My latest Pajamas Media Piece on Beck

My latest piece is up at Pajamas Media, focusing on Glenn Beck. Here’s an excerpt:

The debate over Glenn Beck is fascinating, but both sides have missed the real truth. Glenn Beck’s current position of prominence is a problem, but not for the reason that his opponents imagine.

The debate has come down to a question of whether Beck is good for conservatism. Dan Riehl argues Beck is made prominent by the media because he hurts conservatism. Bernard Chapin provides the counterpunch that Beck is under attack by the media because he’s good for conservatism and revitalizes it.

The problem is that few people are as strategic as Chapin or Riehl suggests. Certainly, Fred Phelps and his ghoulish family are given prominent media play to tar actual conservative Christians, and the media never mentions Phelps’ support for Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 1988. Similarly, I’ve seen people I know to be reasonable, decent folks turned into monsters by the media in order to marginalize them.

However, this can’t be said of all media action. Would anyone say conservatives are attacking Keith Olbermann to make him prominent to give us election wins? Your average voter could care less about the latest outrageous statement by the Sportscenter alumnus. Conservatives attack Olbermann because they don’t like him. If there’s some grand strategy behind it, it’s not working. Nor would anyone say that Sean Hannity has James Carville or Bob Beckel on his show in order to make Democrats look like buffoons. Well, they wouldn’t say it about Carville, anyway.

The news media is about passion, energy, and novelty. “George Will writes bland intellectual column” isn’t news. “Glenn Beck throws down the gauntlet to the Obama administration on national television while wearing lederhosen.” Now, that’s news.

It’s silly to charge Glenn Beck with being bad for conservatism and bad for the Republican Party. Do Beck bashers imagine that people are going to say, “The economy may be awful and I may agree more with the Republicans, but I can’t stand that Glenn Beck, so I’m voting for the Democrats”? Will that show up in the exit polls?