Why Glenn Beck Ought to Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched (Caliphate Edition):
If you think about it in the right context, what Bill O'Reilly did in his interview with President Obama this past Sunday was really quite masterful. Yeah, yeah, sure, the whole thing was boring bullshit, but listen:

Let us say, and why not, that you're Fox "news" host Bill O'Reilly (and if you are, let the Rude Pundit take this opportunity to ask, "Have you worked out that whole gravity thing?"). You've been the network's star since day one. And you used to be the headline guy, the one who said things that you called "truth" and others called "nutzoid," and, goddamn, you were pretty much the Walter Cronkite of this new version of "news" that Roger Ailes created. But ever since this Glenn Beck has arrived with a rucksack full to bursting with lunacy, you've seen your light dim just a bit (even if your ratings have remained fine - it's not like elderly shut-ins are gonna change their viewing habits this close to death).

Beck ain't as popular as you are, sure. But motherfucker gets the headlines. Now, no one really gives a shit what you say unless it's something about how the tides work. And when you try to take a drive to crazy town, you just sound like you're pathetically trying to shove yourself into Beck's spotlight.

And that guy's gone completely bugfuck. Jesus, he's even got other conservatives shitting themselves, as if they're running out of a building before the bomb ticks down to zero. You gotta hand it to Beck, though. The son of a bitch is doubling down on psychotic. Here he is from his TV show yesterday: "Progressive, socialist, Marxist groups, religious groups, green groups, communist, powerful unions led by communists, SEIU, AFL-CIO, radical group like La Raza -- what did all of these groups, what were they all working together for? Well, in one way or another, they want to end the Western way of life as you and I understand it." That's some masterful madness right there. One might think that if a large percentage of the American population was working to overthrow everything everywhere, one might see more evidence of it than the broad interpretations of a delusional TV host who is willing to dress like Moses to show us all who's gonna lead us out of Egypt. Or some such shit. Truly, who the fuck knows anymore. All he cares about is that "caliphate" sounds scary and foreign.

Here's some more from yesterday: "They're working together to help stomp out the free market and capitalism. They'll work everything else out later. That's why Code Pink and the AFL-CIO can stand together in America. And it's why they're rushing in to support the democratic revolution in Egypt." And, no joke, in the course of an hour, Beck connected Van Jones, the unionization of the TSA, the Muslim Brotherhood, and community organizers into one grand unified theory of world domination. Somehow, this will bring about the apocalypse. Because it just will. Apparently, liberals are willing to overlook all other goals having to do with equal rights and freedom and throw in with Islamic extremists in order to overthrow capitalism. The Rude Pundit must have missed that meeting.

But let us get back to you, dear Bill O'Reilly. Look, you know you're not gonna out-crazy Beck. For, at this point, watching Beck is like watching a shit-covered dog sit in a sewage ditch and lick its own balls for an hour at a time. One just wonders if the dog realizes it's rolling in feces, if it's hurts its neck to lick its balls for so long, and why one can't turn away from the disgusting and confusing sight. So, unless you're willing to get down in that stream of human waste and fuck that dog, you're just not crazy enough to go nose-to-nose with it. (It seems more of a Hannity thing to do, anyways.)

So you went in the other direction in your Obama interview. You played the rational dissenter. You decided to traffic in an illusion of credibility as a reflection of Beck's irrationality. You have positioned yourself for Beck's coming fall. And it is coming. You come out looking good in the context of Beck's waves of paranoiac rantings.

Ultimately, Beck is to O'Reilly what George W. Bush is to Ronald Reagan: the devolved version that makes the terrible original seem less odious by comparison. We shouldn't forget, however, how truly awful O'Reilly is. The lesser of two evils is still evil.