In Associate Publisher Gil Smart’s screed (“Glenn Beck’s populism of me“) against Glenn Beck, he observes:
“Beck touches a nerve because so many feel dispossessed and disrespected. That sentiment sparks every populist movement. We think of ‘the people’ as virtuous, and they certainly can be. But they can also be confused, in thrall to their darkest impulses, prone to demagoguery and easily exploited.”
WATCHDOG: A wag of the tail.
The nation’s founders chose a Republic with limited voter enfranchisement and appointed senators with the hopes that those who made the decisions would be better educated, more informed and serve ’the greater good.’ What they didn’t count on was that someday ‘entertainers’ plying to the biases of large factions, both ‘right’ and ‘left’, would be able to earn millions each year and much more for their media outlets. As an example, over the years ‘show biz’ turned Rush Limbaugh from an insightful conservative commentator into a right wing ‘pimp.’
