Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America (18 page)

“Do you want to call somebody a racist?” Beck dared. “If you do, you better have some facts to back it up.” He quickly reconsidered this point. “But in today’s America, does anybody even care?”

Not if the 5
P.M
. ratings on Fox News are any indication.

Beck was growing increasingly bold. “I don’t think people buy into the cries of racism,” he proposed one night in September 2009.

“People are sick and tired of it,” agreed his guest, conservative writer David Horowitz.

To test this theory, Horowitz tried some incendiary lines: “Blacks are the human shield of the Democratic Party … that makes the Democratic Party a party of racists … The Democratic Party is the party of slavery, of segregation, of race preferences.

“Just get rid of the white guilt,” Horowitz counseled. “Just forget it. Blacks all over the world want to come to America because it’s the best place in the world for black people.”

Appearing on the
CBS Evening News
, Beck was asked by Katie Couric if he was sorry he called Obama a racist. He was not about to make a recantation. “It is a serious question that I think needs serious discussion,” he said. Beck would only allow that “I’m sorry the way it was phrased.”

“Living in a sound-bite world is really a nasty place to live,” he concluded.

You might even say it enslaves him.

CHAPTER 16
THE 9/12 MOVEMENT

Let us proclaim the mystery of faith.

Why do people follow Glenn Beck with such passion and devotion? This is a mystery only if you think of him in terms of his job description: conservative commentator. His followers do not view him primarily as a TV host or a talk-radio host. They regard him as more of a heavenly host.

Beck made his transformation from commentator to leader of a religious movement shortly after his arrival at Fox News. “On Friday,” he told his followers one night in March 2009, “I’m going to show you the way to really save our country. But it’s not—I’m not leading a movement or anything. It is you and people all over the country who believe in the nine principles and twelve values.”

Not leading a movement or anything? Beck had contradicted himself before he drew his next breath. The “nine principles and twelve values” are a quasi-religious doctrine Beck authored after polling his flock. They were part of an advocacy movement he called the “9/12 Project.”

The deliberate use of numbers for these “principles” and “values” echoed great attestations of faith that had come before: Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses, Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith, and, perhaps most relevant, Joseph Smith’s thirteen articles of faith for the Mormon Church. Beck portrayed himself as a modern-day Moses as he discussed his principles. A guest on his show one evening observed that Beck’s precepts were quite reasonable because “you only have to follow seven of the nine—that was your original mandate.”

“I know,” Beck said. “It’s like who can’t agree with the Ten Commandments? Okay, ‘well I don’t like that one, I really want to make graven images.’ Okay, give me seven out of ten.”

Beck’s principles ranged from the overtly religious (“I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life”) to the secular, angry, and ungrammatical (“I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable”). His values are a standard mix of hope, reverence, courage, and the like.

The 9/12 Project, however, was more than a covenant with his followers. He used it as a basis for a mass revival meeting for the Church of Beck on the National Mall in Washington. It was, appropriately enough, scheduled for September 12, 2009—hence 9/12—and was meant to evoke the feelings of patriotism and unity Americans experienced after the 2001 terrorist attacks. That’s the thinking behind Beck principle #1: “America is good.”

After this event, Beck immediately set to work on his next mass rally. He would assemble his flock at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 2010, the anniversary of the day in 1963 when the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. stood on that very spot and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. This was timed, by pure serendipity, no doubt, with the expected release of a new Beck book,
The Plan
, about his hundred-year blueprint for America.

The man who called the first black president a racist was attempting to claim the mantle of the martyred Dr. King? This took chutzpah. But whatever qualities Beck lacks, chutzpah is not among them.

“It is the anniversary of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from Martin Luther King, and what an appropriate day!” Beck told his listeners. “I think it was almost divine providence, I do. His dream has been so corrupted. It’s time we pick the dream back up and we finish the job.”

Beck, unveiling his plans for his MLK moment, told a large crowd at a retirement community in Florida in November 2009 (at a signing for another of his books,
Arguing with Idiots
) that he would develop “a hundred-year plan for America.” With this good doctrine, he preached to his disciples, “You will change the course of history.” Casting aside one of his twelve values, “humility,” Beck later forecast that his rally would be “one for the history books” and “a turning point in America.”

The local paper reported that people camped out in line overnight for one of the wristbands that would allow them to have their copies of Beck’s book autographed by the author. Speculation in advance of Beck’s big speech was that he would announce a bid for public office, and journalists spotted a “Glenn Beck for President” sign in the crowd. But such rumors misunderstood what Beck was about: He didn’t want the accountability of being an officeholder, he wanted the power of a movement leader.

Beck, his shirttails untucked from his jeans and his sleeves rolled up, promised nothing less than to “take our country back and usher in the next generation of Americans.” To do this, he would hold a series of conventions around the country and assemble a “team of advisers” to give him policy prescriptions.

This man was no mere talk-show host.

As in his political philosophy, Beck was preceded in his advocacy movement by the controversial Mormon thinker Cleon Skousen, who once went around the country giving “Making of America” seminars on the Constitution. And Beck himself had dabbled in mass-movement politics back in 2003, when he created the “Rallies for America” in response to antiwar protests. Then a syndicated radio host, Beck timed the rallies, in cities from Sacramento to Philadelphia, with the release of yet another of his books,
The Real America
—establishing the pattern of rallies pegged to book releases that he would use repeatedly. This raises some doubts about Beck’s adherence to “sincerity” on his list of values.

The events were full of patriotic imagery and patriotic bands playing patriotic songs. The experience, generally arranged by local radio stations that carried Beck, sometimes included church services. Beck would pull up in a painted “Rally for America” bus also labeled “The Glenn Beck Show” and wave from an observation deck atop the bus. The final event, in West Virginia, included a flyover and a recorded message from President George W. Bush. It was broadcast on Armed Forces Radio and included an appearance by the family of Jessica Lynch, the rescued prisoner of war in Iraq whose capture had been spun by the U.S. military into a false account of her firing at Iraqis.

After coming to Fox, Beck traveled freely back and forth between the worlds of commentary and political advocacy. He offered his audience “a specific plan of action” for taking control of America. On the radio, he asked Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, an outspoken Minnesota conservative, “How can I help you raise money? We should have a fund-raiser for you.” He counseled listeners that “the best way to get the Republicans to change is to abandon them—leave.” He determined that the Republican candidate in a special congressional election in upstate New York was “not a Republican” and urged support for her conservative challenger.

His first big advocacy campaign at Fox came with the “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties” on April 15, 2009. Barack Obama had been in office for two and a half months. “Americans across the country are holding tea parties to let politicians know that we have had enough,” he announced on air. “Celebrate with Fox News.” He told his radio listeners to join him at his own tax-day Tea Party, at the Alamo in San Antonio, with Ted Nugent. “The costs are going crazy,” he added, so “I’m going to do a fund-raiser” for the Tea Party group hosting him. “I’ve heard it’s like $500 a plate or something like that.” Never mind those Beck values of “thrift” and “moderation.”

Five days before the big event, Beck had an actor, Bob Basso, dress up in Colonial garb and pretend to be Thomas Paine reading Beck’s summons to action:

The time for talk is over. Enough is enough. Your democracy has deteriorated to government of the government, by the government, and for the government. On April 15th, that despicable arrogance will be soundly challenged for the whole world to see. Our friends will applaud it. Our enemies will fear it, an unprecedented moment of citizen response not seen in recent history since December 7th, 1941. Millions of your fellow Americans, neighbors, friends, relatives will bring their anger and their determination into the streets … Join the April 15th tea parties and the 9/12 Project elevating us above petty policies and uniting us with a national discussion of values and principles as our Founding Fathers originally envisioned.

This modern-day Paine, at Beck’s direction, likened the Obama administration’s stimulus plan to the terrorist attacks of 2001:

Your complacency will only aid and abet to our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn’t dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn’t dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn’t dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn’t dare pass the largest spending bill in history in open defiance of the will of the people, but they did … The power to change the course of history comes to very few people in a lifetime. On April 15th, you can take the first step. The second step is a one-million ‘we the people’ march on Washington.

When the dead patriot was done, Beck offered his conclusion: “See you at the Alamo.”

To spur participation, Beck tossed in a bit of paranoid talk in his radio show on April 13. “I’m going to be a little cryptic here,” he began, and indeed he was. “There are forces at play that are doing everything they can to make this tax day at San Antonio at the Alamo about me.” This was unsurprising, because Beck himself had organized and promoted the event, with liberal use of the first-person pronoun. “They’re trying to—we have some very good reports; we have a very good security team—the final straw was there are just things that … everything is out of control right now because people will do whatever they have to, to destroy the message.”

Beck didn’t quite explain himself, but he did back out as the keynote speaker of the event. This, however, was a distinction without a difference, because he was the de facto center of the event anyway, as he did his live broadcast from the Alamo. “Tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands are gathered on street corners, state capitols, or in front of their town squares all across our country today for Tax Day tea parties,” a triumphant Beck proclaimed from the Alamo on tax day. He riled the crowd to boo the media and switched between music and stories of the Alamo in 1836—where the surrounded and outnumbered Americans fought the Mexicans, though they knew they would die.

“This is why I think there is no better place for a tea party because this is the—this is kind of the attitude that I’m sensing from people all over the country,” Beck said. The Tea Party activists were preparing for a heroic and bloody last stand? “I believe, and all over the country sense that we’ve got to draw a line in the sand and say—no more!” he declared. “I have a feeling something big is starting with the tea parties.”

Beck was determined to get out in front of this parade. He channeled the Tea Party anger into his own march on Washington, which came five months later. He had already telegraphed the beginning of the 9/12 Project months earlier, in January 2009, when he stated that the nation’s problems could be solved “by just being the people that we promised ourselves we would be on 9/12, the day after 9/11.”

Beck was probably right about that; the days following the attacks were a time of great national unity and purpose. He even made noises about making his movement an apolitical denunciation of Republicans as well as Democrats. But it quickly became a movement of aggrieved conservatives. The tax-day protests had attracted a fiercely anti-Obama crowd, and some carried signs with racist imagery or demands that Obama produce his birth certificate to prove that he’s American.

Beck, to his credit, didn’t embrace the “birther” theory, but he found a way of validating his followers’ grievances, whatever they were. He gave voice to them with a “You Are Not Alone” special on Fox to promote his 9/12 Project. Beck followers, using Meetup.com, held watch parties throughout the land; total viewership topped three million.

“Every time you turn that television on, it just seems like the whole world is spinning out of control,” he told his viewers in an open monologue interrupted by frequent breaks for crying. “What happened to the country that loved the underdog and stood up for the little guy? What happened to the voice of the ‘forgotten man’? The ‘forgotten’ man is you. But something is happening in America. The paradigm is about to change.” Beck’s answer: “Let’s find ourselves and our solutions together, again, with the nine founding principles and the twelve eternal values.”

After a good cry (“I’m sorry. I just love my country. And I fear for it”), Beck pivoted to paranoia. “It seems like the voices of our leaders and special interest and the media, they’re surrounding us. It sounds intimidating, but you know what? Pull away the curtain and you’ll realize that there isn’t anybody there. It’s just a few people that are just pressing the buttons and their voices are actually really weak. The truth is—they don’t surround us. We surround them.”

To illustrate, he introduced a mosaic he had constructed out of photos sent in by his viewers. They were arranged to form a hand clasping a flagpole with an American flag. The words “We the People” and “9/12 Project” were at the bottom. Beck directed his followers to report for duty on September 12.