It's been a while since I weighed in with any commentary, but your mention of Glen Beck just begged for me to write you.
I remember watching Beck when he was on CNN. My wife loved to watch the provocative stuff he would throw out there. On the other hand, I thought he was a delusional huckster, spinning Byzantine conspiracy theories and trying to get people alarmed about this doomsday or that.
My opinion hasn't changed. He's now on Fox, and he's just as delusional as ever, and just as prone to spouting his chalkboard lunacy, but now he's got a network that doesn't think he's too hot to handle. My time is worth something -- throwing it away to listen to the ranting of Beck is not on my To Do list.
Rush Limbaugh is certainly right up there in the pantheon of right-wing blowhards. Missing for the most part, but still as witchy as ever, Ann Coulter has her own corner of this market of ideas -- solidly stocked with her particular brand of hypocritical BS. Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Sean Hannity, the list just goes on and on.
Lest you think that I lean far left, I must comment about the more loony of the left-wing brigade. Of course, there's MSNBC's recently departed Keith Olbermann, who will apparently be re-surfacing on Connect TV. Still focusing on MSNBC, there's Chris Matthews, who almost sounds reasonable at times, and my favorite, Ed Schultz. These are just the commentators -- there are plenty of Democratic politicians who qualify for some sort of "living on the edge" award for their own hyperbolic remarks.
At bottom, I'm done with politics. I'm in my early sixties; I've been waiting my whole adult life to see some 'adults' in the political arena. I've been waiting since at least the Reagan administration to see some political commentators who behaved as adults. I have been disappointed at every turn. The problems that we faced in the early seventies were delayed, postponed and put off for decades, and now they're more intractable, more divisive and more lethal to those things we hold dear than they were when they were fresh and threatening so many years ago.
A pox on this whole crew. I can't change what's already been done, and have precious little likelihood of changing what's going to be done as time progresses. We'll rise or fall on the current of events, and I don't expect the 'hand at the rudder' to have much impact on how that turns out.
Does this sound cynical? You betcha, to quote Sarah Palin. My attitude has gone through a lot of changes since JFK gave his first inaugural speech. I don't think I'm alone in that loss of idealism. What a sad outcome...
-Dennis