Glenn Beck:The 21st Century Les Nessman

Glenn Beck, in his extraordinarily delusional state, fancies himself as 21^st century Thomas Paine. The fact that Thomas Paine was the only Founding Father who called for worldwide disarmament, nationalized health care, welfare and the redistribution of wealth seems to have escaped Glenn Beck and his lemmings. Thanksgiving Day is an occasion in which I ritually engage in the act of watching the classic episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where the turkeys are unleashed from the helicopter. This year as I watched this 1970s television classic it struck me that the real analogue for Glenn Beck is not Thomas Paine, but Les Nessman.

Les Nessman was the news director for WKRP in Cincinnati and he was notorious for being paranoid about the communist invasion and the wholesale destruction of his American way of life. You don't even have to replace the communists with Islamic terrorists to make the comparison apt. For some reason Glenn Beck still seems to think that commies, reds, pinkos, fellow travelers and liberals of all stripes are the great threat to democracy and the American ideal of denying rights to those with whom we disagree. Just as we all laughed at Les Nessman's misplaced paranoia, so should Glenn Beck be an object of ridicule. Of course, Beck has something that Nessman never had: an audience trained to believe only that which is served on a platter of misinformation by the actors playing journalists on Fox News.

Les Nessman's paranoia about all things anti-American made for much of the greatest comedy on WKRP in Cincinnati. Nessman's profound commitment to viewing himself as a serious journalist despite mispronouncing golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez's name as Chy-Chy Rawd-ri-gweez aligns perfectly with Glenn Beck's profound commitment to viewing himself as the savior of the American way of life despite the fact that everything he stands for is in direct opposition to the Constitution. Another interesting bisection between the reality of Les Nessman and the reality of Glenn Beck is that Nessman was infamous for opening an invisible door to his office as he prepared for the day when he would get an actual door.

Glenn Beck, on the other hand, treats his vision of America as if it were reality. Just as Nessman treated a door that wasn't there as if it were, Glenn Beck treats America as if his small minority of followers represents the belief of the majority. Glenn Beck believes that liberals are trying to kill him and that Fox News is fair and balanced and that Barack Obama is a socialist. These are the psychotic ravings of a psychological doppelganger for the fictional Les Nessman.

Sorry, Glenn, but you aren't the 21^st century incarnation of the greatest liberal in American history, Thomas Paine. You are, instead, the 21^st century incarnation of the most laughable journalist in television history before the invention of Fox News. You, Mr. Beck, are our Les Nessman.