Glenn Beck, CNN, John Nolte, the Canadians and Me

by Michael Wilson

John Nolte, the Editor-in-Chief of Big Hollywood emailed me last night and asked if I had any interest in doing a piece about The Onion wishing Glenn Beck dead in this video. At first, I thought maybe it was a job for Wolf Blitzer, but then remembered that Glenn is “somewhat” reviled at CNN and they might not fact-check a bit on him. But I felt compelled to write for two reasons: the first is that Glenn and I have a mutual friend who frequently says “the answer to bad speech is more speech,” the second is that John’s request immediately reminded me of a phone call I received from the Canadian Broadcasting Company a few years back. (Bet you didn’t think I could work everything from the headline into one paragraph, did you?)

Glenn_Beck Foxnews

After I made “Michael Moore Hates America,” I spent several years (and still occasionally) doing interviews for the press on movie stuff. They’d always call me, because, you know, I’m a crazy, angry right-wing nut job and I’d made the only “conservative” documentary any of them had ever heard of. Something controversial would happen in the world of cinema, my phone would ring for a few days and then I’d go back to my life. In one episode, I received a call from the CBC. They wanted to know if I could do a satellite interview with them on an evening news talk show. The topic was the about-to-be-released film “Death of a President” where President George W. Bush was digitally assassinated.

The producer asked me if I could go on and talk about how outrageous it was that the filmmakers would do this. I said, “Well, I’ll go on if you like, but you should know that I don’t find it at all outrageous.” There was a long pause. “You don’t?” she asked. “Nope,” I responded. “I’m a filmmaker. I’m an artist. I would never, ever tell another artist what they should or shouldn’t create. I mean, look, President Bush is still in office and it’s probably not a great idea to do it with a sitting president. But more importantly, he’s married and he has kids. And regardless of whether he’s loved or reviled, he’s still a human being and not a fictional character. So from that perspective, I think it’s kind of mean. But I’d never tell an artist to not create something for any reason.”

“Well,” said the producer, clearly disappointed, “we’re really looking for someone who’s outraged.”

“Good luck finding your outrage,” I said, before exchanging pleasantries and hanging up.

And that, dear readers is almost everything that’s wrong with the world.

Rather than inviting intelligent people to simply talk about stuff they know about and who have expertise they might be able to share with the audience, we live in a world where feigned outrage and an inability to say “I might be wrong and you might be right” has resulted in our loss of focus on what this, the greatest nation the world has ever known, was supposed to be… an arena of ideas.

I’m a hardcore libertarian. I read the Founders and feel like they’d be utterly stunned at the power the federal government has slowly and surely obtained. Some of my very close friends think that’s pure silliness, and we talk about it and hash it out and yell at each other. And after I win the debate, we all feel like we’ve learned something. But they’re right too. They just picked the wrong nation to want socialism in.

I also happen to have a deep respect for Glenn Beck, both for his talent and skill in fusing entertainment and enlightenment, for his deep concern for our nation and where we’re headed, but also because of something deeply personal that our mutual friend was nice enough to convey my thanks for. Not to be opaque, but suffice it to say that Glenn has talked about something that has had a profound impact on my life, beyond politics.

Should The Onion have wished death on Glenn Beck? Probably not, because no matter how much you might hate him, he’s still a guy with a family and feelings. By most accounts, Glenn’s a nice guy (though he admits to having been an asshole in the past, but so do I). I’ve never heard him trash an individual outside of discussing what they’ve said publicly (Van Jones comes to mind), which is certainly fair game in the business of politics. I’ve never heard him step outside of the political and attack a person’s family or religion (unless the context directly informs the politics… i.e. Jeremiah Wright). Yet people hate him with a white-hot passion for speaking truth to power, so much so that he has private security and receives real, honest-to-goodness death threats on a daily basis. That’s a terrible thing, whether the threats are against Glenn or Michael Moore.

But more important than whether the Onion was mean to Glenn is why Nolte asked me to write this piece in the first place, which is that he’s a smart enough guy to know I’m not outraged and that I look at things a little differently, especially when it comes to entertainment. He knew that rather than the sniping that might come from our side, it might be more fun to have a conversation. Glenn Beck probably isn’t outraged (as an entertainer, I bet he might even think it funny). And maybe you shouldn’t be either. We probably shouldn’t get fired up and angry over little things that have no real impact on our world. The Onion doesn’t matter because they can’t tax or enslave me, and if I don’t like their work, I can always choose to not click in their direction. We could also simply counter it with really funny shit that hammers their guys. But mostly, I think we should save our energy for the big fights that mean something, like our struggle to remain free in an increasingly oppressive and parental America.

Tomorrow, if he chooses, Glenn will climb behind that microphone and speak truth to power again. Because, after all, the answer to bad speech is more speech.


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Posted Nov 4th 2009 at 9:51 am in Media Criticism, Politics | 103 Comments