This should be a great read:
An early hint may come in June, when Beck publishes his book The Overton Window, which he described as “a story of America in a time much like today where the people are confused,” with a government in crisis and the rise of a citizens’ group called the Founders Keepers, which “leads to a battle and a civil war, and life is upside-down planetwide.
On first blush it sounds like “Atlas Shrugged” with a bit more violence, and with 9-12 Tea Partiers taking the place of underground intellectuals. And it will also ruin for all time a term political scientists have enjoyed and Beck recently discovered. (In that clip, an early title for the book is “We Are Americans: The Overton Window.”)
A couple thoughts: (1) I hope this is made into a movie, (2) I hope that this makes everyone stop talking about Overton Windows, and (3) I hope that glibertarian “econobloggers” of the future take their usernames from the names of characters in the book.
Zifnab
You can’t use that word! That’s our word!
SGEW
In twenty or thirty years there’s going to be a Hollywood biopic made about Beck, and it’s going to be fabulous. What a role!
Like “Man on the Moon,” but crazier. And stupider.
Chyron HR
The description sounds like a bad sci-fi novel. Is the titual “Overton Window” the means by which the
PsyclosLemdibs come to conquer Earth?Malron
Glenn Beck trying to become the L. Ron Hubbard of the 21st century.
Tom Hilton
Um, kind of already ruined. Several times over.
Napoleon
@Zifnab:
Actually more like our phrase.
arguingwithsignposts
You have to admit the guy has cajones to schedule his wankfest on the date of the King speech.
Face
FWIW, Beck is sick rich right now playing this phony populist on my TV. Everyone rips Beck as a lying goofball, while he sells millions of books and probably laughs as he sees at least 8 figures in his bank account.
Violet
From that article:
And they call Obama voters mindless followers and Obots? I believe this sort of thing is called “irony.”
Also:
He’s ginning up fear and then profiting from it.
Keith
My
BurkeanOvertonian glass is fogging up.Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Zifnab:
Which one, “publishes” or “book?”
cleek
1 we can’t afford everything we want
2 we will have to give up some of the things we want
3 this will make people mad
4 once we get rid of the stuff we can’t afford, we can slash the tax rate by 12%
5 goto 1
?
Scott
I liked Beck better when Andy Griffith was playing the part…
mistermix
(2) will be a happy result, if it happens.
Comrade Jake
All jokes aside, how many Congress members have to be shot before we appreciate just how incredibly dangerous this asshole is?
Xenos
Time to defenestrate some people through an Overton window. From the first floor, of course.
Hypnos
Like there ever was a democratic revolution led by the uncultured masses that the Tea Party embodies. Each and every revolution started by the people driven by pure populist anger ended up creating awful dictatorships.
Revolutions that increase freedom are led by a society’s brightest, most cultured and most educated people. You know, that kind of people that Teabaggers hate the most.
New Yorker
Which work of fiction will be more entertaining: Beck’s novel, or “Going Rogue”?
New Yorker
@Hypnos:
Thomas Jefferson was an elitist lib’rul who hated Jeebus and wanted the terrorists to win. I think I just read that in my Texas-approved high school history textbook.
Omnes Omnibus
@New Yorker:
No, just no.
Ash Can
@Violet:
And this is what makes him so insufferable. It’s all about him, and he doesn’t care who gets hurt, or how hurt they get, in the process. He and his ilk are evil.
matoko_chan
It actually sounds a lot more like the Left Behind series, given that 22% of “conservatives” think Obama is the Anti-christ.
I pray for the Rapture everyday to lift these pre-trib assclowns off into outer space and leave the rest of us alone.
aimai
Man, you guys are *&^% fast. Malron up at 9:37 beat me to it. Just like Cheese is “Milk’s leap to immortality” the Overton Window book is Beck’s leap to L. Ron Hubbard like wealth. He must have seen the earlier story about the Colbert show’s new messiah and thought “I’ve got to get me some of that action! The direct mail marketing will be pure gold!”
aimai
daryljfontaine
@cleek: Not “cut by,” “cut to.” Of course, the spending cuts that he will propose will either have the effect of killing by starvation and untreated illness a large chunk of his lumpenproletariat, or driving them to desperation-fueled revolt, as “tax cuts” will do exactly as much to help them as they have in the past.
D
BenA
I’ve been thinking this for a while now: Something broke in this country after 9/11. A lot of people just went of the deep end… maybe it magnified a already existing condition. There are a lot of people out there just terrified of their own shadow.
Ash Can
And BTW, kudos to DougJ for another outstanding post title.
gbear
@cleek:
As if Beck even has to spend a moment pining for the things he can’t buy. What a snake.
John PM
@matoko_chan: #22
Should the Rapture actually come to pass, I predict that these “assclowns” will be the ones left behind and will be actively working for the Anti-Christ, while the hated liberals will be chillin’ in Heaven.
New Yorker
@BenA:
I don’t think so. Remember, this is the country of the John Birch movement. I just think it made the crazy that much more visible, and a some charlatans learned they could make millions feeding that crazy.
Porco Rosso
Alternate title: “Atlas Creamed.”
Little Dreamer
Don’t tell me Glenn Beck doesn’t want a civil war. He’s writing a fictional account of his wettest dream because the real one just ain’t happening fast enough for him to get his rocks off on it. Oh, damn!
gbear
@Little Dreamer: Yes. This book will be wingnut pron.
BenA
@New Yorker:
I know we had the militias prior to 9/11 and the birchers/LaRouchies and this stuff goes way back… but I think there’s a new dynamic to it… or maybe magnified some of it. Maybe a certain demographic was already primed for it having grown up during the height of the cold war..
matoko_chan
@BenA: well….9/11 was just splashback against centuries of Big White Christian Bwana colonizing and missionarying and enslaving the little black and brown and red and yellow ppls….for their own good and the Love of Jeebus, of course.
The multi-hued are beginning to inherit the earth.
Same thing in the US.
2008 was the first year minority children under 5 outnumbered non-hispanic white children under 5 in America….and …..coincidentally, the first year we elected a black president.
Its like a world wide slave revolt is brewing….think of Haiti and the slave uprisings against the French, but on a global scale.
matoko_chan
Oh….and the “Founders Keepers” arent going win a planetwide conflict.
The numbers just arent there.
Non-hispanic whites will lose a race-war on sheer numbers and territory.
LD50
You mean with retirees on disability driving Winnebagos taking the place of the big strapping metallurgists.
LD50
@gbear: The Turner Diaries go mainstream.
BenA
@matoko_chan:
9/11 was the same as it every was. Quite frankly those responsible for 9/11 have more in common with the frightened white people in this country than they do Haitian slaves. It has less to do with American Imperialism and more to do with a frightened theocracy trying to maintain the status quo. Al Qaeda is nothing more than the Muslim version of the Hutaree. They just have better funding from Saudi oil money.
Little Dreamer
@Violet:
__
How can I get odds that we make it at least 6? I’m in! ;)
matoko_chan
Nah BenA….u wrong.
Al-Q’s stated purpose is to get Big White Christian Bwana off the Arabian Peninsula.
The chief inspiration of anti-anglosaxon sentiment in MENA is Operation Ajax.
GTFO, Big White Christian Bwana.
America was built on the land of red men with black slave labor.
Beck and his posse just want to go back to the good old days.
BTW, the Mich militias were apparently fundie xians that believe Obama is the Antichrist.
Little Dreamer
@BenA:
Joe McCarthy’s fear of communists, perhaps?
GregB
Fox News host and false Messiah, Glenn Beck.
BenA
@matoko_chan:
Yeah… we don’t want the impure in our country. Sound familiar? It’s part and parcel of the crazy right wing here.
You remove the color of the skin and the geography… and you end up with the same talking points.
FlipYrWhig
The thing I find interesting about Beck is how much he poaches the trappings of intellectualism. He puts on the reading glasses, talks about books, writes on the chalkboard; it gives the impression of being professorial. But most of these people hate intellectuals and know-it-alls. What gives?
BenA
@matoko_chan:
And the Saudi royal family wasn’t built on slave labor? I don’t really see the difference between one group of religious fanatics and another. They’re different sides of the same coin.
Mnemosyne
So do you think Beck has only one ghost writer, or does he keep a team of them on salary?
flukebucket
@Porco Rosso:
“Atlas Creamed.”
Not bad. Not bad at all.
flukebucket
@matoko_chan:
Or as Pat Robertson would put it, “the mother of all deals with the devil”
jake the snake
Beck gives more the authority of a preacher or Sunday School teacher than a professor.
Like a lot of fundatmentalist preachers, he feeds into peoples fears and resentments.
matoko_chan
@BenA: try to be smarter Ben.
There is no moral equivalence here.
Did the Sauds send covert agents over here to change election results?
Did the Sauds bring drill crews over here and exploit our resources?
Nope…..we went THERE.
Think centuries of exploitation of natural resources and slave labor of third world countries….and meddling…..incessant meddling in their politics and cultures.
American “exceptionalism” is just code for ….We are going to rape you indigeneous populations and steal your stuff, and we dont have to even say sorry because we are doing this for your own good, bringing our vastly superior western culture and saving your souls for Baby Jesus.
KDP
OT, but providing what I think is a nice counterpoint is this from Fallows via Sully. Along with a link to the New Yorker article.
FlipYrWhig
@jake the snake: Hmm, Sunday School teacher I hadn’t considered, because I didn’t go to church. But I don’t find him all that preacherly, what with all the chalkboards and pointers and such. Seems more like a lecture, less like a sermon. But, again, I’ve been inside a church for services fewer than 10 times in my life.
matoko_chan
@flukebucket:
yup.
Its the White Man’s Burden, lol, to rule the poor ignorant black and brown and yellow and red folk……for their own good of course.
cleek
@daryljfontaine:
to/by, either way he’s saying we’ll be able to cut taxes because we had to cut spending because we can’t pay for what we want.
so either we cut taxes more than we need to (in order to be able to afford his 12%), or we cut spending to a level that matches what we have coming in, and then cut taxes, which will make even more things unaffordable…
?
or, Beck’s just talking out his pasty white ass
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Beck reminds me of the late nutty televangelist, Dr. Gene Scott, right down to the whiteboard.
Beck hasn’t started running videos of himself riding horses surrounded by hot girls in their 20s, but I’m sure it’s coming.
Remember November
Glenn Ayn Ron Beck Always Gives Entertainment…
or G A R B A G E
flukebucket
@jake the snake:
I love to watch Glenn Beck with the television muted while walking on the treadmill listening to Dave Matthews on my IPOD.
It is trippy.
BenA
@matoko_chan:
I agree 100% that there are centuries of exploitation of natural resources and slave labor in third world countries, but if you think the deviding line is East vs. West or the color of people’s skin then you’re overly simplifying the issue.
If 9/11 had been carried out by Palestinians than I’d be on the same page as you. If 9/11 had been carried out by an African nation who’s country was being strangled to death by the world banking system, you might have been right. 9/11 wasn’t . If it hadn’t been the rich spoiled sons of the Saudi aristocracy you MIGHT have an argument.
Paris
Does anyone really believe Beck is authoring a book without a ghost writer?
matoko_chan
niiice.
22% of republicans think Obama is the antichrist.
Pre-trib fundie white boys playin solja.
I think….it isnt just 9/11 that caused this fear apocalypse in the US….it is the undercurrent of demographic evolution…..shifting the tectonic plates of political power under their feet.
Chris Andersen
I know this may be against the apparent popular sentiment in these parts, but the Overton Window is a perfectly legitimate model for discussing political messaging. Just because a bunch of people on the left got thoroughly confused about what it means and a bunch of people on the right have actually used it effectively does not mean we should just dismiss it. We should instead learn to use it right.
(And for those wondering, the mistake many on the left have made is in thinking that the Overton Window has anything to do with the way the leaders of a political movement operate. The window is not pushed by the leaders. It is pushed by the people at the bottom instead. The movement leaders don’t push it themselves, its more like they have to learn how to harness the natural movement of political opinion and make some of the more radical views become acceptable.)
It is really unfortunate that the idiocy of the firebagger crew has resulted in the proverbial throwing out of the baby with the bathwater.
matoko_chan
@BenA: just one question….are you familiar with Operation Ajax?
I think it is pretty telling that educated wealthy young men could be inspired to burn with enough passion to sacrifice their lives for a cause.
ONE MORE FUCKING TIME.
Their cause is gettin’ the Western powers OUT OF MENA.
Do we belong there?
The good ol’ USA has made MENA into a Reaver factory with an infinite supply of spare parts.
We responded to a singleton attack that killed 3000 citizens by raining death and destruction on a country that wasn’t even involved…..giving them a 9/11 every week during the height of sectarian violence in 2006….on a population of 24 million.
New Yorker
@BenA:
Bingo. US Imperialism has its fingerprints all over Latin America and far worse so than the Middle East, yet no Guatemalan or Nicaraguan or Chilean would ever dream of doing that which the millionaire son of those who most benefited from the US-Saudi relationship did on 9/11.
Plus, bin Laden took his Saudi oil money and his Arab fanatic followers and, with the help of the Pakistani intelligence agency, overran an impoverished country in Central Asia. Imperialism, anyone?
This ain’t poor brown people rising up against rich white people. It’s rich brown religious nutcases vs. (at least under Bush) rich white religious nutcases.
Corner Stone
@SGEW:
I’ve been trying to think of what it would take in the future to accurately portray him.
Some kind of mixed up Brad Pitt ala 12 Monkeys/Robert Downey Jr/James Woods mixture combo is where I stopped.
Can you imagine the talent it would take to slip into that mindset, and then *get back out*?
b-psycho
That book is destined to be found in some interesting places. Like, say, the truck of a right-wing extremist that just blew up something.
Shalimar
@FlipYrWhig: Beck is a Mormon. I went to a Mormon church for half a year and chalkboards were common in Sunday school. Maybe he has had the same experience.
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan:
But to what end? (that’s rhetorical) They want them gone for a reason. With the inflaming loose morals of The West gone, then the hyper religious and mega wealthy can go back to exploiting their own uneducated once again.
It’s the same thing in MENA. Why do you think the powers there are ginning up so much hatred for that “Reaver Factory”? It’s so once we leave they can get back to the business of killing and exploiting their own resources without our interference or profit drain.
Svensker
@Violet:
Which PROVES that all the incitement is from the Dems.
BenA
@matoko_chan:
Funny how the Saudi’s seem to benefit from every stupid thing the good ol’ USA seems to do in the middle east. Funny how the effect of 9/11 ultimately increased the hold the powers the be have on MENA. To characterize 9/11 as some kind of rebellion of the oppressed is laughable. AT BEST they were dupes of the same interests they thought they were striking against.
plasticgoat
It’s obvious by now that Glenn Beck has no original thoughts. I think he trolls the web looking for his next subject to scare the 26%er’s. I would be really surprised if had even heard of the Overton Window before reading those nasty “left wing” blogs.
Keid A
Matoko_chan,
Did the Sauds bring drill crews over here and exploit our resources?
Nope…..we went THERE.
I dunno.The Gulf Sheikdoms just don’t look all that exploited to me.
Bubblegum Tate
@Corner Stone:
Nicholas Cage + cocaine
Corner Stone
@Bubblegum Tate: I was thinking with 12 Monkeys we get the spastic nature, RDJ the emotional caricature and Woods the soaring preachy-alternate-scape vision.
Cage + blow seems a little bipolar spastic without the ability to get anyone to buy in to where he’s going.
But I like where you’re going with the addition of modern chemistry. That may be the ticket after all.
FlipYrWhig
@Bubblegum Tate:
So… Nicolas Cage.
I think they might have to adapt some of the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” technology. Nothing will epitomize Beck better than some sort of motion-capture animated rodent.
Luthe
So, to get down to that 12% tax rate will Glenn-boy be cutting the military spending that keeps us safe from teh Mooslims or the Social Security checks that all his viewers get?
ArchPundit
Isn’t this kind of redundant since they are already remaking Red Dawn?
Wolverines!!!!!!!
matoko_chan
@BenA: dude….they are ALL MUSLIMS.
try real hard here.
Bushco went in there and caused the deaths of ~ 300,000 MUSLIMS.
Those retards went in there an ripped up the fabric of their society.
Then the Reavers came through the tears.
Why do they hate us?
Try 600 years of oppression and resource-rape and fuckin’ proselytizing and installing tyrants like the Shah and propping dictators like Hussein and fuckin’ fighting a proxy war with the commies on their farms and fields and in their living rooms.
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: sure.
Still aint our bidness.
5000 ‘merican soljahs and ~300,000 muslim civilians died so we could meddle and make more parts of the world safe for WEC proselytizing and pr0n, not to mention a trillion taxpayer dollars we sure could use right now.
Sound cost-viable to you?
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan: Let’s be clear – people all over the world hate us. Some much, much more than others. A significant portion of these different peoples would pull their own teeth out to inflict damage (physical, financial, psychological) on the US of A and its peoples.
I don’t see anyone arguing that this isn’t true, or that we haven’t meddled in places and done a great deal to cause this hatred.
But 99% of those motivated people do not have the funding, resources/education and opportunity to do so. There is a reason 9/11 happened, and it is not simply because we had troops in Saudi, or have been fucking with that region for an extended amount of time.. And so I am even clearer since you have a hard time staying on topic of the argument – 9/11 happened because the motivated met up with the enabling.
9/11 was not “just splashback” for meddling.
asiangrrlMN
Ah, yes. Populist Glenn Beck who pulls in, according to a link from Benen, around $18 mill a year. Yup. He’s certainly one to talk about having to scrimp and save and not having the government help if you can’t afford insurance. Asshat.
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: splashback.
just like the western powers built the Islamic Republic of Iran with their meddling in Mossadehg’s election and the installation of the Tyrant Shah.
The US had a big part in sowing the dragon’s teeth in MENA.
Now reap the harvest.
Quit whining……we built those Reavers.
From the crusades to the british raj to the slavers and Blackwater, colonialism, missionariism, imperialism, souless rapacious exploitation of 3rd world populations in the name of glorious capitalism and “judeo-christian” democracy.
dumping unfiltered cigarrettes and bad drugs on the third world for profit.
/spit
there is a beautiful ironic symmetry in this….American “exceptionalism” was never more than foul proselytizing and exploitation……now we have our own religious fanatics….the Hutaree and the Teabaggers.
exactly like muslim fundies, they are people that are disenfranchised from mainstream culture and attemptin to “take their country back. “
Batocchio
The Overton window is a very useful term, especially for pointing out that, contrary to MSM reporting, the Blue Dogs aren’t moderates – fiscally, they’re further right than Reagan was. Your main objection to the term seems to be that some folks running around citing “the Overton window” meant “let’s sandbag our own team.”