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Beck's Silent Red Phone Is 'a Hotline to Nowhere'

Host's willful nonsense is the 'new ignorance'

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Nov 4, 2009 6:01 AM CST

(Newser) – Glenn Beck likes to say that the red phone on his desk is a direct line to the White House, but of course it's a hotline to nowhere, just like the Fox host's whole schtick. Beck complains piteously that White House libbers won't call to respond to his issues, Thomas Frank writes in the Wall Street Journal. But he doesn't want information. "That's what makes Mr. Beck's pantomime fear and trembling so odious: He doesn't appear to be interested in further evidence, or really any evidence that doesn't serve his shtick."

Frank went through the motions of speaking to some of Beck's recent targets and—surprise, surprise—not one of them received the hotline number. The silent phone symbolizes "a new kind of ignorance," Frank concludes, an age when people can dismiss what they don't like as liberal bias, surround themselves with media only serving up opinions they like, and "demand that any contrary view be transmitted to them via telephone call from the president himself."

[Images (4)]

[Videos (1)]

[Quotes (2)]

Glenn Beck demands Obama get on the phone. (YouTube)

Glenn Beck, host of Headline News' Glenn Beck Show. (Photo: Business Wire)

In this March 12, 2003 file photo, syndicated radio host Glenn Beck, whose Philadelphia-based show is heard in more than 100 markets, is seen in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. (AP Photo/Mike Mergen, file)

Radio talk show host Glenn Beck gestures to the crowd at the Rally for America event at Marshall University Stadium May 24, 2003, in Huntington, West Virginia. (Getty Images)

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Glenn Beck waits for a phone call that's not going to come. (ObamaComma)

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Maybe, as many believe, Glenn Beck is indeed the future of the conservative movement. From tea parties to town-hall meetings, thousands are signing up and fitting themselves out with their very own hotline to nowhere. - Thomas Frank

These are postulates only possible to believe after you have decided reporting and analysis are not worth reading, and you choose ideological fairy tales over reality until a magical phone call comes from on high. - Thomas Frank

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Beck's Silent Red Phone Is 'a Hotline to Nowhere'