February 2010, Glenn Beck vs. Joe Klein. My favorite comedic moment was this clip where he lampoons Joe Klein and the Ivy League faculty lounge, donning a tweed smoking jacket and a pipe. I've watched it a dozen times or so and it never gets old. Just hilarious.
Look it up Joe, it's true. It almost makes it sound like you don't know what you are talking about. And it also kind of turns your entire nasty little blog entry into...anti-intellectual drivel!
August 2009, Beck exposes Van Jones. Beck makes history by airing a devastating mini-documentary on the radical background of White House clean energy czar Van Jones. Thanks to Beck and a revelation that Van Jones was a 9/11 truther, Van Jones resigned just a few weeks later. Beck 1, White House 0.
July 2010, Beck devotes entire show to Hayek's Road to Serfdom. It wasn't Beck at his best...I am not sure Beck actually read the book before doing the episode. But it didn't matter. Within hours, the book jumped to number one on Amazon.com.
February 2010, Beck addresses CPAC. This was not actually part of his TV program, but it might as well have been. The best moments: his rock star introduction set to the music of Muse, and the moment he brings out his chalkboard.
January 2009, The Inconvenient Debt. This was very early on in the show's history, and I think was one of the first Beck clips that went viral. He parodies Al Gore to demonstrate the dramatic and frightening rise in the nation's money supply. Who said monetary policy makes for bad TV?
May 2010, "The Plan". Yes, he is a self described rodeo clown, but in May of 2010, Beck devoted an entire week to outlining a plan to solve the country's fiscal problems and reversing 100 years of progressivism. He discusses how to cut entitlements, education, health care, and yes, even defense spending. Making policy conversations accessible and entertaining...Beck at his best.
October 2009, Glenn vs. Anita Dunn. In the fall of 2009, White House communications director Anita Dunn spearheaded an unusual White House strategy to attack and marginalize Fox News, calling the network "opinion journalism masquerading as news". A few weeks later, Beck reveals a video of Anita Dunn making a speech where she calls Mao one of her "favorite philosophers". Was she joking when she said that? Most likely. She claims she was "being ironic". But at a minimum, it showed really bad taste. And after going after Fox, did she really think she was going to get the benefit of the doubt? Beck 2, White House 0.
And perhaps the funniest part of all of this was on the next episode, when Beck's staff member manning the White House hotline is dressed in a Mao suit. Hilarious.
March 2009, Beck apologizes to audience for Massa interview. On March 7, 2010, Democratic Congressman Eric Massa accused the White House of orchestrating an ethics investigation "to oust him because he had voted against overhauling health care". Beck is intrigued and lands an hour long interview with the former Congressman, hoping to get some insight into possible Chicago style political tactics from the White House. The interview is a complete disaster, as Massa backs away from his previous statements and is preoccupied with pointing out that he did not engage in "groping", only "tickling". At the end, Beck apologizes to his audience for wasting their time.
January 22 2010, Beck airs documentary "The Revolutionary Holocaust". Beck takes a huge risk and it pays off. Jonah Goldberg, who is featured in the documentary, described it as follows: "It is very, very hard hitting. It’s the sort of thing that would never, ever, have been allowed on TV 20 years ago."
March 13 2009, Beck launches 9/12 project, cries on air. Here is where it became clear that Beck was interested in more than just putting on a news show. The 9/12 project becomes a strand of the tea party movement, and not an insignificant one. Critics are hysterical because Beck cries on air.
April 15, 2009: Beck leads tea party rally at the Alamo. This was perhaps the moment where the tea party movement really started to take hold. As the media and the White House are geniunely confused by the tea party protests (after all, taxes had not gone up yet!), Beck defines the tea party as a non-partisan movement concerned with one issue - the dramatic growth in government spending. From his opening monologue:
(The media) continues to think that the tax day tea parties are all about Barack Obama or they are all for the GOP. It’s not because they don’t try to understand, I don’t think they are capable of understanding. But since the media are watching, I am going to speak very, very slowly. As I understand it, at least the way I see it here, these have nothing to do with the Democratic party, other than the Democrats suck (roar from crowd). However, no more than the Republicans suck (even louder roar from crowd). This has nothing to do with how much Barack Obama is spending, it’s about how Barack Obama AND George W Bush AND both Congresses have been spending for years.- Glenn Beck
Farewell to the Glenn Beck TV program on Fox News. It made history and was unlike anything we have ever seen or will ever see again on TV.
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