That's sure what it looks/sounds like.
Guest hosts all week on his show and this Friday here he is, before a studio audience bearing solemn witness, conducting a seminar on the state of Israel and pushing the case that it's being set up "as the fall guy" by the United States, a prospect that's been "weighing on my heart."
Weighing on his heart so heavily that Beck acts plumb wore-out, his professorial manner so muted that he doesn't bother putting body English into even his most dire prophecies. With the sound off, he looks as if he could be discussing metaphysical conceit in the poems of John Donne on a wet afternoon.
His guests are Pastor John Hagee, the portly apocalypto preacher-man, Dore Gold, notable Israeli bore, and an American rabbi whose name I will jot down the moment he says something interesting.
Of course Beck would never deign to introduce an Arab or Muslim guest into the dialogue, because their point of view has no possible pertinence in a discussion of the Middle East and their humanity would only be an unfortunate distraction, likewise the suffering of the Palestinian people, who don't really suffer, but only pretend to, for propaganda reasons.
A Christian preacher, an American rabbi, and an Israeli statesman--that's Glenn Beck's idea of "Fair and Balanced."
Although the purpose of the show is to rally to the defense of Israel, the tempo and tenor of the hour are so funereal that it's as if the cause is futile, the battle already lost.
And it doesn't help that Fox News keeps running a charity ad during Beck's show for the Holocaust Survivors Passover Box, a succession of sad, age-lined faces and wiped-away tears.
"I'm targeted by the Jewish left like nobody's business," Beck told the panel in hurt bafflement, caricatured by his enemies as pro-Israel anti-Semite, he complained. (Neglecting to mention the reason why--the classic anti-Semitic tropes he deployed in his attacks on George Soros).
I dread to think what Beck might have planned for Good Friday. That may be the show when he finally climbs on the cross and fulfills his martyr fantasies, with Alan Cumming camping it up as Pontius Pilate, a dubious casting decision, in my estimation.
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