On Glenn Beck Leaving FOX

My liberal friends are happy:

Plz don't cry, Glenn Beck is leaving fox! Hip, hip hooray, hip, hip hooray!!!!

A more-conservative friend (a veteran) was bewildered that FOX News' Website had no information at all on this story, and that he had to go elsewhere (remember, FOX News isn't about news at all, but about propaganda).

Nevertheless, I worry about this turn of events. I worry about who might replace him. Glenn Beck, for all his craziness, always seemed to me to be a liberal in disguise.

Don't get me wrong. Ultimately, I'm certain they'll find that Beck, full of blood lust in that critical month of June 2010, was the guiding spirit behind Jared Loughner's January 2011 Tucson shooting spree. But if you read Beck's words instead of listening to them on the TV, you find all kinds of liberal echoes.

For example, Beck's intense criticism of the Federal Reserve and the Progressives behind Woodrow Wilson echoes very closely the very-liberal criticism of Woodrow Wilson by very-liberal people like Walter Karp. In some ways, Beck was simply repackaging liberal thoughts for a conservative audience. So, if Beck goes from FOX, then someone else, likely more repugnant, will take his place. There are definitely worse people out there in the conservative jungle. Better the Devil you know!

As I've blogged before, this review of Beck, which calls him the most-successful American demagogue since Father Coughlin in the 1930's, is the most-useful:

Beck is the most gifted demagogue America has produced since Father Coughlin made his populist broadcasts during the Great Depression. In the course of one radio or television show he can transform himself from conspiracy nut and character assassin into bawling, repentant screw-up, then back to gold-hoarding Jeremiah, and finally to man of God, without ever falling out of character. Which is the real Glenn Beck?