Glenn Beck On TIME Magazine Cover: Is The "Mad Man" Bad For America?

Glenn Beck On TIME Magazine Cover: Is The "Mad Man" Bad For America?

Glenn Beck has landed on the cover of TIME magazine.

"As melodrama, it's thumping good stuff," Von Drehle writes. "But as politics, it's sort of a train wreck - at once powerful, spellbinding and uncontrolled."

Von Drehle adds:

Extreme talk, especially as practiced by a genuine talent like Beck, squeezes maximum profit from a relatively small, deeply invested audience...The more the host is criticized, the more committed the original audience becomes. And the more committed the audience, the bigger target it presents to the rant industry on the other side of the spectrum... How can we trust each other, though, when the integrated economy of ranters and their delighted-to-be-outraged critics are such a model of profitability? A microphone, a camera and a polarizing host is all it takes to get the money moving.

Read the full story here. See the cover image below:

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Watch TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel discuss the cover on "Morning Joe" Thursday:

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