Glenn Beck Biographer: 'I wasn't prepared for the depth of Beck's mean streak'

A new book on Glenn Beck is out.

Author Alexander Zaitchik has penned, "Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Nonsense" (Wiley, 2010). It was released May 24.

The book offers a great history of Beck's life and career, including his days as a Morning Zoo disc jockey, along with his current controversial stints on talk radio and Fox News.

Zaitchik sat down for a Q&A with me this week, giving his views on Beck, his rise, and insight into the man, his opponents, and followers.

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Q. What made you want to write this book at this time?

A. I first started thinking about Beck in March of 2009. The trigger was a clip I saw of his weepy "We Surround Them" episode on Fox News, the one co-starring Chuck Norris, where he choked up while mumbling about "loving his country... and fearing for it." I knew nothing else about him at the time. I just started digging around to see who this guy was and where he was coming from. The more I dug, the more it was clear that something was bubbling around his demo that was unique. There were all of these MeetUp groups and viewing parties across the country--a whole Culture of Beck. It was clear he was heading toward territory more Palin than Hannity. But I had no way of knowing he'd get as big as he did over the course of writing the book.

Q. What is the biggest misconception about Glenn Beck?

A. I think the biggest mistake people make is trying to fit him into just one basket. His critics sometimes think that he's totally crazy. Or just an actor. Or a businessman. His fans, meanwhile, are convinced that his politics are deeply held and his self-less patriot shtick is authentic. But there's no need to choose with Beck. You can be a crazy actor and businessman with genuinely bizarre politics and a perverse understanding of history. There's no conflict. 

That said, I think his primary motivations are, and have always been, money and fame. That's a constant throughout his career. Long before he found God and George Washington during his early transition to talk radio, he dreamt of making it big as a syndicated Top 40 guy. His media empire has been a dream since childhood, although the content is probably a surprise even to him. But just because he's a businessman who knows exactly what he's doing does not mean that everything coming out of his mouth is part of a charade. I think he really does have the twisted hard-right politics he professes to hold. He doesn't know enough to know better. He learned just about everything he knows about history and politics from AM radio and crazy Mormon Birchers like Cleon Skousen. A lot of what people find hard to understand about Beck is a result of rank ignorance. I offer numerous examples of this in the book. 

Q. What surprised you the most from your research?

I wasn't prepared for the depth of Beck's mean streak. He's still known for personalizing disagreements in a vicious way. This is something that goes all the way back. Along with his ambition, it's another striking constant in his life and career. This is a guy who called a competing deejay's wife live on the air and mocked her for having a miscarriage. More than one former colleague described him as a "sadist," the kind of guy who enjoys humiliating people, who pulls wings off of flies. I don't doubt that he could enjoy hurting animals. He still sells a shirt on his website that features a picture of a baby polar bear with a target on it and the tagline, "Drill through their a** for cheaper gas."

The idea that Glenn Beck "became a better man" when he found Jesus is one of two major self-serving myths out of which he's built his brand. The other being that his public super-patriotism is reluctant and full of self-sacrifice.

Q. There is much discussion of past emotional problems. What exactly occurred and how has that affected Beck's actions?

A. Beck had his share of tragedy in his youth. A divorce followed by the death of his mother. Then a half-brother killed himself. How much these things contributed to the Beck we know today, I have no idea. But Beck is clearly full of hatred to this day, for himself, for the world, for his political opponents. More than one former colleague believes he was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder in the 90s, likely bipolar, and that he took lithium on top of his recreational drugs and booze until he went clean in mid-90s. So you start with that as a baseline, together with a history of depression, throw in some megalomania and ADHD, for which Beck takes Big Pharma speed, sprinkle it with some dry drunk fairy dust and an instinctive paranoia, and you have a recipe for a freak show.

Q. Is this related to his crying, or is that even real emotion?

A. Beck has been fake crying for at least a decade. At his Top 40 station in New Haven, his ex-partner told me he'd get emotional, cut to commercial, dry up to order a bacon-and-cheese, then start crying as soon as he was on-air again. One of his colleagues in Tampa told me the same thing. This is not to say that Beck is not an emotional wreck who cries a lot. He definitely does. But I think the way he incorporates it into his performance is a combination of embarrassingly deep emotional neediness and a shameless desire to manipulate his audience, which apparently is willing to give him a pass on the crying because they think at bottom he is authentic. And it's worth noting that the neediness seems to cut both ways. Often Glenn Beck feels like nothing so much as an episode of Mr. Rogers.

There's also a bit of a Mormon thing going on with regard to the cheap theatrics and tortuous sentimentality in Beck's shtick, which I talk about at length in the book.

Q. Do many know Beck is a Mormon? How has that change affected him?

A. I think his fans know he's a Mormon. It's affected him in a number of ways. Most importantly, it was though Mormonism that he encountered the work of Cleon Skousen, whose books--The Naked Capitalist, The 5,000 Year Leap--filled the massive void that was Beck's knowledge base when he started doing talk radio.

Q. Beck's comments about Malia Obama caused outrage. How does this compare to other instances of outrageous comments during his Zoo career?

A. There's no need to go back as far as his Zoo career. When he was doing talk radio in Tampa and Philadelphia, he attacked Michael Schiavo's kids as "bastard children" on the air, because they were from a second marriage, and Beck was accusing him of "attempted murder" for wanting to pull the plug on his brain-dead wife, Teri.

If the attacks aren't nasty and personal, they're offensive in other ways. Beck's broadcast bile has been condemned, usually more than once, by groups representing just about every race and religion you can think of--from Jews to Hindus to Muslims, you name it. You could fill an entire encyclopedia with Beck's beyond-the-pale antics over the years. Some of it has been on-air, and just as much off-air. This stuff is, and always has been, his stock and trade.

I don't think his coy apology for his recent attack on little Malia Obama signifies a new and improved Beck. Even if he wanted to outgrow this kind of thing, his spleen wouldn't let him. His spleen runs the show. Always has.

Q. Tell us about Beck's "Plan" and his effort to announce it on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech?

A. Beck now claims that his "Restoring Honor" rally on the National Mall has nothing to do with King, even though he originally advertised it as timed to the anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Somebody must have told Beck that King was a "progressive cockroach." So now he claims he chose August 28 because it was near Labor Day.

Basically, the whole thing is a massive self-promotional event in which he'll be keynote speaker at a podium at the foot of the National Memorial. It would be funny if he wasn't asking his fans to pay for the whole thing while wrapping himself in the flag and claiming it's "about the troops." The way he's set it up is enough to make you puke. Only once he pays for this huge Beck Fest will any extra money will go to a benefit for the children of Special Forces veterans. But that might as well be an after thought. There are other, much more effective ways to raise money for charity. It's disgusting to watch him promote this thing, and breathtaking to watch his fans fall for it. Despite the transparency of what he's doing, they continue to eat up his selfless patriot act. It's very similar to his "Rallies for America" tour in 2003, which he promoted as a way to support the troops, but was really all about Glenn Beck, who at the time was building a national brand less than a year after beginning syndication. I tell that story in the book in some detail.

Q. Does the left over-worry about his impact, or is he a true influence on the right?

A. There's no question Beck is a major influence, especially given the flux and activity we're seeing on the right in 2010. The guy has an estimated total media footprint of 30 million Americans every month. And a good chunk of the Amazon 100 top-selling books are only on the list because he recommends them.

As for whether the left sweats him too much, time will tell. He may very well flame out, or melt down. But right now he merits concern. As pleasant as it might be to dismiss him, too many people are willing and eager to enter into this bizarre role-play in which Beck is not only their history professor, but also their quasi-prophetic movement leader. While there is an argument to be made against giving him too much of our energy and attention, completely ignoring him and his ilk is one luxury we can't afford.