Digging For Gold, Glenn Beck-Style

A lot has been said of Glenn Beck in the past year or so. So much, in fact, that rather than give you a point-by-point rundown of it all, we’ll just give you a few words that sum it all up: he has a thorn in his vagina.

Glenn is a man that claims he’s fighting for the people – that he’s trying to fend off both big business interests and big government. But his actions are proving to be even louder and more idiotic than his words; a remarkable feat to say the least.

Currently, Glenn is wrapped up in a bit of a controversy that is being annoyingly called “Gold-Gate,” either because of the Nixon Watergate scandal, or as a reminder of the dangers of metal fencing. (Seriously, you can get hurting climbing that stuff).

The controversy surrounds Glenn’s “Three G’s system,” which is “God, Gold, and Guns.” Apparently, Glenn fancies himself a six-shooter slinging treasure hunter that’s just trying to fight for all that’s holy in this world as he battles greedy land barons and roving gangs of outlaws, all while riding atop his horse named LibertyFreedomPatriot.

In his own head, the “Three G’s” make Glenn a lot like Clint Eastwood, if Clint Eastwood had hyper-sensitive tear ducts. Or, better yet, like Clint Eastwood if he had tear ducts.

Glenn regularly tells his audience, both on radio and on TV, that soon the value of the US dollar will come crashing down to a near apocalyptic level, and that buying gold is the only way to ensure you’ll have money “when the system eventually collapses, and the government comes with guns and confiscates, you know, everything in your home and all your possessions, and then you fight off the raving mad cannibalistic crowds that Ted Turner talked about, don’t come crying to me. I told you: get gold.”

This would be all well and good if it weren’t for the fact that Glenn is a paid spokesman for GoldLine, a company that sells gold. When Glenn brought up the issue on his show, he summed up his argument with a simple “So I shouldn’t make money?”

And that’s the problem.

For as much as the guy refuses to consider himself a journalist (which he clearly isn’t), he is a journalist in the hearts and minds of his followers and loyal viewers. So when Glenn broadcasts himself to the country every day and his viewers hear his argument for why people should be investing in gold, they aren’t really hearing a man’s opinion on the matter. What they’re hearing is more akin to Billy Mays talk about Orange Glo.

“Gold! It’ll act as currency when the walls of safety come crumbling down, and the marauders begin to fest on the flesh of children! It can also get a stain out of anything!”

The truly baffling part of it all is how Glenn defends himself. How a man like him, who warns us all about the dangers of big business becoming entangled with government, can himself be promoting a product being sold by a large company, which he then presents to his viewers as “news.”

At that point, Glenn basically becomes the physical manifestation of an internet pop-up ad that reads, “Study Shows Sky-Rocketing Erectile Dysfunction Rates Among Young Men!” And then you click on it and it takes you to a boner pill website that installs malware onto your hard drive. In other words, advertisements disguised as news headlines.

A little disingenuous.

The real point is here comes out when you take this same situation and examine it under a different light.

What if President Obama was a paid spokesperson for Nike? What if at every press conference, Obama ditched the presidential suit and tie and opted, instead, to sport a shirt with a massive Nike logo, a Nike hat, and every few minutes he would slam his Nike shoe-wearing foot on to the podium for all cameras to see? To top it all off, he tells us how Nike shoes are the best shoes for running away from the marauders that eat children.

You’d probably be inclined to believe that he was in the pocket of big business, which is kind of a bad thing due to him being the president and all.

But a far worse scenario than that would be a TV and radio newsman (again, a “newsman” in the eyes of his supporters) doing the same thing. A man with a job that is, in my very humble, far more important than that of the President of the United States.

Sadly, we do have that.

His name is Glenn Beck.