AltWeeklies Wire
21st Century Situationists
Framed inaccurately by the press, The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is best understood as a contemporary extension of the French Situationist movement of the ’60s, a mass inversion of rhetorical logic, meant to break the spectator’s passivity toward the spectacle and turn the obscuring force of mass media back on itself. Using pop cultural references and superficial Internet memes like the double-rainbow guy and “Hide ya kids, hide ya wife...” in the context of a once-powerful political forum was a Dadaist attempt to wipe the slate clean, to rise above the fruitless tit-for-tat schoolyard shouting match to which our political discourse has been reduced by the 24-hour news cycle and corporate spin-doctoring.
Tears of a Clown: On the Glenn Beck Phenomenonnew
The ex-Top 40 disc jockey, recovering drug addict and alcoholic, convert to Mormonism and the National Rifle Association, is American popular culture at its most incomprehensibly weird and offensive. He's also a huge success, a hit, a phenomenon -- a star.
Birth of a Blowhard: Glenn Beck in Connecticutnew
When Beck arrived at KC 101 in early 1992, he was a semi-failed, drug-and-alcohol addicted, Top-40s radio jock desperately looking for a route to stardom. By the time he left seven years later, he had figured out that talk radio was the future and conservative shtick could be revamped to serve as his escalator to fame and fortune.
Hartford Advocate |
Gregory B. Hladky |
10-21-2009 |
Media
How Glenn Beck is Driven by Mormonismnew
A case can be made that Beck is to Mormonism what Father Charles Coughlin was to Catholicism in the 1930s, when the "radio priest" peddled nasty, faith-based opposition to another ambitious Democratic president.
Boston Phoenix |
Adam Reilly |
10-07-2009 |
Media
Forget Reform: '9-12' Protesters Want a Revolution Against Gov'tnew
Don Rodgers is the driving force behind a local group that came together in March under the auspices of the so-called 9-12 Project, the brainchild of Glenn Beck, whose rants put Obama at the center of a vast conspiracy to steal freedom from hard-working Americans.
Colorado Springs Independent |
Anthony Lane |
09-10-2009 |
Media
New Hampshire Transplants Live Free -- or Die Tryingnew
They're digging up public squares. They're smoking pot and baring breasts. And they openly carry guns. New Hampshire residents are divided as to whether the Free State Project is a godsend or a nuisance.
Boston Phoenix |
Chris Faraone |
08-27-2009 |
Civil Liberties
