Glenn Beck: Farewell to a Fearmonger (Barf Alert!)

NEW YORK – Beck’s departure from Fox News marks the welcome removal of an incendiary talk-show host who reveled in apocalyptic shtick and the politics of incitement, writes John Avlon. Plus, the Fox-Beck divorce. The nightly nervous breakdown will not be televised. Glenn Beck is going off the air on Fox News. It is a remarkable reversal of fortune for a man who one year ago was banking $32 million annually, teaching Americans how to fear-monger for fun and profit. But with his ratings down nearly 50 percent and advertisers abandoning the show, Beck’s apocalyptic shtick has been getting rancid fast. It’s almost hard to remember that not so long ago Glenn Beck was being taken seriously as a political figure by hyper-partisans on the far right. The proto-Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill in 2009 was directly inspired by Beck. This past summer, he filled one-third of the Washington Mall with his faithful for what turned out to be a religious revival with political overtones, on the anniversary of the Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech. There were even, it is now surreal to say, calls for him to run for president on a ticket with Sarah Palin—a draft movement that they had to deny.

Glenn Beck is an American patriot and deserves all our support.

Yes, despite his faults I agree. Beck touched some very raw nerves with his reporting of subversives in the Obama administration. This is not much different than what others like Michelle Malkin and David Horowitz have done in print. But Beck had huge ratings on Fox. He was beginning to really ruffle some feathers.

The big problem Beck had was his style. He has a clownish demeanor about him and this doesn't not allow people to take him seriously about many issues. He tends to go off the deep end on occasion. He also brings up facts about people's backgrounds but will not tie ends together for a conclusion. So he has his faults.

That said, Beck has been a big positive. I hope he continues to have influence in the big debates on the big issues and makes contributions. He might be better behind the scenes as some have suggested.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/fashion/weddings/08HOOVER.html

Margaret Hoover , John Avlon
New York Times, The (NY) - Sunday, November 8, 2009
Margaret Claire Hoover and John Phillips Avlon were married Saturday at Stanford Memorial Church in Palo Alto, Calif. The Rev. Susan Scott, a Lutheran minister, officiated, with the Rev. Samuel Johnson Howard, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Florida, taking part.

The bride, 31, will continue to use her name professionally. She is a political and media consultant in New York and a commentator on the Fox News Channel. She graduated from Bryn Mawr. From June 2004 to November 2005, she worked at the White House as the associate director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

She is a great-granddaughter of Herbert Hoover , the 31st president of the United States. She is on the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford and on the board of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association in West Branch, Iowa.

She is the daughter of Jean W. Hoover and Andrew Hoover of Littleton, Colo. Her father, a mining engineer, retired from Greenfield Engineering in Denver. He is also on the board of the Hoover library association. Her mother retired as a flight attendant for United Airlines.

The bridegroom, 36, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist at The Daily Beast. He graduated from Yale and received an M.B.A. from Columbia. In 2007 and 2008, he was the chief speechwriter and the deputy director of policy for the presidential campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. He is the author of “Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics” (Crown, 2004). He is on the boards of the Bronx Academy of Letters, a high school, and the Citizens Union of New York.

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WE HEAR . . .
New York Post (NY) - Monday, February 22, 2010

EXCERPT
THAT the left and right of the political spectrum came together at Tina Brown’s house the other day to celebrate pundit John Avlon ‘s new book, “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America” - the first tome from the Beast Books imprint. Guests including Peggy Noonan, Carl Bernstein, Kiran Chetry, Rich Lowry, Mark McKinnon and Stanley Crouch all toasted Avlon and his new bride, Fox News star Margaret Hoover , the great-grandaughter of Herbert - and nobody threw a drink.

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