Hyperreality and Glenn Beck

Over the past two decades, with the rise of new media (including cable TV, the Internet, blogging, etc), American politics has become a national redemptive spectacle; it is no accident that the seemingly sempiternal contest between the Left and the Right has taken on the terminology of a military conflict. It is no accident that we speak of a "Culture War," or say that Democrats have "taken" the White House, as if it were a strategic encampent, or that a Congressman is in an "embattled" district. Over the last two years, we saw the quest for the Presidency (formerly called an election) become the nation's prime-time entertainment, wilder than anything that could be conjured up by the Sopranos and the West Wing. The entire affair took on a sort of mythic character (Obama as Arthur, H. Clinton as Morgana?); one could almost see the stages of Joseph Campbell's hero cycle playing out before our eyes.

What was perhaps most striking, again, is the degree to which the language of commentary was militarized. One would be forgiven if, upon hearing that Mitt Romney had been "routed" from Iowa after Mike Huckabee's Evangelical "surge," or that John McCain had attacked Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, one would for a moment imagine that we are hearing the commentary of some grand conflict. Switch the names to Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, and one would be entirely within one's wits to think the subject being covered was the American Civil War. But this is precisely the point; television and the Internet, the "news cycle," by nature are sensationalizing. They take the brute facts of existence and weave them into stories; they are vehicles for constructing and assembling plots, on a scale both stranger and more effective than mere writing.

The news cycle is a mechanism by which the plain facts of daily existence are taken, turned around, and spat out as stories; the news, instead of being an outlet for what has happened, becomes an outlet for stories of what has happened, removing itself a degree from reality. In a sense, this means that the news cycle makes events hyperreal; like works of literature, news stories detail the particulars but suggest the universals. I do not mean to suggest that this is a new phenomenon -one can see it in the early yellow journalism or even, in a sense, in Thucydides' account of the Pelopennesian War, which went beyond mere history. What I do mean to suggest is that television and the Internet -by the nature of their medium- are far more prone to this. Indeed, whereas the writer must go out of his way to be a sensationalist, the TV presenter must go out of his way to not be a sensationalist. This is natural, of course, because television allows the presenter to tell a story to the audience as if he were telling it in a bar; that is, whenever one speaks live, one is prone to sensationalism.

Back to my title.

Perhaps the greatest illustration of the hyperreality our "news cycle" produces is Glenn Beck's show on FOX. My purpose here is not to bash Beck; my sympathies, which are in fact in his favor, are irrelevant. The point is Beck's program, which purports to be the "fusion of entertainment and enlightenment," has reached a Howard Beale level of sensationalism -the host cries, guests faint, patriotic rallies are held at the Alamo, fish, turtles, and other wildlife are brought on routinely as props, ominous exposes are lurking behind every corner. Above all the mayhem is Beck himself, who rarely if ever admits dissenters on his program, in one of his two modes; mocking or prophetic. The show's ratings are, for its time-slot, off the charts, while the Left decries Beck as a demagogue and clamors for boycotts. The Right, meanwhile, is split over what to do with their primetime Jeremiah and his following.

Over everyone is an unease; an unease because they feel that the show is a delusion and yet they cannot call out any of its facts as delusional. What is most peculiar about Beck is that he is, by and large, right; he has taken his facts from the tapestry of everyday life. But in the way in which he weaves them and presents them, like some Surrealist painter, he paints a picture which seems above reality; composed of it and yet outside of it. To see just what I mean, watch the following clip from his show:



The above clip captures the essence of Beck; one wants to feel that it is fantasy, but one is disconcerted by the fact that his fantasy is composed of quotes and videos; his fantasy is composed by facts. Near the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry asks his mentor, "Is this real? Or is it just in my head?" "Of course it's just in your head," his mentor replies, "but why on earth should that mean it isn't real?" Is Glenn Beck's news fantasy? Of course it is, but why on earth does that mean it isn't true?