We’re talking today to Michael Charney, author of Chasing Glenn Beck: A Personal Experiment in Reclaiming Our Hijacked Political Conversation.
Today’s political dialogue has been stolen, hijacked from us by those with the loudest voices. Until we begin to take that conversation back for ourselves, we remain at the mercy of those with the most radical agendas, the most extreme visions for our country. The risk is great: a country run by a vociferous minority that just happens to scream louder than the rest of us is NOT what democracy is supposed to be about …
With discussions about politics, schools, national security, manifestos, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Flag Code—and the Senate’s Candy Desk—Charney cuts a wide swath through the issues facing our country, a country he claims has a serious case of “Electile Dysfunction.”
Q. Thank you for this interview, Michael. Can we begin by having you tell us why you chose to write about Glenn Beck?
Glenn Beck was a jumping off point for me in that I was writing more about what he represented than about the person himself. He’s a symbol, a character, rather than a subject.
Ultimately the book isn’t really about Glenn Beck at all, but about how we’ve allowed people like him to take over our political conversation, replacing reasoned, thoughtful conversation with marketing, sound bites, emotion and fear.
We seem to have forgotten, too, that Glenn Beck is just an entertainer and that they’re all just entertainers, whether it’s him or Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz. And they’re not even all that entertaining most of the time! I sometimes think that if Rush Limbaugh really does have his “talent on loan from God,” then maybe he should have asked for a bigger loan!
Q. Did you outline before you wrote your book or just went with the flow?
I started without an outline, partly because I decided to write the book in real time and, obviously, I had no way of knowing what would actually happen in the real world. For example, about half-way through the process Bin Laden was killed,and that generated an entire chapter I hadn’t anticipated.
What I did do was create a list of themes that I knew I wanted to cover, and then, as things happened in the real world, I would choose the theme I thought mapped well to those events. I knew, for example, that I wanted to discuss bullying at some point, and when Ed Schultz started calling Laura Ingraham names on national television … well … let’s just say it was a nice fit for what I wanted to write about.
But even those loose plans required adjustment because I never anticipated how much I would change during the process. I struggled with how to fit myself into the narrative, or if I even should. Finally, I just decided to write about it honestly, whenever it happened. Turns out I was a jackass more than a few times, and that I’m prejudiced in some pretty strange ways.
Q. What kind of research did you do before putting this book together?
I did some research early on, particularly on Glenn Beck’s life, the history of the GOP, things like that. Most of the deeper research, though, was done after the first draft was complete, mostly because I didn’t want what I studied to change what I was thinking as real-world events were happening. I felt that I wanted to get my thoughts down and, if, later on, I discovered I was factually wrong about some things I thought I was sure of, then that, too, would be interesting to explore.
You’d have to read Chapter four, “I Believe in Me,” to understand why, but there’s an incredible irony to the way I did my research. The short, brutal bottom line is that my beliefs may not be any more valid than yours, or your mom’s, or the person down the street who makes your lattes—even though I did my “research.”
