Ousting Glenn Beck

Fox News has a bad habit of crucifying its prophets. Glenn Beck’s predecessor wrote a book called, “A War on Christmas.” Shortly thereafter, John Gibson disappeared, never to be heard from again and Glenn eventually took his place. His book is still on my bookshelf, though.

Glenn may have 2.2 million viewers, even while Fox claims that his ratings are dropping, a circumstance they blame on Glenn for accusing Obama of being a racist. From what I’ve heard, though not yet read (only because I refuse to put any money in that Obama’s coffers), all the evidence is right there in his two books, which Bill Ayers lays claim to having ghost-written. Authorities seem to agree that not only is Obama not a good speaker, he’s also not a particularly good writer. Which makes one wonder how he ever came to be the head of the Harvard Law Review.

Glenn could be gone by the end of the year, or he could be gone sooner. All I can say to Glenn Beck is: welcome to the club! I’m in the exact same situation. My job is going away, officially, in December. “The End” could come sooner, though, as early as August, and almost certainly by October, when we put the final edition of our local magazine to bed. After that, like Glenn, I’m on God’s good humor. Only Glenn has the funds to make it on his own, to write his own ticket.

Glenn certainly isn’t on Fox’s good humor, nor on their advertisers’, who all quailed when Liberals threatened to boycott their companies if they dared to advertise on Glenn’s show. Free markets are only as free as their bottom line, I’m sorry to say. A relative handful of angry customers and a compliant media can make most companies quail. My company advertises on Rush Limbaugh’s show, but not Glenn’s.

In making the official announcement last night on his show, Glenn was gracious, noting that is relationship with Fox has always been good and that (for his part) there’s no animosity, no hard feelings. He said that he wanted to go on to do other things, and that he would still have a relationship with Fox News as a producer of programs. Fox sent out a press release saying the same things.

Not that Glenn has anything to worry about (he has the wherewithal to pursue freedom). But his followers do and so does America. He’s telling America a truth they don’t want to hear. As he’s often advised people: do your own homework, don’t just take his word for it. If you read any of the books by Andrew McCarthy, Brigitte Gabriel, or Sayyid Qutb himself (I’d left Social Justice in Islam at the movie theater on Saturday, put on my hazmat suit, and recovered the noxious thing yesterday afternoon), you’ll read the truth for yourself.

I've been reading up on the “real” Islam. Islamists mean what they say when they cry, “There is no God but Allah.” They consider Jesus' mission and the claims that He was God incarnate, divinity in the flesh, as the supreme insult, “blasphemy.” In the writings of Muslims like Sayyid Qutb, Jesus is reviled in every way. The Islamists do, in fact, consider Christian worship a “crime” by their shariah law.

Westerners get taken in by this bill of goods that Islam is a peaceful religion that promotes freedom. Sure, it's peaceful - if you're a man and a true believer. They believe that their all-encompassing laws, as set down by Mohammed received directly from Allah, is what sets Man free from sin. But only because the believers are so strait-jacketed by shariah that they could hardly sin if they wanted to. And those who do face brutal corporeal punishment, even death.

Brigitte Gabriel’s “They Must Be Stopped” (2008) is an easy to read, but horrifying account of how dangerous the Islamists are. Driven out of her native Lebanon, Gabriel is a Christian with a dire message for Christianity. She gives direct quotes for the Quran on its violent nature. By the account of one imam, the Quran harbors over 400 directives towards violent jihad, advocating the murder of Christians, Jews, and other “non-believers” of other faiths.

Another female writer of Mediterranean and I believe French descent also wrote such warnings. Now she’s dead. I can’t remember her name, but I remember her columns in the Wall Street Journal. Other authors are being threatened or black-listed by the multiculturalists and the Liberals. Today, they’re dancing on what they presume is Glenn Beck’s career grave.

If they can’t silence him completely, they’ll at least marginalize him to his faithful followers. His radio program was forced out of the critical metro New York market and now Fox is dropping his television program by the end of the year. The headlines state that he’ll be transitioning out.

He can make more money from his website broadcasts, they say, but I hope he remembers that a good portion of his audience is older, with luddite tendencies. Nor are his broadcasts completely safe from interference. Hackers can access viewer’s computers, cutting off the sound, as they did on my home computer. I have the Insider Extreme, for all the good it does me without the sound on my computer. It’s harder to interfere with a televised broadcast.

I’ll probably have to tote my hard drive to Staples, which has a computer repair service so I can listen in again. We can’t let the foes of free speech defeat us. Glenn will survive and even thrive (Rush Limbaugh has, because he’s independent) and so will we, but this is yet another bad portent of things to come – a 1984ish world where freedom is trumped by corporations, clerics, and communists.

Still, as the Jeff Goldblum character noted in Jurassic Park: “Life always finds a way.”