Headline at Forbes, with the amusing correction:
An earlier version of this post quoted Beck saying the “Pit of Despair” was at Fox News. In fact, he was talking about his time at CNN when he made that remark. I’ve corrected both the article and the headline to reflect that.
Ha ha ha. Would that have been the headline if the mistake hadn't been made?
Before coming to Fox, Beck worked at CNN, where, he said, he had an office that looked out on an open-plan office area where producers and reporters had their desks. “I used to call it the Pit of Despair because there are all these people plunking out stories like, ‘I just want to hang myself, I just want to hang myself,’” he said.*
Among his frustrations at both networks, he said, was the rigid, formulaic thinking about how to produce a talk show. “Most of what we do on television was developed by Desi Arnaz” in the 1950s, he said. “There’s no reason we still do it that way, except that it works. It drives me out of my mind that they are still using what’s called the Desi shoot, three cameras on the floor.”
For Beck, who loves to amble around as he talks, it was an unwanted constraint. “I moved, and they couldn’t follow me,” he said. “I said to them, ‘Get me a sports director, please. Get someone with experience producing sports. Just tell them I’m carrying a ball. I think they can do it.’ But everybody in news was saying, ‘You’re supposed to stay here.’”
Even as Lucy wanted to get into show business, Glenn Beck wants to roam free.
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26 comments:
Seems like he made the right choice.
Beck was a bigger jerk on CNN than he was on Fox, but that isn't saying much.
Glenn Beck: the only source of news left who doesn't do the Obama mandated Saudi bow.
The CNN Pit of Despair is one Level above Anderson Cooper's Love Shack.
Wasn't Lucy in show business before she married Ricky?
Another show that I didn't realize was years old when I watched it.
Lucille Ball in "Stage Door" [1937)
(Factoid: As a teen-ager in the 1920s, Ball attended drama school with Bette Davis. The story goes that her mom scraped together the money in an effort to break up her daughter's relationship with a much older hoodlum.)
Glenn has a lot of splanin to do
Don't we all really know that he left cable news because his employers asked him to?
Too crazy for Fox News. How awesome is that?
Beck can be very funny and entertaining when he doesn't get all deathly serious and impassioned about The Country and The Future of America, then he's just tedious.
Please don't allow a conservative to do things in new ways, it upsets the paradigm.
Glenn Beck is a seriously deranged religious nutzoid.
Don't we all really know that he left cable news because his employers asked him to?
I thought he was getting good ratings at the time. I suspect he asked for more money, and Ailes didn't agree to his terms, so he thought he could take his audience to another venue. Wonder what he makes now.
"Wonder what he makes now."
According to the article: More.
As you know, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old. Really that's all this is except that instead of sucking water, I'm sucking life. I've just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don't know what that would do to you.
The clips I see of Beck tend to be pretty good, really. Granted, I'm probably just seeing the good ones.
Him talking to Penn Jillette are pretty good. He's good at making connections and thinking about consequences during interviews so he actually *responds* to the other person. (This probably also explains his affinity for conspiracies.) His interview with the anarchist guy who's 3-D printing AR receivers and high capacity magazines was a good interview also.
I don't have to agree with him or even deny he has his crazy moments to recognize that he's probably one of the better interviewers of people he doesn't agree with that is out there. He draws people to explain what *they* want to explain instead of trying to force them to his agenda.
The man deserves props for that.
I do find myself inclined to defend Beck.
I don't and never have watched him much but a few years ago the big debate point (on this blog no less) was to answer an argument with accusations of me (or whoever) parroting Beck... essentially trying to win an argument, not with ideas but by flinging Beck Cooties.
The Beck Cooties didn't stick, but the lesson did. Piling on Beck is shorthand for... "I got nothin'."
Glenn Beck is fascinated with the history of this country, does his own research using the original sources and is brilliant at presenting a coherent alternative narrative to the liberal/progressive one generally taught in our schools.
He's definitely worth listening to on American history even if you disagree with his interpretations.
@Synova
That's the worst logic I've seen in a while. Thanks for the laugh :)
Yeah, they tried to shame Luther by saying that his argument sounded just like some heretic that had been burned at the stake a century earlier.
Luther thought about it and said, "I guess that guy was right."
The guilt by association thing was a big deal for Penn Jillette, too. Oh, no, it's not enough to *disagree* with Beck, Penn had to be shunned and shamed until he purified himself from all Beck Cooties. Beck was anathema, and anything he said or thought not to be *engaged* in any way. And Penn disagreed with that shaming, and good on him.
Let's see:
Beck outed Van Jones. He's gone.
Beck outed Anita Dunn. She's gone. (I loved the bit where Beck put that Mao look-alike by the phone in the background waiting for the White House to call.)
He definitely drew more blood from the Obama gang than O Reilly, Hannity, or anyone else at Fox ever did.
Let's see I could say Wolf Blitzer is a seriously deranged atheist nutzoid, or Katie Couric is a seriously deranged feminist nutzoid, or fill-in-the-blank "journalist" is a serious fill-in-the-blank nutzoid and be really smart and clever like Alex, but I don't do that so I can't be taken seriously.
I think I have the general idea now.
Yes, notice the use of the word "we". Don't "we" all really know...? It's more of the same attempt to avoid the actual argument and just focus on maintaining the clique.
But, in fact, "we" don't all know that because "we" don't all live in the leftoid fever swamp. They just want us to believe we do, and act accordingly.
He's on target about how once set things never change. Look at local news, the same pattern is everywhere,older male anchor,younger female anchorette,affable or goofy weatherman,smart ass sports guy.
Team anchors, I find especially irritating,as if they're work is so exhausting they can bareley finish a sentence and have to hand
off the the other yakker.
Is there local news anywhere that is not done this way? Has anyone anywhere tried something different?
"Even as Lucy wanted to get into show business, Glenn Beck wants to roam free."
Cruel Neutrality!
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