Thank Heaven--and Fox--for Glenn Beck

By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

The doctor has ordered me to lose weight, and that is why yesterday, channel surfing as I waddled on a treadmill like a tubby rat, I was watching Glenn Beck. Speaking of tubby ra--Nope. I won't go there. That would not be nice.

Anyhow, Glenn was in full blackboard mode, explaining how, in the 1930s, our economy was on the rocks, but that the Great Depression wasn't really that awful because we still had had such terrific inventions as television, and refrigerators, and jet airplanes in our future.

Not so today, said Beck. Even if our soft, emasculated working men could come up with a great idea, he said, the Chinese would make it cheaper. And so we are, basically, doomed.

There was a commercial break then, and the noted ex-felon Gordon Liddy came on to promote some firm that, he assured me, would wisely invest my money in gold.

Then Glenn came back on, and said how American unions, and the EPA, and workplace safety rules and entitlements, and other evil liberal stuff was responsible for our fix. If we didn't pay so much to the government for those durn federal programs, he said, we could invent cool stuff and revive our economy.

Then there was another commercial break, and some smiling geezers urged me to call some company that specializes in getting old folks those cool electric scooter chairs for free.

I don't think this firm was promoting Medicare fraud, so I wondered why the seniors couldn't get the chairs themselves, without paying a middleman.

And then there was Glenn again, and I looked forward to hearing how American workers, free of the evil unions and the dastardly EPA, would get their jobs back from Asia, without having to accept Third World wages.

But Glenn had moved on, and was talking about the federal debt, and how we all consumed too much.

Another ad. And this time it was Peter Graves, the old Mission Impossible guy, urging seniors to call some financial advisement group that would sell them new, reversible mortgages so they could borrow money on the houses they worked all their lives to buy.

And as I contemplated my wonderful future—chugging through some Sunbelt retirement community on my new taxpayer-funded scooter, gold coins jiggling in my pocket, heading for the mall to spend the equity in my home—I thanked heaven, Fox, and his helpful sponsors for bringing me the wonderfulness that is Glenn.

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