Categorical Aperitif

Michael Tomasky points to a recent profile of Glenn Beck which notes that he hauls in about $32 million from books, TV, etc. and that he claims to be merely an entertainer, not really interested in politics:

I wonder if Beck is telling the truth there. If he is, the whole business is amazingly cynical and actually quite contemptuous of his fans. And he has said these kinds of things before, so it may well be the case.

At the other end, he has spoken lovingly of right-wing books like this rambling and paranoid malignity by this clown named Cleon Skousen that Beck has said changed his life. Of course, maybe he just meant it changed his life in that it showed him what kinds of crazy conspiracies about the world people were willing to believe and therefore what he should say on the air and in books etc. for the purpose of hauling in $32 million a year.

Word. The he's-a-con-man-riding-the-anti-Obama-paranoia-zeitgeist theory works fine for me at the moment.