{"id":1375,"date":"2010-11-20T22:23:47","date_gmt":"2010-11-21T03:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/20\/puppets-mediums-in-the-battle-over-amerika\/"},"modified":"2010-12-21T13:56:34","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T18:56:34","slug":"puppets-mediums-in-the-battle-over-amerika","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/20\/puppets-mediums-in-the-battle-over-amerika\/","title":{"rendered":"puppets & mediums in the battle over Amerika"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Stewart does Glenn Beck (again<\/a>), spinning his George-Soros-as-Darth-Vader routine to its logical culmination… “Only Rupert Murdoch” — well, with this ragtag bunch of conservative billionnaires, media organizations, PACs, et al. — “stands between George Soros and Amerika.” This is laugh-(or-cry)-out-loud hilarious.<\/p>\n

Part 1:<\/a><\/p>\n

Part 2:<\/a><\/p>\n

Or watch the whole episode at the Daily Show<\/a> web site.<\/p>\n

And yes, Fox News chairman Ailes actually did<\/a> say that National Public Radio “are, of course, Nazis.” Bill McKibben provides a more reasoned assessment of public radio here <\/a>in the New York Review of Books<\/em> — the same issue that has Soros chiming in<\/a> on Obama’s economic missteps, Diane Ravitch effectively shredding<\/a> the Davis Guggenheim pro-charter schools film Waiting for “Superman,”<\/em> and Anne Applebaum reviewing Tim Snyder’s excellent Bloodlands<\/a> (which has little to do with America except for the historical ground-truthing it provides on the more bizarre expressions of this current culture war — like Ailes’s “Nazis”).<\/p>\n

The new issue, meanwhile, includes a thoughtful piece by Mark Lilla on that same Beck of Revelation<\/a>. Searching for the \u201creal\u201d Glenn Beck, Lilla argues, \u201cmakes no sense. The truth is, demagogues don\u2019t have cores. They are mediums, channeling currents of public passion and opinion that they anticipate, amplify, and guide, but do not create; the less resistance they offer, the more successful they are.\u201d It’s this that distinguishes Beck from his Fox confreres: \u201cRush Limbaugh plays the loud, steamrolling uncle you avoid at Thanksgiving. Bill O\u2019Reilly is the angry guy haranguing the bartender. Sean Hannity is the football captain in a letter sweater, asking you to repeat everything, slowly. But with Glenn Beck you never know what you\u2019ll get. He is a perpetual work in progress, a billboard offering YOUR MESSAGE HERE.\u201d There\u2019s a lot to that characterization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jon Stewart does Glenn Beck (again), spinning his George-Soros-as-Darth-Vader routine to its logical culmination… “Only Rupert Murdoch” — well, with this ragtag bunch of conservative billionnaires, media organizations, PACs, et al. — “stands between George Soros and Amerika.” This is laugh-(or-cry)-out-loud hilarious. Part 1: Part 2: Or watch the whole episode at the Daily Show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[689701,691215],"tags":[16936,16865,16866],"class_list":["post-1375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media_ecology","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-america","tag-glenn-beck","tag-jon-stewart"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-mb","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1205,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/25\/morsels\/","url_meta":{"origin":1375,"position":0},"title":"morsels","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"First, for anyone living in a JonStewartless alternate universe... Stewart (and Samantha Bee) giving Glenn Beck a history lesson (about progressivism) was pretty funny. Beck may be a cheap target, but it's also a cheap (free) history lesson. Take this country back, Glenn, way back... www.thedailyshow.com Next, Denmark's new tourist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1319,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/08\/08\/jon-stewart-gives-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":1375,"position":1},"title":"Jon Stewart gives up","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Just had to share this. Hat tip to Reconciliation Ecology.","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1299,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/21\/an-energy-independent-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":1375,"position":2},"title":"an energy independent future","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Jon Stewart's history of US energy policy...","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1357,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/23\/letter-to-a-tea-party-sympathizer\/","url_meta":{"origin":1375,"position":3},"title":"letter to a Tea Party sympathizer","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"As another political season (leading to the midterm elections) winds down here in the US, people get wound up. Here's part of something I wrote to a friend who happens to be a Tea Party sympathizer - which surprised me when I found this out, but life is full of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1363,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/03\/progressive-priorities-jobs-movement-building-jon-stewart\/","url_meta":{"origin":1375,"position":4},"title":"progressive priorities: jobs, movement-building, Jon Stewart","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that the election results are in, we can all go back to thinking about what U.S. citizens (and non-citizen residents like me) can do about the sad state of affairs in this country. Gara LaMarche's and Deepak Bhargava's recent Nation piece The Road Ahead for Progressives: Back to Basics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1048,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/02\/from-huxley-to-obama-nlp\/","url_meta":{"origin":1375,"position":5},"title":"from Huxley to Obama & NLP","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I've mentioned Aldous Huxley here before. This 1958 interview with Mike Wallace shows him to be as broad-rangingly perceptive as anyone at the time - with insightful comments on persuasion techniques, Foucauldian surveillance and control (before Foucault wrote a word about the topic), television (which he thought was already \"being\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1894,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions\/1894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}