Since I offered a take on Glenn Beck, I feel like I should keep charting his comet-like flight across the news celebrity sky. The clip below - via Ezra Klein - is from an interview Beck did with Katie Couric (sorry about the sound), and Couric, as she does, manages to flummox Beck with the obvious... when he said "Obama hates 'white culture'"... what did he mean by "white culture"?
You can go at this in a number of ways, especially given that Beck, for all his bluster, can't seem to muster the nerve to speak his mind (which, I think, goes back to just how his "mad as hell" number is a bit of a put-on). But I think there's two key points: a) what Beck won't say, which would likely be catnip to the "race" discussion we're currently mostly not having, and b) that Beck succumbs, as many conservatives do, to a kind of cold disdain when questioned by the perceived "MSM" keyholders of the"liberal media."
The first point goes to the meaning of "white culture" which is really very meaningless but is meant to reach disaffected, mostly working class whites as some kind of sop about "Middle America" that's really very condescending: it's meant to denigrate Obama for not just being black, but being part of the educated elite (Ta-Nehisi has done some great work explaining the fear of the black middle class)... but at the same time it's "they're making fun of you for liking Nascar and shopping at Wal-Mart"... whereas Beck just thinks they can be easily exploited for ratings and commercial success. Cynicism abounds.
But the second point is what I find really striking in this clip: it's not that Beck succeeds at - what I'm pretty sure he thinks is meant to come off as "I treat you with the respect I never get from people like you" but can't really hide the thinly veiled contempt. He talks to Couric as if she were a child, as if "this should be obvious" but she won't hand him any sense of her thinking. Sarah Palin did this - somewhat more effectively - as well, though her own chipper demeanor saved her from seeming cold. Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter, by contrast, never can hide their disdain or their disrespect. And being contemptuous, while displaying a convenient faux politesse, is the current vogue in conservative media when dealing with their supposed enemy; I suppose there's no real alternative... but the prim "I'd give you the what-for, but I'm too classy for that" shtick is getting old... and it helps if you can get that across, better, without sneering at the same time.
I have my issues with Couric, though I think, overall, she's turned out to actually be better than one would have feared as anchor... partly because she's developed into knowing her actual strengths - like her solid ability to interview and follow up - and not her supposed ones that werer never entirely real (like the forced cheeriness and let's all be gals together bonhomie that was never as good as her Today backers would gush). Couric prepares, she's serious, and she's respectful without being mean. That conservatives can't sense the difference, I think, is why the media/PR sell they attempt tends to backfire so badly: until you either treat Couric, and her cohorts, with actuial respect as an equal - or simply let rip with the undiluted vitriol you save for blogs and Fox news appearances - you're lying. As Back is doing here... and oh, the lies...
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