I wrote this as a letter to the editor to the Daily Beast in response to this article.
Beck is gone, or going. And good riddance. But there is a strange meme attempting to equate Beck and Olbermann as being the same and functioning out of the same principles albeit on different ends of the political spectrum. I do not think this is a defensible position, as I try to articulate below.
I do think that our journalism and reporting these days is full of a false point-counterpoint labeling. As if just having someone from the right and someone from the left makes a balanced conversation. Or even one that will surface anything of value.
It is as if a journalist cannot make a point these days, even about the craziness of a Glenn Beck, without feeling the need to take cover from the charge of being prejudiced by finding a counter point on the presumed opposite side. This “need” to be “balanced” of course leads to all sorts of imbalance, not to mention insipid reporting.
My primary reaction to this article is the harm this level of false equivalence does to our national discourse.
To John Avlon/Daily Beast
Just read your piece ‘Glenn Beck: Farewell to a Fearmonger by John Avlon And I suppose you will get a lot of push back on what seems a strange and false equivalency between Beck and Olbermann. I’ll add mine.
Toward the end of your article you have the post cited below. If your intent was to capture a certain passion, emotional intensity between these two, (I ignore the Palin part as it doesn’t seem part of the point) then fair play… I suppose. Sort of. But you make a substantial error in the substance of the two men and what they actually did and stood for.
Without getting into the fray of right/left whose right/wrong, I do not think you could compile a commensurate list of fundamental errors and structural logical flaws made by Olbermann. He had his histrionics, and certainly his point of view. And of course the ego fights w O’reilly and Fox may not have been his high points. But they were not borne of a crazy and deranged unsupportable logic. Becks were (and are). You could not write a similar piece, as you did here of Beck, describing Olbermann. And when you cite Olbermann’s hi-lights reel, or call it lo-lights if you will, you will find a series of rather bold, out of the mainstream thinking, calls to clarity that you cannot legitimately call crazy. Call them something else, you may not have liked them, you may disagreed with them. But you did not watch them for the bozo crazy that you do Beck’s strange performances. He was quite literally fulfilling journalisms stated mission: to speak truth to power, and try to reveal what was hidden.
The substance of what was being said by Olbermann was debatable. That is, you could check facts, you could agree with a position or not. Beck’s? You said it well in your piece: “His chalkboards have become versions of the intricate strings connecting pins in the backyard shed of A Beautiful Mind.” All you can do with these rants is simply be amazed. Or mock them. Or ignore them as the gibberish they were.
We pay attention to Beck not because of what he says, but because of that slice of America that is taken in by him. And by turns we are amused, and horrified to think that this kind of crazy might actually gain some political power. Beck is manifestly logically wrong and wrong headed. Appealing to fear. As you say. A pretty powerful appeal to many it appears, at least for a time. (With Beck’s departure, it is likely just going dormant until the next event comes along that requires a projection of our own national dread upon a scapegoat…).
I have not read your book. And perhaps you deal with these substantial distinctions there. But I fear you do not. Either way, you don’t in this little paragraph. You make the serious error that is replete throughout journalism and reporting these days: the easy, and facile false equivalence. Picking out some superficial similarity between two positions, or in this case people, you proceed to ascribe similarities in other facets that are simply wrong and lead to wrong conclusions.
And you have done it here in this Beck/Olbermann conflation. I would love to get your response.
ps. An interesting question and inquiry is whether and how the “thesis” of Howard Beale was wrong or not? Is Beale more Beck or Olbermann? Maybe with a dash of Stewart? I think there are some interesting lessons to be mined out of the film Network. Including how it is that we as Americans seem to need to have our news and analysis packaged and presented to us. I think it holds some relevant perspectives on this conversation of what is news and/or truth and/or entertainment and how is it packaged. But that is for another post.
ref: A closing note: One year ago, when Wingnuts was published as the first BeastBook, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Keith Olbermann were put on the cover because they were the most public faces for the problem I was trying to describe—the return of the paranoid style in American politics and the cycle of incitement that was empowering the extremes while drowning out the vast vital center.
