# Did Glenn Beck kill a frog on live TV, or is he just an idiot? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 24, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333 "2009-09-24T03:28:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/1 "2009-09-24T03:28:45Z")
Okay, I realize the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive… Anyway, in [this video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9nVpO1Dvfk), Glenn tries to bring up that old trope about frogs not jumping out of gradually heating water vs boiling water, which I think those brainless jingoists use to say that the reason Obama isn’t turning us into communist nazis even though he is, is because he _is_, we just can’t tell, because he’s doing it slowly. That makes sense if you read it through a few times. Also, you have to have frontal lobe brain damage. To demonstrate this, I guess, it looks like he takes a frog and drops it in some boiling water, expecting it to jump out. Except it doesn’t jump out. It dies. Now, it’s certainly possible that it was staged, some simple slight-of-hand and pretending to be surprised, since we don’t actually see the frog go into the water, but the fact that the frog doesn’t jump from the water kind of defeats the point of his whole stupid metaphor. Unless he was trying to say that the metaphor is wrong, that the frog dies either way. Maybe so as to mean that _we_ are going to die because Obama is the boiling water and taxes are the flame and healthcare is the pot and death panels are the teflon coating. If that’s the point he was trying to make, he failed to make it. When the frog apparently died, he changed topics very quickly. Besides, Beck doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy whose words you need to pore over multiple times to figure out what he really means, like a character on Mad Men. So there remains the two options, either Beck killed a frog on live tv by throwing it into boiling water, or he’s too stupid to follow his own metaphor past the first ten words. I’ll grant you that killing a frog is not the same as, say, throwing a puppy off of a cliff. Chefs kill lobsters on TV by dropping them into boiling water all the time. Hell, Alton Brown took out a whole colony of crawfish at once in a recent episode. I’m not really fazed by any of these things. Suffer a few frogs, who gives a shit? I’m not trying to pull some kind of animal-rights-PETA-pity-party here. Fuck the frogs. I just like to know how Beck’s brain works. If that frog really died, and he thought it wasn’t going to, and he still thought doing it on live TV without trying it out first was a good idea, I can’t vouch for the man’s sanity anymore. It’s easy to assume that he’s just doing an act, like I’m sure Hannity is, to rouse rabble and tow the party line. The problem is, maintaining that kind of act requires lots of work, and brain power to keep the act up (see: Stephen Colbert), and someone expending that kind of brain power would be expected to be able to think that maybe dropping an animal into boiling water on TV, or even pretending to, would not be a good idea. You wouldn’t expect this kind of thing from a [former zookeeper.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJkxBLgd5Hs) How is it that when Beck comes up with these ideas, like [pretending to poison the Speaker of the House](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UudQuVOwSds), or [pretending to pour gasoline over someone](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRDEM2X4UZU), trying to say that Rockefeller (the richest man in American history) [was a communist because of some incidental art](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szlLM5lCNJg) on a building that he, y’know, must have designed himself, nobody in his studio or network ever says, “Hey, umm… let’s not do that”? If there _are_ people telling him _not_ to do certain things, I shudder to consider them. ---
**Author:** ![leander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bcef8e/32.png) [@leander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leander)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/2 "2009-09-24T03:52:04Z")
I’m sure there is no dead frog. He’s a jackass who gets off on shocking people. ---
**Author:** ![C3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/c3/32/3108_2.png) [@C3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C3)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/3 "2009-09-24T03:55:43Z")
I’m not so sure he’s trying to shock anyone as much as he has figured out that his audience is made up of the type of people who would be guffawing at a frog getting “accidentally” boiled alive (or Pelosi being poisoned or someone being doused with gasoline and set on fire). It’s funny. Get it? Har har! Man, you people have NO sense of humor. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/4 "2009-09-24T03:56:58Z")
Maybe deep down, in his heart of hearts, he really wishes he could just leave this politics stuff behind and be a host on Mythbusters. Interestingly, I’ve heard that if you test the other part of the saying, put a frog in water and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog will feel the increasing heat and jump out. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/5 "2009-09-24T04:00:51Z")
You know, as soon as the camera was off, he fucked that frog. ---
**Author:** ![Claude\_Remains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@Claude\_Remains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claude_Remains)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/6 "2009-09-24T04:05:29Z")
Ultimately, Who gives a fuck? I wanna see Paul Watson as the base of a really good seafood soup. I just don’t wanna be the poor bastard who has to skim the fat off the top. ---
**Author:** ![Alienhand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8edcca/32.png) [@Alienhand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alienhand)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/7 "2009-09-24T04:09:15Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > You know, as soon as the camera was off, he fucked that frog. Now I’ll never fall asleep tonight. ---
**Author:** ![Algorithm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/algorithm/32/12204_2.png) [@Algorithm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algorithm)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/8 "2009-09-24T04:10:14Z")
I heard he raped and killed a girl in 1990. I did some research, and I can’t _dis_prove it. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/9 "2009-09-24T04:23:10Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Interestingly, I’ve heard that if you test the other part of the saying, put a frog in water and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog will feel the increasing heat and jump out. I haven’t done the experiment on frogs, but I’ve tested salamanders for their critical thermal maximum in Herpetology class. If you slowly heat a container of water with a salamander in it, the salamander will begin to move about once the heat becomes uncomfortable, then start to thrash around violently before it finally keels over. I’m sure a frog would do the same. The whole metaphor is bogus. (Note: We didn’t kill the salamanders in the experiment. As soon as they zonked out, we turned the heat off and cooled the container down again until they revived.) ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/10 "2009-09-24T04:25:55Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > (Note: We didn’t kill the salamanders in the experiment. As soon as they zonked out, we turned the heat off and cooled the container down again until they revived.) As good a preparation for moderating the SDMB as any, I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/11 "2009-09-24T04:46:54Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > in Herpetology class I think they make a cream for that now. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/12 "2009-09-24T05:01:06Z")
It doesn’t look fake to me. It wouldn’t make any sense for it to be fake. It totally undermined his point when the frog did not jump out. I think he was looking for a dramatic illustration that didn’t happen… Jeezus Keerist, what a maroon. Weren’t there any producers or crew people on hand who could have tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “hey dumbass, this isn’t going to work,” or is he just surrounded by sycophants who never correct him? That’s a repulsive thought. Can you imagine a more pathetic existence than being a Glenn Beck toady? ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/13 "2009-09-24T05:03:49Z")
It’s better than being a Glenn Beck froggy. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/14 "2009-09-24T05:09:03Z")
Dude, I almost never do this kind of nitpicky shit, but I like reading your posts a lot, so when you go– > [@wierdaaron](#): > > slight-of-hand –or– > [@wierdaaron](#): > > tow the . . . line –it’s even more distracting than when an idiot does it. So language nazi hijack: _sleight of hand toe the line_ End of language nazi hijack. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/15 "2009-09-24T05:15:44Z")
> [@3trew](#): > > As good a preparation for moderating the SDMB as any, I suppose. Better experience was my stint as a toad wrangler. ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/16 "2009-09-24T05:22:58Z")
> [@wierdaaron](#): > > …I can’t vouch for the man’s sanity anymore. Anymore? Wait, there was a time when you could vouch for Beck’s sanity? Do tell! ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/17 "2009-09-24T05:23:53Z")
> [@Algorithm](#): > > I heard he raped and killed a girl in 1990. I did some research, and I can’t _dis_prove it. Yeah, I heard that too. I have no evidence that he did or did not rape and murder a girl in 1990, but I _fear_ that he did. I don’t know why he doesn’t just provide documentation proving that he did not rape and kill a girl in 1990, so this can be put behind us. Maybe he can’t find the long forms? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/18 "2009-09-24T05:24:01Z")
> [@Alienhand](#): > > Now I’ll never fall asleep tonight. Then you _really_ don’t want to google “chimp rapes frog”. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/19 "2009-09-24T05:24:50Z")
I don’t believe he’s ever denied it. It would be so easy for him to put a stop to all this. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333/20 "2009-09-24T05:26:21Z")
Meh, it probably committed suicide – figuring that it would have to spend the rest of its life with Glenn Beck. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-glenn-beck-kill-a-frog-on-live-tv-or-is-he-just-an-idiot/511333.md?page=2)