Whenever public funds are being handled in any way, there is corruption. It's part of the Human Situation.
Beck is a truly remarkable phenom. The paranoid style (the Black Helicopter ducking crowd), has taken over the minds of 40 million Americans who now think, talk, move, lsiten and buy as one vast flock. It's like a flock of starlings in the air. They turn on a dime, and at the exact same instant. They fly in one way at one speed, and bunched together -- like a churchy flock or a sheeple flock.
Libs are all over the place. Always were. Always will be. More like a vast junkyard of loose and spare parts than like a flock. When they move it's like a bunch of housecats let loose out of a bag. They have pluralism. They have diversity. They are a motley crew. A coat of many colors. A kaliedoscope of little odd shaped parts.
Beck has found that a completely uneducated, half drunk, and totally out of control person, can earn $23 Million per year and have a house in New Canaan just by learning how to "play" the rant game to the paranoid crowd of cultural conservatives and over-amped loonies. He's in the tradition of Billy Sunday, Elmer Gantry, the Saddleback Church, Pat Robertson, and Sarah Palin. He's not the Christopher Columbus who discovered this land of Plenty, he's the latest incarnation of the Super-Dooper Rant-Meister like Rush Limbaugh, another uneducated bigmouth, but who knows his audience and can sell himself, his books, his shows, his tapes, and his everything.
This is a special talent category. The people in that category may or may not be doing it just for the money -- I doubt that they are. To play to that crowd, you have to walk the walk -- you have to be one of them -- at least in some major areas. The whole marketing process is affiliation based. Even the content of the ideology is affiliation based.
This is like a talent for being the lead starling in the flock as it flies. You are the bird that turns the entire flock, by a slightly early twitch of your wing. Then they all turn. Glenn Beck twitches his wing and 40 million paranoid-style conservatives (anti-intellectuals, conspiracy theorists, Us vs Themers) turn with him.
It's a no-brainer to talk about corruption. It creates and environment where you have no opponents. Who is going to stand up and say "Corruption is good, let's have more of it, who is with me?"
Ranters don't really have anything to say.
