Glenn Beck and Personal Integrity

[Christopher]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100519/pl_ynews/ynews_pl2136

Glenn Beck feuds with congressman over gold investigation

Fox News host and conservative talker Glenn Beck is firing back after New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner issued a report critical of Goldline International, a gold retailer and one sponsor of Beck's cable show. Goldline is among several gold concerns that advertise with Beck while Beck offers testimonials about gold — an arrangement that's sparked some conflict-of-interest complaints about the pundit.

...

It sounds more to me like the show is an advertisement rather than an actual ethical program. Perhaps a 'political MTV.'

I'm just saying...

[dan2100]

http://news.yahoo.co...ws/ynews_pl2136

Glenn Beck feuds with congressman over gold investigation

Fox News host and conservative talker Glenn Beck is firing back after New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner issued a report critical of Goldline International, a gold retailer and one sponsor of Beck's cable show. Goldline is among several gold concerns that advertise with Beck while Beck offers testimonials about gold — an arrangement that's sparked some conflict-of-interest complaints about the pundit.

...

It sounds more to me like the show is an advertisement rather than an actual ethical program. Perhaps a 'political MTV.'

I'm just saying...

If you mean his show, I look on it and all similar shows as entertainment first and foremost. (To be sure, I'm not personally entertained by it, but this is the role I see it playing.)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Beck actually believes gold is a sound investment. And he can't stand Weiner.

Beck launched a satire blog called Weiner Facts.

The term "Weiner Facts" then hit Google Trends as the No. 1 search surge (most searched for term at a specific moment) on the Internet.

Apropos, some advertisers are boycotting Beck's show, but they are few. In the main, he turns advertisers away. I believe he canceled General Motors ads, for instance. So he doesn't need to attack Weiner in order to play footsie with his sponsor. On the contrary, he is probably trying to protect his sponsor from any kind of action a congressman can cause by drawing the fire towards himself. There was once a time when you could not buy gold in America...

Another interesting fact is that Beck has catapulted books about George Washington, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, etc., onto the Amazon bestseller list. Not just top 100, either. Right now as I post, one about George Washington is sitting No. 1. This is a direct result of Beck plugging the book.

How on earth is getting Americans to read about early American history just "entertainment"?

Michael

[dan2100]

Beck actually believes gold is a sound investment. And he can't stand Weiner.

Beck launched a satire blog called Weiner Facts.

The term "Weiner Facts" then hit Google Trends as the No. 1 search surge (most searched for term at a specific moment) on the Internet.

Apropos, some advertisers are boycotting Beck's show, but they are few. In the main, he turns advertisers away. I believe he canceled General Motors ads, for instance. So he doesn't need to attack Weiner in order to play footsie with his sponsor. On the contrary, he is probably trying to protect his sponsor from any kind of action a congressman can cause by drawing the fire towards himself. There was once a time when you could not buy gold in America...

Another interesting fact is that Beck has catapulted books about George Washington, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, etc., onto the Amazon bestseller list. Not just top 100, either. Right now as I post, one about George Washington is sitting No. 1. This is a direct result of Beck plugging the book.

How on earth is getting Americans to read about early American history just "entertainment"?

Michael

I wrote "first and foremost" on entertainment -- not "just."

[syrakusos]

Another interesting fact is that Beck has catapulted books about George Washington, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, the signers of the Declaration of ... How on earth is getting Americans to read about early American history just "entertainment"?

Michael

You do not know that the books are being read, only bought.

They are bought by people predisposed to doing so. Had he recommended Feynman on Physics, sales might also surge, but with little actual consequence. If he recommneded Keyne's General Theory -- and I mean advocated for it -- his present viewers would leave. He is only telling them what they expect to hear, what they want to hear, what they know in advance that they will agree with. He is not "getting Americans to read" about anything. He is letting people indulge themselves in ideology by purchasing objects.

[imurray]

....On the contrary, he is probably trying to protect his sponsor from any kind of action a congressman can cause by drawing the fire towards himself. There was once a time when you could not buy gold in America...

Another interesting fact is that Beck has catapulted books about George Washington, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, etc., onto the Amazon bestseller list. Not just top 100, either. Right now as I post, one about George Washington is sitting No. 1. This is a direct result of Beck plugging the book.

How on earth is getting Americans to read about early American history just "entertainment"?

Michael

Michael,

You know how I feel about Beck and, admittedly, that makes my opinion on matters regarding him biased. However, the arguments above clearly show your bias in favor of Beck. I say that because they're uncharacteristically "weak", Michael.

I personally purchased a book about Jefferson recently. I bought it because I was fed up with Beck's characterizations of our Founding Father's, which is subsequently being perpetuated among his followers, and I wanted to educate myself before taking them on. So, yes, I bought it because of Beck - because he's an entertainer commonly mistaken as a journalist and/or profit. That's the anecdotal response to your argument. The more rational response is that helping to sell books (even American history books) doesn't make Beck more than an "entertainer" - it merely demonstrates his influence over his fans. Influence which, in my opinion, he wields carelessly.

As for the Goldline issue: it looks like a good old-fashioned Donald Trump v. Rosie O'Donnell feud. Both sides are blinded by their contempt for the other. As far as Goldline goes, this isn't going to cost them anything. Beck fans will rally to support them while the rest of us probably would never have used them anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if their business increased. If the accusations are false, they have nothing to worry about.

I just hope someone investigates that "Survival Seeds" company! Now that IS a rip-off and clearly only someone driven to a state of irrational fear by Beck's apocalyptic rhetoric would ever pay that kind of money for seeds. A rational thinking person who believes in being prepared for a crisis would not shell out that kind of money for seeds they could buy for much less elsewhere.

Ian

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ian,

I am biased towards Beck. He is doing the heavy intellectual lifting in terms of getting the word out on small government, republic versus democracy, individual freedom, low taxes and limited government spending, interest in Founding Fathers, etc..

Show me one other person with the same intellectual clout and influence on this side of the divide in today's culture. I'm talking about getting people to do stuff on a massive scale, not just making speeches to a small public.

Instead of bashing Beck, intellectuals who are truly interested in changing the culture should be studying his methods. The guy's one of the most competent communicators of intellectual ideas I have seen in my lifetime. That way, if they don't like something he says, they can say something different and make a strong impact, too.

On the other hand, I agree about the seed thing. It stinks. If you want to read a hilarious take-down of it, go to the link below. Beware, though. Some of the language on that Salty Droid site will make Solo Passion look like a quiet Scrabble party for Christian grandmothers. (As you probably know, I'm changing careers and going into Internet marketing. This site is one of the places I go to find dirt on the major Internet marketing gurus. I like to get all sides of an issue... )

The Seed Hedge

Michael

[imurray]

Ian,

I am biased towards Beck. He is doing the heavy intellectual lifting in terms of getting the word out on small government, republic versus democracy, individual freedom, low taxes and limited government spending, interest in Founding Fathers, etc..

Show me one other person with the same intellectual clout and influence on this side of the divide in today's culture. I'm talking about getting people to do stuff on a massive scale, not just making speeches to a small public.

Instead of bashing Beck, intellectuals who are truly interested in changing the culture should be studying his methods. The guy's one of the most competent communicators of intellectual ideas I have seen in my lifetime. That way, if they don't like something he says, they can say something different and make a strong impact, too.

On the other hand, I agree about the seed thing. It stinks. If you want to read a hilarious take-down of it, go to the link below. Beware, though. Some of the language on that Salty Droid site will make Solo Passion look like a quiet Scrabble party for Christian grandmothers. (As you probably know, I'm changing careers and going into Internet marketing. This site is one of the places I go to find dirt on the major Internet marketing gurus. I like to get all sides of an issue... )

The Seed Hedge

Michael

As a "rhetorician" I have studied Beck's style and he's honestly not very interesting from that point of view. His influence is amazing, but his real power stems from a confluence of events - which, to his credit, he capitalized on (maybe he doesn't even deserve that as FOX created the formula and plugged and chugged - he was popular, but not nearly as popular and certainly not as influential when he was on CNN). If it were not for FOX, the growing divide between the right and the left and extremist positions on both sides, the campaign and subsequent election of Obama, race issues, and immigration he'd be talking to himself. FOX News, like its counterpart MSNBC, has become an echo chamber and he operates within it - well within the boundaries imposed by his audience. The real question is how can people be so blind to this? His main trope is "fear" - fear of socialism, fear of Godlessness, fear of reverse discrimination against whites, fear of terrorism, fear of intellectuals, etc. In short, all the fears his middle-aged conservative white following already had - which FOX had already laid the groundwork for. They were the already ripe low-hanging fruit. I'm not saying there is no reason to fear any of these things - my contention with him is that he feeds it for the sole purpose of maintaining an audience. This is all he is - nothing more. I don't want anybody to emulate him or his antics - right, left, or middle. All he's doing is keeping a devout following by instilling fear in them and then baiting them to believe he's their savior. Don't believe me - are you going to watch him give his divine "Plan" to his people and lead them to the promised land? And trust me, he intends to get there with them - because all he wants is fame and money.

In other words: he doesn't "challenge" your beliefs or tell you things you don't already know, on the contrary he tells you all the things you had speculated about, but had rationally suppressed. Beck (and his contemporaries) gives people permission to indulge in those irrational thoughts - at the emotional level. Like all other political commentators/entertainers he gets a majority of his information from the journalist in the print media and then selectively excludes the stories that don't fit the formula.

And finally, his style wouldn't work on the left anyway: they respond to a different rhetorical strategy. His schtick is custom-made for his target audience.

Ian

Good luck in your new endeavor. And thanks for "The Seed Hedge" haha.

Edited May 21, 2010 by Panoptic

[dan2100]

Ian,

I am biased towards Beck. He is doing the heavy intellectual lifting in terms of getting the word out on small government, republic versus democracy, individual freedom, low taxes and limited government spending, interest in Founding Fathers, etc..

Show me one other person with the same intellectual clout and influence on this side of the divide in today's culture. I'm talking about getting people to do stuff on a massive scale, not just making speeches to a small public.

Instead of bashing Beck, intellectuals who are truly interested in changing the culture should be studying his methods. The guy's one of the most competent communicators of intellectual ideas I have seen in my lifetime. That way, if they don't like something he says, they can say something different and make a strong impact, too.

On the other hand, I agree about the seed thing. It stinks. If you want to read a hilarious take-down of it, go to the link below. Beware, though. Some of the language on that Salty Droid site will make Solo Passion look like a quiet Scrabble party for Christian grandmothers. (As you probably know, I'm changing careers and going into Internet marketing. This site is one of the places I go to find dirt on the major Internet marketing gurus. I like to get all sides of an issue... )

The Seed Hedge

Michael

His methods are what though? Shouting and fomenting, in too many cases, an unreasoned response -- such as his blaming that murder (the one with a railroad tie) on rampant atheism.

Also, you should consider how many people he has an impact on by changing their minds on something important. Do you believe he's done that to any significant degree? I'm not sure how to measure that, but that would be the thing to measure here. (And even were some reliable measure practicable, you'd still have to figure out why these people changed.)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As a "rhetorician" I have studied Beck's style and he's honestly not very interesting from that point of view.

Ian,

I'm not so sure how much you know of mass persuasion techniques, but I can see several clear examples in Beck's presentations. On the contrary of not being very interesting, he is a prime example of how to do it. Maybe he does not use these things formally, as in he studied them, but they are present.

You can start with pattern interrupts from NLP, like opening many of his presentations with a frog or something oddball like that. As far as NLP goes, I have not done much thinking on his use of embedded commands (I will before too long), but his calls to action--usually right after softening up the audience properly with calls to emotion--are absolutely clear. "Do this. Now." (Like "Record this program," or "Send me your research," or "Buy this book and read it," etc.) His use of one of the hidden addictions of the mind (according to Blair Warren), i.e., "it's not your fault," is nothing short of masterful. He reveals secrets (another addiction of the mind.) His appeals to authority, the God most of his audience believes in and the Founding Fathers, is classic Cialdini. Speaking of Cialdini, on the "liking" trigger, he shows he is a normal schlub who has his own problems--even alcoholism in his past--and is not afraid of admitting he is wrong--and he is a family man who talks about his kids and wife. He cries when he is moved by deep emotion. I could go on and on and on. And I have just scratched the surface.

The scarcity trigger is where the fear you mentioned comes in. I am not convinced that circumstances is the only reason. Why doesn't fear work with other folks that have been called a clown and conspiracy theorist? Why with Beck?

Here's how persuasion techniques work. They never work in isolation. Each one contributes just a little to an overall impact. Taken together when many are used, they set crowds in motion. And something like fear can become intensified.

That's the only way they work consistently, time after time, on a large scale.

Anyway, I have written about fear before. Beck certainly does not have a monopoly on pulling that trigger. Here is part of a post from 2007.

State of Fear

I am starting this thread to discuss a syndrome I found in the book State of Fear by Michael Crichton. I am probably pushing the limits of fair use, but this is very important. I broke it up to make up for the length and I hope this use sells more books for the author and publisher. Please buy the book. It is worth every cent.

The excerpt speaks for itself. The quote is from a crazy professor-almost-prophet type (Hoffman) who showed up suddenly and the hero (Evans). Hoffman starts. (pp. 453-459)

"If you study the media, as my graduate students and I do, seeking to find shifts in normative conceptualization, you discover something extremely interesting. We looked at transcripts of news programs of the major networks—NBC, ABC, CBS. We also looked at stories in the newspapers of New York, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, and Seattle. We counted the frequency of certain concepts in terms used by the media. The results are very striking." He paused.

"What did you find?" Evans said, taking his cue.

"There was a major shift in the fall of 1989. Before that time, the media did not make excessive use of terms such as crisis, catastrophe, cataclysm, plague, or disaster. For example during the 1980s, the word crisis appeared in news reports about as often as the word budget. In addition, prior to 1989, adjectives such as dire, unprecedented, dreaded were not common in television reports or newspaper headlines. But then it all changed."

"In what way?"

"These terms started to become more and more common. The word catastrophe was used five times more often in 1995 than it was in 1985. It is doubled again by the year 2000. And the stories changed, too. There was a heightened emphasis on feat, worry, danger, uncertainty, panic."

"Why should it have changed in 1989?"

. . .

"At first we thought the association was spurious. But it wasn't. The Berlin Wall marks the collapse of the Soviet empire. And the end of the Cold War that had lasted for half a century in the West."

. . .

"I am a leading to the notion of social control, Peter. To the requirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. To keep them driving on the right side of the road—or the left, as the case may be. To keep them paying taxes. And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.

"Fear," Evans said.

"Exactly. For fifty years, Western nations had maintained their citizens in the state of perpetual fear. Fear of the other side. Fear of nuclear war. The Communist menace. The Iron Curtain. The Evil Empire. And within the Communist countries, the same in reverse. Fear of us. Then, suddenly, in the fall of 1989, it was all finished. Gone, vanished. Over. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a vacuum of fear. Nature abhors a vacuum. Something had to fill it."

Evans frowned. "You're saying that environmental crisis took the place of the Cold War?"

"That is what the evidence shows. Of course, now we have radical fundamentalism and post-9/11 terrorism to make us afraid, and those are certainly real reasons for fear, but that is not my point. My point is, there is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us. Before terrorism we feared the toxic environment. Before that we had the Communist menace. The point is, although the specific cause of our fear may change, we are never without the fear itself. Here pervades society in all its aspects. Perpetually."

He shifted on the concrete bench, turning away from the crowds.

"Has it ever occurred to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can't even see—germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around them. Remarkable! Like to believe in witchcraft, it's an extraordinary delusion—a global fantasy worthy of the Middle Ages. Everything is going to hell, and we must live in fear. Amazing.

"How has this world view been instilled in everybody? Because although we imagine we live in different nations—France, Germany, Japan, the US—in fact, we inhabit exactly the same state, the State of Fear. How has that been accomplished?"

Evans said nothing. He knew it wasn't necessary.

"Well, I shall tell you how," he said. "In the old days—before your time, Peter—citizens of the West believed their nation-states were dominated by something called the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned Americans against it and the 1960s, and after two world wars Europeans knew very well what it meant in their own countries. But the military-industrial complex is no longer the primary driver of society. In reality, for the last fifteen years we have been under the control of an entirely new complex, far more powerful and far more pervasive. I call it the politico-legal-media complex. The PLM. And it is dedicated to promoting fear in the population—under the guise of promoting safety."

"Safety is important."

"Please. Western nations are fabulously safe. Yet people do not feel they are, because of the PLM. And the PLM is powerful and stable, precisely because it unites so many institutions of society. Politicians need fears to control the population. Lawyers need dangers to litigate, and make money. The media needs scare stories to capture an audience. Together, these three estates are so compelling that they can go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless. If it has no basis in fact at all."

. . .

At the very least, we are talking about a moral outrage. Thus we can expect our religious leaders and our great humanitarian figures to cry out against this waste and the needless deaths around the world that results. But do any religious leaders speak out? No. Quite the contrary, they join the chorus. They promote 'What Would Jesus Drive?' As if they have forgotten that what Jesus would drive is the false prophets and fearmongers out of the temple."

He was getting quite heated now.

"What we're talking about is a situation that is profoundly immoral. It is disgusting, if truth be told. The PLM callously ignores the plight of the poorest and most desperate human beings on our planet in order to keep fat politicians in office, rich news anchors on the air, and conniving lawyers in Mercedes-Benz convertibles. Oh, and our university professors in Volvos. Let's not forget them."

. . .

"What happened," he continued, "is the universities transformed themselves in the 1980s. Formerly bastions of intellectual freedom in a world of Babbittry, formerly the locus of sexual freedom and experimentation, they now became the most restrictive environments in modern society. Because they had a new role to play. They became the creators of new fears for the PLM. Universities today are factories of fear. They invent all the new terrors and all the new social anxieties. All the new respective codes. Words you can't say. Thoughts you can't think. They produce a steady stream of new anxieties, dangers, and social terrors to be used by politicians, lawyers, and reporters. Foods that are bad for you. behaviors that are unacceptable. Can't smoke, can't swear, can't screw, can't think. These institutions have been stood on their heads in a generation. It is really quite extraordinary.

"The modern State of Fear could never exist without universities feeding it. There is a peculiar neo-Stalinist mode of thought that is required to support all this, and it can throve only in a restricted setting, behind closed doors, without due process. And our society, only universities have created that—so far. The notion that these institutions are liberal is a cruel joke. They're fascist to the core, I'm telling you."

I am very grateful for reading this book if only because of this passage. I have perceived an excess of fear here in the USA that is not present in Brazil and I have been perplexed as to what it is. When I look, I see what Crichton says is true. The world is essentially a much safer place than years ago, but people are sheep and scared out of their wits.

Beck doesn't do this any better than the MSM. But when you add the other persuasion techniques, and you look at his track record on predictions and presentation of facts--which are hard to beat--he makes a very compelling case for fear of upcoming economic collapse.

His methods are what though? Shouting and fomenting, in too many cases, an unreasoned response -- such as his blaming that murder (the one with a railroad tie) on rampant atheism.

Dan,

What murder? I missed that one. As to methods, see above.

Also, you should consider how many people he has an impact on by changing their minds on something important. Do you believe he's done that to any significant degree? I'm not sure how to measure that...

I am.

The Amazon bestseller list is a great way.

Since when have biographies of our Founding Fathers been bestsellers?

Not in more than a century.

Beck is the only one in the mainstream who is plugging them.

Look on Amazon and see for yourself.

That's a pretty compelling measurement.

Michael

[imurray]

Even if you are right about Beck's rhetoric and it is as sophisticated as you say (a claim I disagree with - I think you're reading way too much into it), I'm not sure I'd be happy to find out that the person I rely on for my news was a modern day Gorgias who uses "embedded commands" on an unwitting audience. Since when is that virtuous behavior for a person in his position? I still contend that he himself is much less interesting than the conditions that make his brand of punditry possible.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I looked at some news today to understand this matter further.

I also just saw Beck on O'Reilly talking about this. It was interesting and there might be more to this than meets the eye.

Weiner is going after Goldline for what he calls a scam. He claims that Goldline advertises that gold is a sound investment, yet Goldline charges a price well above market value. To him, since people like Beck say the economy is going to hell and that you should buy gold as protection, then goldline's commercials finish the job. In other words, Beck is plugging a scam.

According to what I found out, Goldline's prices are variable, depending on whether the form is collectible gold coins or bars of gold. In this article, it says that the prices Weiner was objecting to was for gold coins minted before 1933 during the Roosevelt years. Also, Goldline, according to the New York Times (Buck's blog), has the highest standing possible (A+) for sound business conduct from the Better Business Bureau. Here it is on the BBB site itself. According to the NYT, the BBB looked into it once again because of Weiner's press conference, but didn't see any reason to change its rating.

On the other hand, if I got it correctly, Beck told O'Reilly that Weiner has had problems with financial impropriety in his past. And he had those issues twice. But I didn't get what they were, if I heard it right.

Here's a funny twist. Weiner's main source of information came from a website called Rip-off Report. Once again, enter the Salty Droid: RipOff Report Report.

Probably the most sinister thing O'Reilly mentioned (and seemed alarmed about) was that one hour after Weiner made his press conference denouncing Goldline and Beck, he had an appointment with President Obama.

Beck was noisily eating a hotdog the whole time...

btw - Weiner Facts is a hoot.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Since when is that virtuous behavior for a person in his position?

Ian,

Virtue has nothing to do with this. If you think it does, better stay away from TV, radio, newspapers, anywhere advertising is presented. They all do this stuff.

Actually, Rand did, too, up to a certain extent...

If, some day, you should be interested in learning about these things, I can point you to some excellent books and science on it, brain scans and all.

Michael

[imurray]

Since when is that virtuous behavior for a person in his position?

Ian,

Virtue has nothing to do with this. If you think it does, better stay away from TV, radio, newspapers, anywhere advertising is presented. They all do this stuff.

Actually, Rand did, too, up to a certain extent...

If, some day, you should be interested in learning about these things, I can point you to some excellent books and science on it, brain scans and all.

Michael

If you choose to back someone who you know is not acting virtuously that's your prerogative. Personally I don't buy 'everyone else is doing it' as a rational justification to defend unethical behavior. You seem to think that his ends justify his means - because you agree with him. You even seem to want more commentators doing the same thing. Your scientific explanations downgrade humans to mere animals who respond reflexively, like Pavlov's dog, to triggers. I'd argue that if more people used their rational mind there wouldn't be an audience for this kind of entertainment. We should he educating people to see through this blatant sophistry, not advocating for more of it. Is it not frightening to you to think that all it takes is mastery over a few tropes to influence human behavior? I'm glad that I don't hold that view.

Finally, if you need brain scans and books to see what Beck is doing - you're missing it. He's operating at base level. He's all pathos. Sometimes a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing - in this case it has blinded you from looking at the simple explanations first.

Ian

Edited May 22, 2010 by Panoptic

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If you choose to back someone who you know is not acting virtuously that's your prerogative.

Ian,

What an odd thing to say.

I don't think that at all.

I don't know how to respond to the rest of your post, since it has nothing--in reality--to do with me...

What a strange perception you have...

Michael

[imurray]

Huh, and I just responded to your previous post. "Know thyself."

Virtue has nothing to do with this. If you think it does, better stay away from TV, radio, newspapers, anywhere advertising is presented. They all do this stuff.

Sorry, thought this meant that you were saying virtue isn't important because all TV, radio, etc. act unvirtuously.

...but his calls to action--usually right after softening up the audience properly with calls to emotion--are absolutely clear. "Do this. Now." (Like "Record this program," or "Send me your research," or "Buy this book and read it," etc.) His use of one of the hidden addictions of the mind (according to Blair Warren), i.e., "it's not your fault," is nothing short of masterful. He reveals secrets (another addiction of the mind.) His appeals to authority, the God most of his audience believes in and the Founding Fathers, is classic Cialdini.

Yup, I sure want our media personalities to be manipulative - as long as I agree with what they're trying to get people to do, right Michael? I know the media is manipulative, but I can choose to support media that acts ethically. Let's simplify your comment quoted above: Beck appeals to emotion and then asks them to do something. What do you think they act out of? Rationality? No. One more guess. He gets people to act on their emotions. A bunch of irrational people running around doing what they've been 'triggered' to do - great! I can see why you think this is so good.

Instead of bashing Beck, intellectuals who are truly interested in changing the culture should be studying his methods. [in order to copy them - Ian]

I say - study it in order to educate people so that they don't fall for it.

Is it all coming back to you?

Edited May 22, 2010 by Panoptic

[syrakusos]

Instead of bashing Beck, intellectuals who are truly interested in changing the culture should be studying his methods. The guy's one of the most competent communicators of intellectual ideas I have seen in my lifetime.

I'm sorry, but I missed the part where a single individual changed a culture. Cortez changed Mexico. But he did not offer many intellectual reasons for his side. Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Jonas Salk,..., many individuals make great contributions, but changing a culture, that is another matter.

When I was ten years old, I read all about Hitler. I wanted to rule the world. Glenn Beck appeals to the ten-year old inside conservatives. His blackboard is a pure gimmick. They feel like they are learning something, but, of course, they already know the lesson, so he makes them all A pupils while he poses as an intellectual.

[syrakusos]

As a "rhetorician" I have studied Beck's style and ... His main trope is "fear" - fear of socialism, fear of Godlessness, fear of reverse discrimination against whites, fear of terrorism, fear of intellectuals, etc. In short, all the fears his middle-aged conservative white following already had - which FOX had already laid the groundwork for. They were the already ripe low-hanging fruit. ... In other words: he doesn't "challenge" your beliefs or tell you things you don't already know, on the contrary ... His schtick is custom-made for his target audience.

Yes, there is no doubt about it. You are accurate and precise.

Beck speaks to an audience that knows what he will say. They expect to agree with it.

Fear works wonders. I know from sales training that you can sell easier by raising fear than you can by offering opportunity. People will not take a risk for an investment that pays dividends, but they will shell out to protectt what they fear losing. Presidents Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy spoke of the present. Kennedy's space program and New Frontier were about the near future. Beck and the Right are all about the past.

Eric Hoffer said in The True Believer, that a mass movement can succeed without God, but no mass movement can succeed without a Devil. Whether Karl Marx and Commmunism or Ayn Rand and Capitalism or Adolph Hitler and Germanism or Glenn Beck and The Founders (like from Deep Space 9?), the framework is the same.

• Once upon a time there was a perfect (near perfect) world.
  
• But the Evil One(s) stole it from us.
  
• If we all band together, we can reclaim what was ours, not for ourselves, but for our posterity.
  

America was a good society, but progressives tricked us into disobeying the Constitution, and now we suffer for it, but if we all - do what?? - then we can regain the lost paradise.

Do what?? See, the thing is that even the worst of the demogogues had a plan of action. The real trick is to have NO PLAN of action, thus, the campaign continues forever... and ever... amen...

[syrakusos]

Your scientific explanations downgrade humans ... I'd argue that ... educating people to see through this blatant sophistry ... all it takes is mastery over a few tropes ... if you need brain scans and books to see what Beck is doing...

Ian,

What an odd thing to say.

What a strange perception you have...

Michael

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us,

An' foolish notion:

What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,

An' ev'n devotion!

Oh, Michael, if only you knew...

For myself, I believe that danger is cyncism. Glenn Beck or Al Franken, you cannot just say "they all lie." What they i.e., we, all do is explain what we perceive. Glenn Beck's motives might not be same as Albert Einstein or Neils Bohr, but from your point of view, the consequence is the same: you have to decide for yourself based on the standard of judgment you have. Given that, simply understanding the methods removes their power as surely as knowing how a magic trick is done removes the mystery. This website is about Logical Fallacies.

The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and one of the company called to a plain, clean, old man, with white locks, "Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them? What would you advise us to?" Father Abraham stood up, and replied, "If you would have my Advice, Iwill give it you in short; for A word to the wise is enough., as Poor Richard says." They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and gathering round him, he proceeded as follows.

"Friends," said he, "the taxes are indeed very heavy, and, if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us, by allowing an abatement.

Benjamin Franklin, "The Way to Wealth" here.

But Glenn Beck does not want you to clean up your act, work hard and save gold coins. No, he wants you to feel snarky and yet powerless, a curious combination, indeed.

Edited May 23, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Yup, I sure want our media personalities to be manipulative - as long as I agree with what they're trying to get people to do, right Michael? I know the media is manipulative, but I can choose to support media that acts ethically. Let's simplify your comment quoted above: Beck appeals to emotion and then asks them to do something. What do you think they act out of? Rationality? No. One more guess. He gets people to act on their emotions. A bunch of irrational people running around doing what they've been 'triggered' to do - great! I can see why you think this is so good.

Ian,

Let's do it your way, then.

You want the tools of crowd psychology only to be used by the bad guys. Never by the good guys.

And you want to impose that by argument from intimidation.

That sounds terribly suspicious to me.

That sounds to me like you want to promote the bad guys and leave the good guys permanently handicapped and at the mercy of crowds.

But I am pretty sure you don't think that. You are just unaware of many things and think you know something about this subject. (You don't.)

I am going to stop this part of the discussion now (but I will continue to add good Glenn Beck stuff) because I feel like I am trying to explain to someone who is dead set against the bomb that nuclear energy can also be used to light a city. The person doesn't want to hear it. Nuclear energy is evil to that person. Period.

I detect the same thing with you and the innate side of the human mind, especially with respect to advertising, persuasion and crowd psychology.

(Pick up any copywriting primer--any at all--even from the 19th century, and the first lesson you will read is sell with emotion and justify with logic. Not to be sleazy, but because that is the way the human mind works--and if you want to sell on a free market against competent competition and not be buried, you have to accept the reality of... Sorry... I don't know why I wrote that. Wasted energy. I am pretty sure--at this point--you are in denial mode--one I typically see in some Objectivists--about the way the human mind actually exists... I will say, though, that reality does not change for anyone, but that's a lesson we all have to learn on a hands-on basis individually, even when we have given lip service to it for years.)

So I'm going to stop, but to be clear, I think you're a good dude...

Enjoy the show.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

There is so much wrong with your analyses (and your use of the quote function) that I don't know where to begin.

So I won't.

btw - How many shows of Beck have you seen?

I remember the last time I asked that after you blasted Beck, you had not seen any. Then you saw one and made a long sermon about how evil Glenn Beck is through and through, since the beginning, and forever and ever amen.

I'm just sayin'...

Michael

[imurray]

Yup, I sure want our media personalities to be manipulative - as long as I agree with what they're trying to get people to do, right Michael? I know the media is manipulative, but I can choose to support media that acts ethically. Let's simplify your comment quoted above: Beck appeals to emotion and then asks them to do something. What do you think they act out of? Rationality? No. One more guess. He gets people to act on their emotions. A bunch of irrational people running around doing what they've been 'triggered' to do - great! I can see why you think this is so good.

Ian,

Let's do it your way, then.

You want the tools of crowd psychology only to be used by the bad guys. Never by the good guys.

And you want to impose that by argument from intimidation.

That sounds terribly suspicious to me.

That sounds to me like you want to promote the bad guys and leave the good guys permanently handicapped and at the mercy of crowds.

But I am pretty sure you don't think that. You are just unaware of many things and think you know something about this subject. (You don't.)

I am going to stop this part of the discussion now (but I will continue to add good Glenn Beck stuff) because I feel like I am trying to explain to someone who is dead set against the bomb that nuclear energy can also be used to light a city. The person doesn't want to hear it. Nuclear energy is evil to that person. Period.

I detect the same thing with you and the innate side of the human mind, especially with respect to advertising, persuasion and crowd psychology.

(Pick up any copywriting primer--any at all--even from the 19th century, and the first lesson you will read is sell with emotion and justify with logic. Not to be sleazy, but because that is the way the human mind works--and if you want to sell on a free market against competent competition and not be buried, you have to accept the reality of... Sorry... I don't know why I wrote that. Wasted energy. I am pretty sure--at this point--you are in denial mode--one I typically see in some Objectivists--about the way the human mind actually exists... I will say, though, that reality does not change for anyone, but that's a lesson we all have to learn on a hands-on basis individually, even when we have given lip service to it for years.)

So I'm going to stop, but to be clear, I think you're a good dude...

Enjoy the show.

Michael

Michael,

I have studied rhetoric on my own and under the guidance of Ph.D. rhetoricians while getting an MS in Communication. I also have a BS in biology (have had an actual neurobiology course), and am a few courses away from finishing an MBA. I know more about all the things you're talking about than you think (I won't be so bold to compare my knowledge to yours, but let me say that it's safe to assume I know more than I need to in participate in this conversation.)

What you wrote above was ridiculous. I clearly stated that I would rather educate people about these rhetorical strategies so that nobody could use them to manipulate the masses. Where did you ever get the idea I wanted only the bad guys to use it - I think Beck's a bad guy and I don't think you could have mistaken my comments as a endorsement of him.

Funny, Beck doesn't have the same effect on me as he seems to have on you. I don't find myself emotionally stimulated by his rhetoric. That's because I tune in with a rational mind.

I understand how marketing works. However, if we educate people to see through the bull then maybe we'll get better products instead of better advertisements. Imagine a public that isn't duped by fancy talk or glossy ads - we'd have competition based on the merits of the products. We'd also have a public that doesn't buy what it doesn't need. The analogy can be carried over to government. We get the entertainment, products, education, government, etc. we deserve - we'll keep getting crap as long as we keep buying it.

Finally, I'll restate - I could use big words if you want, but you don't need big words to explain what Beck is doing. I prefer the KISS approach. Don't mistake that for lack of knowledge. Like truly wealthy people, truly educated people don't have to flaunt what they have to make a show. The truth doesn't need embellishing.

Ian

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ian,

Like I said, enjoy the show.

Michael

[imurray]

Ian,

Like I said, enjoy the show.

Michael

I like a man who knows when to throw in the towel.

Enjoy having your emotions manipulated

If I studied 'your' Beck more, I could have persuaded you to see this my way - hahaha.

Ian

[Brant Gaede]

Ian,

Like I said, enjoy the show.

Michael

I like a man who knows when to throw in the towel.

Enjoy having your emotions manipulated

If I studied 'your' Beck more, I could have persuaded you to see this my way - hahaha.

How strange. I've never watched one Beck show. My total exposure must be 1:45 inattentive minutes.

--Brant

off-worldler