going to go all emo on us for the next few years.
Christ, Beck, where ya been? The only difference between your supposedly Deeply Held Principles and mine is that I kept my principles the same no matter who was in charge. I never needed a fuckin' map to tell me dissent from the majority wasn't unpatriotic, and I never needed to have a 12-step-program styled event to tell me whether or not I loved my country.
If this is any indication, by the end of Obama's presidency Fox News and Trinity Broadcasting are going to be the exact same network. They'll be selling cheap trinkets, cheap pity, and advice on how to cheat on your taxes... because that's what God and our dead soldiers would want you to do.
And for the record, I still ain't surrounded.