Glenn Beck

For his self-titled news show, see Glenn Beck (TV program).

Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck on a booktour for An Inconvenient Book, in 2007
Born	(1964-02-10) February 10, 1964 Mount Vernon, Washington, USA
Occupation(s)	Talk-radio and television host
Spouse	Tania Beck
Children	4
Website	http://www.glennbeck.com/

Glenn Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American radio and television host, political commentator, author, and entrepreneur. He hosts The Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. Beck also hosts the Glenn Beck Show on Fox News Channel. He refers to himself as a libertarian and a conservative who is "fighting for individual rights".

In addition to broadcasting, Beck has written three New York Times-bestselling books, and is the publisher of Fusion Magazine. He also stars in a one-man stage show that tours the US twice a year.

Personal life

Beck was born in Mount Vernon, Washington in February 1964, and raised a Roman Catholic. His mother and one of his brothers committed suicide and a sibling had a fatal heart attack. He graduated from Sehome High School in Bellingham, Washington in 1982.

A 2007 profile in "LDS Living" magazine provides a comprehensive history of Beck's early life and career in radio, and states that his first significant exposure to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came at age 18 when, after graduating from high school, he moved from Washington to Salt Lake City, Utah and shared an apartment with a former Mormon missionary. The article goes on to say that his first marriage ended in divorce at age 30 (1994). He and his second wife, Tania, joined the church in October 1999, partly at the urging of his eldest daughter, Mary, who has cerebral palsy.

Beck was admitted to a special program for non-traditional students at Yale University while he was working for a New Haven-area radio station, having received at least one of his recommendations from Senator Joe Lieberman. During this time Beck took a single theology class, dropping out around the time of his divorce.

Beck is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. He also has a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. He and his first wife divorced amid his struggle with substance abuse. Beck cites the help of Alcoholics Anonymous in his sobriety, and he eventually converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches against the consumption of alcohol.

By his first marriage, Beck has two teenage daughters, Hannah and Mary. With his second wife, Tania, he has two children, Raphe and Cheyenne. He is currently a resident of New Canaan, Connecticut, where, in May 2008, Beck applied for a special permit to place a six foot wall around his home citing "security concerns" and "angry audiences."

Political views

Beck says of his political views that "I consider myself a libertarian. I'm a conservative, but every day that goes by I'm fighting for individual rights." Beck describes some of his core values as personal responsibility, private charity, right to life, freedom of religion, low debt, limited government, and that family is the cornerstone of society.

Beck supports individual gun ownership rights, and is against gun control legislation. Glenn Beck has suggested that Obama's health care reform agenda is a means by which he can effect reparations for slavery. He also has expressed concerns over the compassion of hospital staff after an outpatient procure to remove a hemorrhoid went awry. Beck believes that there is a lack of evidence that human activity is the main cause of global warming, promoted a petition rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, and considers the American Clean Energy and Security Act to be a form of wealth redistribution.

Career

Radio

See also: Glenn Beck Program

Radio historian Marc Fisher has posited that Beck is "first and foremost an entertainer, who happens to have stumbled into a position of political prominence." Beck began his radio career when he won a local radio contest to be a DJ for an hour, and was eventually granted a part-time job. He hosted Christian radio on Saturday, rock on Sunday and country on weeknights. In the mid 80s he worked at WRKA radio in Louisville, Kentucky as a morning-drive DJ. His show was called Captain Beck and the A-Team.

After graduating from high school, Beck pursued his career as a Top 40 DJ. By the time he was in his 20s, Beck was on WKCI-FM (KC101), a Top 40 radio station in Template:City, hosting the local morning show with Pat Gray. Originally the show was billed as the Glenn and Pat Show. When Gray left the show, Beck continued with co-host Vinnie Penn. While working in Connecticut, he appeared and sang background vocals on The Delrays' Red, White and Blues CD, a fund raising effort by then Governor John G. Rowland produced by guitarist Tom Guerra. The CD was well received and was promoted by a series of live appearances.

The Glenn Beck Program first aired in 2000 on WFLA (AM) in Template:City, and took their afternoon time slot from eighteenth to first place within a year. In January 2002, Premiere Radio Networks launched the show nationwide on forty-seven stations. The show then moved to Template:City, broadcasting from new flagship station WPHT. On November 5, 2007, The New York Times reported that Premiere Radio Networks was extending Beck's contract. By May 2008, it had reached over 280 terrestrial stations as well as XM Satellite. It was ranked 4th in the nation with over six and a half million listeners.

Television

See also: Glenn Beck (TV program)

In January 2006, CNN's Headline News announced that Beck would host a nightly news-commentary show in their new prime-time block Headline Prime. The show, simply called Glenn Beck, aired weeknights at 7:00 p.m., repeating at 9:00 p.m. and midnight (all times Eastern) from May 8, 2006 to October 16, 2008.

By 2007, Beck's success on CNN had ABC wanting him for occasional appearances on Good Morning America.

CNN Headline News described the show as "an unconventional look at the news of the day featuring his often amusing perspective on the top stories from world events and politics to pop culture and everyday hassles." At the end of his time at CNN-HLN, Beck had the second largest audience behind Nancy Grace. On July 21, 2008, Beck filled in for Larry King on the show Larry King Live. In 2008, Beck won the Marconi Radio Award for Network Syndicated Personality of the Year.

On October 16, 2008 it was announced that Glenn Beck would join the Fox News Channel, leaving behind CNN Headline News. CNN pulled the program off the air the same day. A news hour with Jane Velez-Mitchell filled Beck's former slot, with subsequent slots filled by Lou Dobbs Tonight encores. After moving to the Fox News Channel, Beck began to host Glenn Beck airing weekdays at 5pm ET, beginning January 19 2009, as well as a weekend version. His first guests included Karl Rove, Governor Sarah Palin, and the wives of Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos. He also has a regular segment every Friday on the Fox News Channel program The O'Reilly Factor titled "At your Beck and call." On some days his television program draws upwards of 3 million viewers.

Books

• The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland, released September 1, 2003
• An Inconvenient Book, released November 20, 2007, was #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list for the week of December 9, 2007
• The Christmas Sweater, released on November 11, 2008, was #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list for the week of November 30, 2008, and the week of December 25, 2008.
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine, released June 2009.
• Arguing with Idiots: America's Next Epic Battle: 1776 vs. 1984, scheduled for September 2009 release.

Additionally, Beck was the author of the foreword to the 2008 edition of conservative author Cleon Skousen's The 5,000 Year Leap. Beck has described the book as "divinely inspired."

An interview with Beck about The Christmas Sweater appeared on James Dobson's Focus on the Family web site but was removed after complaints by an evangelical group that the article failed to mention that he is a Mormon.

Beck is also the publisher of the comedy magazine Fusion Magazine, which is a play on the slogan of the The Glenn Beck Program, "The Fusion of Entertainment and Enlightenment."

Live events

In March 2003, Beck ran a series of rallies called Glenn Beck's Rally for America in support of troops deployed for the upcoming Iraq War. He ran the final rally at Marshall University over the Memorial Day weekend. In subsequent years, Beck has toured American cities twice a year, presenting a one-man stage show. His stage productions are a mix of stand-up comedy and inspirational speaking. His current tour is called Glenn Beck's Common Sense Comedy Tour.

In 2005, the summer show Glenn Beck: On Ice advocated diminishing the role of politics in daily life. The 2006 summer show The Mid-Life Crisis Tour featured life's lessons from the perspective of a middle-aged man.

In June 2007, Beck completed his latest tour called An Inconvenient Tour. It focused on the inconvenient aspects of everyday life, and was a parody of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. On July 4, 2007, Beck served as host of the 2007 Toyota Tundra "Stadium of Fire" in Template:City. The annual event at LaVell Edwards Stadium on the Brigham Young University campus is presented by America's Freedom Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is "to provide deeply felt emotional experiences that celebrate and promote the traditional American values of family, freedom, God and country."

On May 17, 2008, Beck gave the keynote speech at the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky.

On September 1, 2009, Bud Norris, the mayor of Beck's hometown of Mt. Vernon, announced that he will award Beck the key to the city in recognition of his achievements. The announcement drew both support and resentment from local citizens. The mayor stated that it was not an endorsement of Beck but just recognition of a person who grew up in Mt. Vernon.

9/12 Project

Beck put together a campaign, The 9/12 Project, that is named for nine principles and twelve values, extolled by Beck, that he says embody the spirit of the American people on the day after the September 11 attacks. Beck has supported the tea party protests from their inception and held a broadcast from one of the the April 2009 rallies in San Antonio.

In September 2009, the conservative political activism group Freedomworks organized the Taxpayer March on Washington, to rally against President Barack Obama's policies. The non-violent event was not officially affiliated with – but inspired by – Beck's 9 12 project, attracted roughly 75,000 people, and was encouraged by Beck and other conservative commentators.

Commentary style

"The old American mind-set that Richard Hofstadter famously called the paranoid style — the sense that Masons or the railroads or the Pope or the guys in black helicopters are in league to destroy the country — is aflame again, fanned from both right and left ... No one has a better feeling for this mood, and no one exploits it as well, as Beck. He is the hottest thing in the political-rant racket, left or right. A gifted entrepreneur of angst in a white-hot market. A man with his ear uniquely tuned to the precise frequency at which anger, suspicion and the fear that no one's listening all converge."

— David Von Drehle, Time magazine, September 2009 cover story

Beck's shows have been described as a "mix of moral lessons, outrage and an apocalyptic view of the future ... capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans." In lieu of this undercurrent, one of Beck's Fox News Channel colleagues Shepard Smith, has jokingly called Beck's studio the "fear chamber", with Beck countering that he preferred the term "doom room."

Beck has referred to himself as an entertainer, a commentator rather than a reporter, a rodeo clown, and identified with Howard Beale "When he came out of the rain and he was like, none of this makes any sense. I am that guy." Time Magazine describes Beck as "[t]he new populist superstar of Fox News" saying it is easier to see a set of attitudes rather than a specific ideology, noting his criticism of Wall Street, yet defending bonuses to AIG, as well as denouncing conspiracies against FEMA but warning against indoctrination of children by the AmeriCorps program."What unites Beck's disparate themes is a sense of siege" states Time Magazine. Time further describes Beck as "a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies", proclaiming that he has "emerged as a virtuoso on the strings" of Conservative's discontent ... mining the timeless theme of the "corrupt Them thwarting a virtuous Us."

Reception

Financial success

In June 2009, estimators at Forbes magazine pegged Beck's earnings over the previous 12 months at $ 23 million dollars, with 2009-2010 revenues on track to be even higher. Although the majority of his revenue results from his radio show and books, his website's 5 million unique visitors per month also draws at least $3 million annually, while his salary at Fox News is estimated at $2 million per year. Additionally, Beck's online magazine Fusion, sells an array of Beck-themed merchandise.

Controversy

Beck's opinions have helped make his shows successful, but have also resulted in protest and advertiser boycotts. For example, in 2006, Beck asked a self-proclaimed poorly worded question, "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies," and saying "And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel" to Muslim congressman Keith Ellison, which resulted in protests from several Arab-American organizations. Ellison later dismissed the comment.

External links

• Glenn Beck official website
• Glenn Beck – The 912 Project
• Forbes 2009 Celebrity 100 interview of Beck
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense Tour