Tears of Testimony: Glenn Beck and the Conservative Moral Occult

Abstract

In the years following the World Trade Center attacks, bitter partisanship ultimately characterized US politics at the local and national levels. In popular media, news and talk shows became settings for the staging of emotive, personalized dramatic spectacles of partisan loyalty. At the same time, media personalities such as Glenn Beck could capitalize on the feelings of anxiety, anger and skepticism that charged the cultural climate as the private sphere dissipated in the name of greater state-controlled security. Beck’s political profile was a strange admixture of stock conservative ideals, libertarian ethics, Mormon theology and millennial panic. Though his politics might account for ideological resonance with Republicans and Tea Party supporters, they cannot account for his more widespread success. Beck’s critics had difficulty rationalizing his hijacking of the evening news with a strategy of tears and One World Government conspiracy theories. What had once occupied the position of the news on evening television was suddenly a one-man vitriolic circus. Loren’s “Tears of Testimony” shows how Beck’s reactionary populist rhetorical strategies never dealt in facts, but rather in feelings. Tapping strong emotions such as anxiety, resentment and a nostalgic longing for the phantom of a non-existent past, Beck attracted the eyes and ears of a nation for the better part of a decade. Though he has often been accused of achieving success through fearmongering, racism and political propaganda, Loren’s aim is not to discredit Beck’s methods, but rather to provide a discursive context that clarifies their efficacy. Mapping a melodramatic operative mode onto the spectrum of Beck’s public performances, Loren’s essay provides further evidence for the protean nature of melodrama beyond traditional fictional forms and its role in US politics.