I'm Mad as Hall, and I'm Only Going to Take It until They Announce the Numbers

While it is perhaps the nature of cultural references to drift from the original referent and become clichés of independent meaning, it seems to me that given the ubiquity of video and the ease of accessing it, a person could actually watch Lumet's and Chayefsky's Network and familiarize themselves with the plot before drawing unintentionally unflattering comparisons. Because Howard Beale, the character, is not actually a prophet; because Howard Beale is an old, broken, and pathetic figure, whose one moment of cogent, leonine rage is immediately co-opted by the very people he railed against, and, believing himself to be touched by god, he goes right on serving them until, quite by accident, he offends a power even higher than his own crass corporate masters, who just happens to be even madder than Howard Beale, in the British sense. Then Beale takes a new line that fails to capture the public imagination, and the network execs, who can't very well contradict their own boss' whims, assassinate him. The end.

Anyway, Glenn Beck. I admit that I was getting a bit concerned about his ratings, but I knew he wasn't the Headline News type. No business traveler wants to find himself in the lousy bar of an airport hotel while a weepy Mormon harangues him in an odd, breathy whinespiel about The Country That Wuz from up on the teevee. On the other hand old people gumming "chicken cacciatore" from the retirement-castle kitchen at 5pm . . . they can definitely get behind that sort of thing, and they have. As I endlessly seek to explain to my timorous, easily-spooked proggle acquaintances, FOX News is not a conservative network, but an elderly one, thus the bright graphics, endless harumphery, fear of change, and Maximum Volume. The average age of the O'Reilly viewer is one hundred and seventy-four. Tune into Beck at the early-bird-special hour and pay attention to the advertisements for a flavor of his demographic. He is the Large Print edition of the book of ressentiment.

The proper cultural equivalent to Beck is less Howard Beale than it is the Teletubbies. After all, isn't senescence in many senses just a return to infancy? Loud, bright, repetitive, and painted in the broadest possible emotional brushstrokes. Designed for people no longer able to appreciate the subtle gradations of human sentiment, just as young children are not yet able to do the same, when Beck is happy, he is very happy, when he's a-scared, boy, he's a-scared, when sad he weeps, when angry he yells. Insofar as he may nightly prevent several millions of grandparents vivants from strolling into busy intersections in their flannel pajamas, he does this nation a service. Beck, you are an American treasure.

Update: Topically dissimilar, but it appears that I had a Mr Smith post title roiling my brain.