Who’s scarier: Heath Ledger’s Joker or Glenn Beck 18 March, 2010
Posted by Zack in Uncategorized.trackback
Glenn Beck *is* Heath Ledger’s Joker. I’m serious: same intonation, same delivery. It’s terrifying because the guy actually exists in real life, and has millions of followers. Listen to the clips below and make your own comparison.
Americans are freaking out, as they should be, as their society and economy crumbles down around them. If you don’t know that’s what’s happening, then you’re not paying attention. Glenn Beck is one of the few prominent voices who’s connecting full-on with that very appropriate anxiety.
But he’s using a classic, uncreative stunt to do it: demonizing a false enemy — in this case “communists,” a category that includes for Beck everyone from Woodrow Wilson to Obama to Wallis and even to little old me.
But over the past few months he’s gone beyond political attack to almost sexualized sadism (“pounding” the Reverend Jim Wallis “all night long”???). He has been taunting and threatening his targets in breathless whispers and hysterical screams, separated with dramatic pauses and prolonged evil villain cackles. Listen for yourself.
Joker:
Beck—”Hammer” Jim Wallis “all night long”:
Joker:
Beck:
Joker:
Doesn’t stuff like this just play into Glenn Beck’s game? It’s fighting fire with fire. The end result is that Glenn Beck gets even more publicity. How does equating Glenn Beck to the Joker help at all? Instead of fear of Marxism now we have fear of Beck. We should respond to the “freaking out” as you put it, with hope.
Matthew 10:5-8 “…And don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy. Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously.” -The Message
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Agree with your sentiment. But I think this may be part of “kicking out demons.” I’m serious — When there’s a guy on the radio with an audience of 10 million people a day who’s practicing real, terrifying sadism… I don’t think we should ignore that.
And by comparing with the joker clips I’m not trying to be cute — I’m trying to show that Beck is actually bringing something terrible into our politics.
Ledger’s Joker wasn’t a joker, he was a serious sadist — someone who took pleasure from torturing others. And that’s exactly what Beck is doing in those clips — in this case toward Jim Wallis. He’s taking pleasure from trying to scare Wallis, and going so far as to make what sound like physical threats.
I think if we ignore it, it’s just going to get worse, and more people are going to do it.
One more try: What Beck is doing is introducing violence to American politics. He tells his supporters not to be violent, but listen to the clips above — he is working to scare Jim, and then making physical threats too.
The church has a responsibility to speak against violence and hatred. If we don’t do that, it will just get worse and worse. We look back at the Nazis and wonder why the church didn’t speak out. Well, at what point should the church have spoken out? Only after they were in power, when it was too late? Or when they began threatening — just threatening — socialists, foreigners and Jews?
You’re right that we shouldn’t make Beck into a “public enemy”. But we should speak out against him making others a public enemy, and bringing in violence to attack them.
Zack – So glad to see you addressing this issue (and blogging again). MLK Jr. – “Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.”
Politics aside I’m jumping in on just the auditory comparison Good comparison, though I think you could have shortened the Hammer Wallis commentary by Beck just a tad.. 40 seconds comparison to over a minute loses the ” feel” of it for me. Nice matching though..
Wow, I already would have been creeped out with those Glenn Beck clips just by themselves. With the Joker concept added on top of that… *shudder*.
Anyways this reminds me of the guy that’s been outdoing Glenn Beck since before Glenn Beck started: Alex Jones. He took the Joker thing to the extreme. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnIWSI2tkDM
This guy Glen Beck sounds like a Sociopath
It bears repeating that there was considerable anger and hatred in the previous decade. There were public assassination fantasies about the president, and the clueless, unprincipled “Jesuslander” bushie was the enemy de jour. Few hands were wrung over that equally hateful and dangerous climate. Rightly so, because the state has the biggest purse and sword on the block, and needs pity about as much as a jungle cat.
Those who fancy this new breed of social gospel is a winning evangelical strategy are kidding themselves. The Catholic blend, “Liberation Theology”, has driven Latin Americans into the evangelical camp faster than any clerical scandal could. Nowhere else is the Catholic flock shrinking faster. A similar situation may be observed with the “mainline churches” in the United States.