Thursday, April 08, 2010

too bad many of his viewers are "idiots"

Beck admits he doesn’t give ‘a flying crap about the political process. … We’re an entertainment company.’

Fox News host Glenn Beck’s media “empire” is the cover story of the newest issue of Forbes Magazine. In the story, Beck reveals that his media company Glenn Beck Inc. made $32 million in revenue in the period between March 2009 and March 2010. The host also explains that he sees himself much more as an entertainer than a political activist, saying that he doesn’t “give a flying crap about the political process”:
With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: “I could give a flying crap about the political process.” Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. “We’re an entertainment company,” Beck says.

“I don’t necessarily believe that [what Beck says] is reflective of his own personal politics — I don’t even know if he has personal politics,” Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers magazine tells Forbes. “I see him as a performer.” This isn’t the first time Beck has suggested he isn’t as radically conservative as he seems. In February he told USA Weekend that “you’d have to be an idiot” to “not notice the temperature change” caused by global warming, and that he thinks mankind may play a signficant role in the phenomenon. Beck has previously described himself as “a rodeo clown” and conceded, “If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.”


(Think Progress)