Art of the Union

Glenn Beck. Crier of tears, shouter of sensationalism, harbinger of… well I’m sure he’s a harbinger of something. It’s been a week without him screaming in the limelight and I feel lost. I have been following the man since his tenure on CNN’s mysterious HLN, a channel that I know exists but can rarely find as if it only shows up when it feels like it, to his recently ended stay on Fox.

We’ve shared many memories together, Glenn Beck and I. Who could forget the journey to the hospital he so bravely shared with us for his annual rectal scraping, with his innocent cherubian face sharing such insightful gifts as “The personal voyage through the nightmare that is our healthcare system.” Surely that opinion would not change. Or certainly who could forget that one time when he cried. So precious, so rare.

If there was one thing I could count on Beck for, it was that he would be an excellent pitchman, selling me the finest garbage I could ever want. With shilling his book “The Christmas Sweater” for what seemed like four months, I knew I could buy a heart-warming tale about a young African Muslim who was working to kill Christmas by smacking it with a picture of Hitler until it died… or something like that, I didn’t read it. I can also thank Glenn Beck for the knowledge that I could indeed buy gold. Prior to Beck I thought the only way I could buy gold was selling my family and heading for the hills armed with a pan or robbing an oil baron’s stagecoach.

Where does this leave me? Who can I turn to now? Who now will scribe onto a blackboard things so confusing it leaves me questioning whether or not I did indeed receive a highschool education? Who now will cry tears caused by the physical pain of squeezing out fake tears? But more importantly, who will constantly talk about themselves as if they are on the verge of forgetting who they themselves are at any minute?