Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck on tour for his book, An Inconvenient Book in 2007
Born	February 10, 1964 (1964-02-10) (age 45) Mount Vernon, Washington, USA
Occupation	Talk-radio and television host
Religious beliefs	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Spouse(s)	Tania Beck
Children	4
Website http://www.glennbeck.com/

Glenn Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American radio and television host, libertarian^[1] political commentator, author, and entrepreneur. He hosts The Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. Beck also hosts a self-titled television show on Fox News Channel.

In addition to broadcasting, he has written three New York Times-bestselling books, and is the publisher of Fusion Magazine. Beck also stars in a one-man stage show that tours the US twice a year.^[2]

Contents 1 Personal life 2 Career 2.1 Radio beginnings and growth 2.2 Television 2.3 Live events and projects 2.4 The 9/12 Project 3 Political views 4 Books by Glenn Beck 5 References 6 External links

Personal life

Beck was born in Mount Vernon, Washington, and raised a Roman Catholic. His early life was pitted with tragedies; his mother and one of his brothers committed suicide, and a sibling had a fatal heart attack.^[3] He graduated from Sehome High School in Bellingham, Washington in 1982. Several years later, he took a single theology class at Yale University.^[4]

A 2009 profile in GQ states that Beck was admitted to a special program for non-traditional students at Yale University at some unspecified point in time while he was working for a New Haven-area radio station. Senator Joe Lieberman wrote one of Beck's recommendation letters. Beck dropped out around the time of his divorce. When Beck left Yale, an unnamed professor told him "Glenn, you belong here."^[4]

Beck is a self-described recovering alcoholic and addict. He and his first wife divorced amid his struggle with substance abuse. Beck cites the help of Alcoholics Anonymous in his sobriety, and he eventually converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,^[5] which teaches against the consumption of alcohol.

Beck has spoken often of his religious beliefs and conversion. "God stalked me!...He had a giant baptismal rifle," Beck said. "I thwarted him. I led people astray as much as I could, but he kept putting Mormons in my way."^[6]

By his first marriage, Beck has two teenage daughters, Hannah and Mary, who has cerebral palsy. With his second wife, Tania, he has two children, Raphe (adopted in 2004) and Cheyenne (born 2006).

He is currently a resident of New Canaan, Connecticut.

Career

Radio beginnings and growth

Beck began his radio career when he won a local radio contest to be a DJ for an hour, and was eventually granted a part-time job. He hosted Christian radio on Saturday, rock on Sunday and country on weeknights. In the mid 80s he worked at WRKA radio in Louisville, Kentucky as a morning-drive DJ. His show was called Captain Beck and the A-Team.

After graduating from high school, Beck pursued his career as a Top 40 DJ. By the time he was in his 20s, Beck was on WKCI-FM (KC101), a Top 40 radio station in Hamden, Connecticut, hosting the local morning show with Pat Gray. Originally the show was billed as the Glenn and Pat Show. When Gray left the show, Beck continued with co-host Vinnie Penn. While working in Connecticut, he appeared and sang background vocals on The Delrays' Red, White and Blues CD, a fund raising effort by then Governor John G. Rowland produced by guitarist Tom Guerra. The CD was well received and was promoted by a series of live appearances.

The Glenn Beck Program first aired in 2000 on WFLA (AM) in Tampa, Florida, and took their afternoon time slot from eighteenth to first place within a year.^[7] In January 2002, Premiere Radio Networks launched the show nationwide on forty-seven stations. The show then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, broadcasting from new flagship station WPHT.

In January 2002, The Glenn Beck Program launched nationally on Premiere Radio Networks. On November 5, 2007, The New York Times reported that Premiere Radio Networks was extending Beck's contract. By May 2008, it had reached over 280 terrestrial stations as well as XM Satellite. It was ranked 4th in the nation with over six and a half million listeners.^[8]

Television

In January 2006, CNN's Headline News announced that Beck would host a nightly news-commentary show in their new primetime block Headline Prime. The show, simply called Glenn Beck, aired weeknights at 7:00 p.m., repeating at 9:00 p.m. and midnight (all times Eastern) from May 8, 2006 to October 16, 2008.

On November 16, 2006 Jon Stewart of The Daily Show criticized Beck's recent remarks during an interview with Keith Ellison, the then newly elected Minnesota representative and first Muslim ever elected to U.S. Congress. During the interview, Beck stated, "I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.' And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way." Stewart responded to Beck's statements with "Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking."^[9] David Segal of The Washington Post described the Ellison interview as "surely [Beck's] most embarrassing moment" and a "stink bomb." He then speculated on Beck's popularity: "Maybe an attention-deficit host is exactly what an attention-deficit public wants. Listen to a few of Beck's shows and what strikes you most is the enormous ratio of words to substance — how Beck can monologue for minutes at a time and leave behind almost nothing except the impression of great vehemence."^[10]

By 2007, Beck's success on CNN had ABC wanting him for occasional appearances on Good Morning America. As reported by the Associated Press in January 2007, three groups wrote in urgency to the network to keep Beck off GMA. Arab American Institute spokeswoman Jennifer Kauffman told the AP, "That blatant anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bias has been given credibility on a larger news show is something that concerns us."^[11]

CNN Headline News described the show as "an unconventional look at the news of the day featuring his often amusing perspective on the top stories from world events and politics to pop culture and everyday hassles."^[12] At the end of his time at CNN-HLN, Beck had the second largest audience behind Nancy Grace.^[13] On July 21, 2008, Beck filled in for Larry King on the show Larry King Live.^[14] In 2008, Beck won the Marconi Radio Award for Network Syndicated Personality of the Year.^[15]

On October 16, 2008 it was announced that Glenn Beck would join the Fox News Channel, leaving behind CNN Headline News. CNN pulled the program off the air the same day. A news hour with Jane Velez-Mitchell filled Beck's former slot, with subsequent slots filled by Lou Dobbs Tonight encores.^[16] After moving to the Fox News Channel, Beck began to host a weekday show at 5pm ET, beginning January 19 2009, as well as a weekend version.^[17] His first guests included Karl Rove, Governor Sarah Palin, and the wives of Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos. He also has a regular segment every Friday on the Fox News Channel program The O'Reilly Factor titled "At your Beck and call."

After a March 2009 taping of Beck's FOX News show on which he appeared to choke up on air, wiping tears from his eyes and explaining, "I'm sorry. I just love my country, and I fear for it,"^[18] Beck was mocked by fellow FOX personality Shepard Smith^[19] and Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, the latter going as far as to imitate Beck, saying "I'm sorry. I just love Glenn Beck's sanity. And I fear for it."^[20] The New York Times ran a feature piece on Beck later in the month, quoting an interview with Beck in which he identified himself with Peter Finch's "mad prophet of the airwaves" from the 1976 film Network, Howard Beale, and continually noting Beck's reputation as a performer rather than as a journalist.^[21]

On the March 2, 2009 Fox & Friends program, Beck claimed that he had been unable to debunk rumors that FEMA facilities were to be converted into concentration camps, ^[22] a longstanding conspiracy theory that has circulated in the U.S. militia movement since the 1990s.^[23] On the April 6, 2009 Glenn Beck Program, Beck renounced his support for the rumor. ^[22] After the airing of Beck's March 13, 2009 Glenn Beck Program Special "We Surround Them," Beck was criticized by former George W. Bush speech writer and conservative commentator David Frum for distributing copies of conspiracist and John Birch Society supporter Cleon Skousen's book The Five Thousand Year Leap, for which Beck wrote the 2008 edition's foreword. ^{[1][24] [25]} Beck had previously promoted an excerpt from Skousen's 1958 book, The Naked Communist on his website. ^[26]

Live events and projects

In March 2003, Beck ran a series of rallies called Glenn Beck's Rally for America in support of troops deployed for the upcoming Iraq War. He ran the final rally at Marshall University over the Memorial Day weekend. In subsequent years, Beck has toured American cities twice a year, presenting a one-man stage show. His stage productions are a mix of stand-up comedy and inspirational speaking.^[27] His current tour is called Glenn Beck's Common Sense Comedy Tour.

In 2005, the summer show Glenn Beck: On Ice advocated diminishing the role of politics in daily life. The 2006 summer show The Mid-Life Crisis Tour featured life's lessons from the perspective of a middle-aged man.

In June 2007, Beck completed his latest tour called An Inconvenient Tour. It focused on the inconvenient aspects of everyday life, and was a parody of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in name only. On July 4, 2007, Beck served as host of the 2007 Toyota Tundra "Stadium of Fire" in Provo, Utah. The annual event at LaVell Edwards Stadium on the Brigham Young University campus is presented by America's Freedom Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is "to provide deeply felt emotional experiences that celebrate and promote the traditional American values of family, freedom, God and country."^[28]

On May 17, 2008, Beck gave the keynote speech at the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky.^[29] Also in 2008, Beck's summer show was Beck '08: Unelectable, a political comedy tour. It was also carried for one night live via satellite to suitably equipped theatres around the U.S. For his annual winter tour, Glenn Beck's Christmas Tour, Beck focuses on a Christmas theme. In 2008, the Christmas tour was a live performance of his novel The Christmas Sweater. The last stop on the tour was simulcast via satellite to hundreds of suitably equipped movie theatres around the US. The performance was also replayed the following day (titled an "encore" performance) in many of those same theatres.

Each year in January, Beck and Stu Burguiere return to their original home station of 970 WFLA to provide commentary on the yearly Gasparilla Pirate Festival parade. Additionally, Beck's We Surround Them meeting has been an offshoot of the "You Are Not Alone" Special.

The 9/12 Project

The 9/12 Project is a campaign that was announced by Beck on March 13, 2009. It is named for nine principles and twelve values, extolled by Beck, that he says embody the spirit of the American people on the day after the September 11 attacks.^[30] His twelve values are honesty, reverence, hope, thrift, humility, charity, sincerity, moderation, hard work, courage, personal responsibility, and gratitude.^[31]These virtues are similar to the ones Benjamin Franklin outlined in his autobiography^[32]

His nine principles are:

1. America Is Good
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday
4. The family is sacred
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with whom I want to
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion
9. The government works for me — I do not answer to them, they answer to me.^[33]

Political views

Beck supports individual gun ownership rights, and is against gun control legislation.^[34] On June 2, 2008, Beck interviewed Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana on his syndicated radio talk show about the Second Amendment, gun control, and the state of Montana. The interview was mostly focused on Montana's status as a state if the United States Supreme Court ever ruled that gun ownership was a collective right and not an individual right, thus violating Montana's compact with the United States government for its entry as a state. The interview also covered several other subjects including global warming, high fuel prices, alternative energy, and Schweitzer's ideas on how best to deal with the aforementioned issues.^[35][36]

On May 7, 2009 Beck spoke on his Fox News show about the Montana Firearms Freedom Act which was signed by Governor Brian Schweitzer on April 15, 2009 and will become effective October 1, 2009. The law exempts firearms made and kept in Montana from Federal firearms regulations.

Beck also is pro-life, including being opposed to euthanasia, in which he said that he could not "imagine telling God that he lived in a society that decided who should live or not." His position on embryonic stem cell research is that he hopes that it can be done without the destruction of another life, and admits his daughter's cerebral palsy affects his viewpoint. In a more recent statement, Beck clearly stated his opposition to federally funded stem cell research. Beck favors hard currency and opposes the Federal Reserve.

Books by Glenn Beck

• The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland, released September 1, 2003
• An Inconvenient Book, released November 20, 2007, was #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list for the week of December 9, 2007
• The Christmas Sweater, released on November 11, 2008, was #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list for the week of November 30, 2008, and the week of December 25, 2008.
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine, released June 2009.
• Arguing with Idiots: America's Next Epic Battle: 1776 vs. 1984, scheduled for September 2009 release.

Additionally, Beck was the author of the foreword to the 2008 edition of conservative author Cleon Skousen's The 5,000 Year Leap. Beck has described the book as "divinely inspired."^[25]

An interview with Beck about The Christmas Sweater appeared on James Dobson's Focus on the Family web site but was removed after complaints by an evangelical group that the article failed to mention that he is a Mormon.^[37][38]

Beck is also the publisher of the comedy magazine Fusion Magazine, which is a play on the slogan of the The Glenn Beck Program, "The Fusion of Entertainment and Enlightenment."

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Glenn Beck

• Glenn Beck official website
• Forbes 2009 Celebrity 100 interview of Beck
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense Tour

Persondata
NAME	Beck, Glenn
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	talk-radio and television host
DATE OF BIRTH	1964-02-10
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mount Vernon, Washington
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH