“I’m not a journalist,” says the weepy Fox News host Glenn Beck in this video. “I’m just a guy that loves his country.”

I agree he’s not a journalist. No self-respecting journalist would cry these cued-up crocodile tears.

In this clip, you’ll see Tina Brown call Beck someone who is “in the mode of the great charlatan evangelists.” I think that’s about right. Many of those folks were taken as prophets of God — just as many of these entertainers are misunderstood as journalists.

Before the last newspaper folds, will any of them be able to make a profitable transition to the web? Because as bad as print reporting has been the past decade, with an overbearing curiosity about Britneys and Lindsays and little interest in corporate and government malfeasance and illegal wars, I shudder to consider how much worse we will be relying on the sort of boosterish hucksterism seen below.

Please watch.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 9:23 am and is filed under On seeing, Politics, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.