Coinciding with the launch of his roundly ridiculed work of "faction," Glenn Beck used 60 minutes of his Fox News perch to celebrate the prescience and wisdom of ... fiction authors:

The only people that really tell you what they honestly think about what's coming in the way of the future -- and they could be wrong -- are fiction writers, I think. That's why I love talking to them. They're very well informed, very intelligent, and many times way, way, way ahead of the time.

Fiction authors like Glenn Beck, who -- as Ben Dimiero and Simon Maloy astutely noted -- penned a book whose “facts” track very closely with the frequently false things Beck himself spent the last year and a half invoking fear about, making much of his Fox News show seem to be little more than a publicity stunt for his “factional” novel.

The advance work complete, Beck now turns his Fox News show into his very own marketing department -- singing the praises of fiction writers and their ability to speak honestly and bravely about the state of the world (without having to worry about getting fired by Fox News for “leveling baseless charges that can't be backed up”).

And fear not that Beck's message might be undercut by the growing number of scathing reviews. See, those nasty reviewers are in on it. Just like they were with Ayn Rand:

[Ayn Rand] saw the brutality of socialism and communism, but the elite here in America said, 'Oh, riff raff. Ayn Rand? She's crazy." Really? Read her books today. You'd think that the media would love a success story like this, but Ayn Rand was mocked in the media, in the universities. Even after achieving success she was routinely bashed by all of her critics, the media elite.