Fox News' Glenn Beck has gotten a lot of attention of late for his meteroic rise into the cable news pantheon--as The Philadelphia Inquirer's John Timpane is the latest to note, GB current ranks third among all cable newsers, behind only Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. And yet Beck is clearly his own man, ideologically. He garnered a lot of attention during the Tea Party Day events (and watch that space, because the TP's are coming back), but as the Philly Ink profile makes clear, Beck isn't really a conservative, but rather, a right-leaning libertarian.
As he said so pithily to the Inky, "I was always a fiscal Republican, but socially, I don't give a flying crap. As the Founding Fathers said, as long as you're not hurting others, more freedom rather than less."
"More freedom rather than less"? Does that apply to gay marriage? To abortion? To gambling and lotteries? To drugs? Beck can speak for himself, of course, on all these questions, although TCG has certainly noticed that Beck routinely cites Ayn Rand, the Queen of Libertarians (OK, for purists, I'll say Objectivists.)
And so Beck actually is considerably different, ideologically, from either O'Reilly or Hannity. O'Reilly is more of a populist, while Hannity, more of an orthodox conservative. This chart here provides a useful grid for placing anyone, politico-ideologically. And yes, that was me--I put Beck's face in where the "Libertarian" quadrant should be. And so one could put Hannity over on the "Right Conservative" quadrant, and put O'Reilly on the straddle of "Centrist" and "Authoritarian"--which is usually rendered as "Populist."
What quickly becomes apparent, upon reflection, is just how much of the rest of the media is clustered in the left-libertarian quadrant--you know, the folks who want to legalize abortion and gay marriage, and tax or regulate everything else. Seen from this perspective, it's obvious why the MSM have had so much trouble: they mostly represent one particular perspective, at the expense of all the others.
Big mistake, leaving Fox the run of the rest of the quadrant-table.
