The Forest And The Trees

Just as I am considering self mutilation simply to break the monotony of 8 straight hours of Fox News, in which the news cycle repeats itself 3 times, I am slapped in the face with bucket load of cold water. It's time once again for the Glenn Beck Comedy Hour, on prior days this moment had been met with a deep sigh and subsequent eye roll, but not this time. This time it was a welcomed detraction from the mind numbing repetition that is common place on every 24 hour news channel by 2pm pst. If you've ever had a bucket of cold water thrown in you face while sleeping or daydreaming, you know it is a jarring, scary and disorientating experience. An experience identical to that of consuming Glenn Beck's opening soliloquie on any given day. Though as I said, on this day it was different. Instead of being annoyed by it's arrival and bracing myself for an inevitable barrage of bullshit, I settled in and welcomed the showmanship. That which made no applicable sense I brushed off as creativity, while accepting his connection of seemingly unrelated points as revelation. BAM! The fog was lifted, my orientation restored and I was overcome with epiphany. "This is how they do it!" I shouted in my empty room. This is how a person who is an otherwise normal constructive member of society can watch Fox News exclusively and Glenn Beck religiously, because you have to. That's the only why it makes sense or is even comprehensible. For a moment ignore "Fox And Friends" and "Fox News Primetime" (both aspects of Fox News that are still kicking my ass) and focus only on the 6am pst. to 2pm pst. programing (the most appropriate use of the word "programing" in written history). It is not a series of individual and independent shows, as they would have you believe. Fox News Desk, Megan Kelly, Shepard Smith, Neil Cavuto ect.  NO! It is one long show, a three act play if you will. In which story lines are created in the morning hours and developed throughout the day, not by actual events or even reflective analysis but by actors "anchors" and their playwrights "producers". Certainly there is some degree of this analogy in every news room, but here is where Fox is distinctly different. They flourish as a result of their viewers watching ONLY Fox News. Daily, as if watching a soap opera marathon, they draw you into storylines that always fall under the banner "Developing Now" carrying you from one hour to the next. Creating themes instead of reporting stories, giving performances instead of analysis, tying the audience to personalities instead of realities. All culminated, climaxed and ultimately molded into a narrative by none other than the master of manic depression, Glenn Beck himself. The true anchor of the daytime ship. The clean up batter if you will. He is responsible for scraping everything Fox Actors "anchors" through against the wall that day into a sweet mush of delicious brain food, then he is tasked with serving it up for your digestion before you can carefully inspect the ingredients. That's why it is nearly impossible for the average common sense thinking American to turn on Glenn beck in the middle of the day and have any idea what the hell he is talking about or where he's getting it from. It's like trying to watch the last 15 minutes of a soap opera you've never seen before. It makes such little since, you are forced to turn it off and dismiss it or (most likely) you are made so curious that you have to tune in tomorrow and try to figure it out. That's how they get you, I know...because that's how they got me.