Here’s a video and transcript of a recent segment on Glenn Beck’s show, in which he denounces popular FOX series Glee as “a horror show” and “propaganda”.
He then devotes what struck me as an unusual amount of time to examining the lyrics of the My Chemical Romance song “Sing” that was performed at the end of the “Comeback” episode.
I was somewhat surprised that he didn’t call Glee gay propaganda (something it’s been called here on the SDMB, in fact – old thread). But he does say he’s only seen two episodes, and one of them was “Comeback” which doesn’t feature any gay characters. This plot of this episode actually does not involve “everybody sleeping with everybody else” either; it deals in part with the Finn/Quinn/Sam/Santana love rectangle, but none of these characters have had sex with each other.
Glee is, in its own strange way, actually rather conservative when it comes to teen sex. I mean, I’m sure there’s far more teen sex on the show than Glenn Beck would like, but everybody is not, in fact, sleeping with everybody else. Most of the couples apparently stop at second base. Of the 13 current New Directions members, we know for sure that six have been sexually active (Puck, Santana, Brittany, Quinn, Finn, Artie) and the latter three have had sex with only one partner. Quinn and Finn each had sex on only one *occasion *(with Puck and Santana, respectively) and in both cases this led to problems later on. For Quinn it was practically a morality tale: she got pregnant the first and only time she had sex, while cheating on her respectful, virginal boyfriend with a promiscuous “bad boy”. There have also been multiple storylines discouraging casual sex, including Rachel shown as making the right decision in twice refusing to have sex with Jesse St. James, Artie being upset that Brittany used sex to manipulate him, and a speech from Kurt’s father (who’s basically the only responsible adult on the show) warning that there are emotional consequences to sex and that Kurt shouldn’t “throw yourself around like you don’t matter.”
This isn’t to say that even a liberal like me would want my imaginary children turning to Glee for moral instruction – it’s just a TV show, and one that regularly and I suspect deliberately presents mixed messages – but I was surprised Beck focused on teen sex and the lyrics to one song when there are so many other things on the show that I’d expect he’d consider even more offensive. Aside from being the gayest show on network television, Glee has featured jokes at the expense of political conservatives and Christianity, and authority figures are generally treated as clueless at best.
Too late to edit, but Finn and Santana actually have had sex (as I say in the next paragraph), but their one-night stand the year before isn’t really important to this episode. But Quinn hasn’t been having sex with Sam, her cheating with Finn was limited to kissing, and while Santana explicitly offers Sam access to the “twins” she doesn’t say she’ll have sex with him.
One does almost need a chart to keep up with the various past and present romantic pairings on this show, but few of the teen couples have “gone all the way”.
I kind of suspected that the only reason that Glee doesn’t get more criticism on Fox News, is that it’s a $500 million cash cow for the Fox the broadcast network, so the Fox News bosses have told their underlings its an unofficial policy to stay away from attacking the show. Fox News personalities have been fine with attacking other entertainment that feel is pushing a liberal agenda. Since Back is leaving his show soon, he may have felt he could get away with going after the most liberal of liberals show on network TV.
This is just Glenn Beck trying to stay relevant (although the fact that it’s taken him two years to notice Glee shows how out-of-touch he actually is). Five years ago he’d have been denouncing Lost, ten years ago it would have been Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and fifteen years ago it would have been The X-Files.
Which, actually, is a whole lot like I remember high school. Everybody pairing up, splitting up and new couples forming around the circle of friends, with lots and lots of *talk *about sex, but only a handful of us actually having it.
Oh, yeah, and Glenn Beck is an idiot. News at 11. :rolleyes:
The disconnect between the values expressed by Fox News and the programming on Fox has always seemed weird to me. I understand the reasons for it ($$$), but it seems like many people who love Fox News must find the programming on Fox loathsome. But since they’re two different channels you could watch one while mostly avoiding the other.
Yeah, that’s basically how things were when I was in high school too (late '90s).
Believe me, I’m not surprised that the man is an idiot, but I am surprised he was choosing to focus on the lyrics to one song rather than go after the show for the many other elements I assume would be far more offensive to Beck’s viewers. Then again, the emphasis on the My Chemical Romance song did allow him to criticize Glee without really criticizing Glee, and may have been intended to keep the top brass happy. He even makes a point of saying that the show has a great cast, great dialogue, and great musical numbers.
Hadn’t really thought about it, but yeah - probably that’s why blah blah breaking up with who’s with who? on Glee annoys me, 'cause I’m a grownup now. It was a source of endless fascination when I was 16. (And half of the participants ended up coming out of the closet in college anyway.)
Didn’t the show have a throw-away line that established Quinn’s father (an unsympathetic character, at least at the time) as a devoted Glenn Beck viewer right before he kicked Quinn out of the house for getting pregnant?
I keep seeing clips of Beck, but never watched his show. I fear too many people who hate the guy still watch him, just to see what wacked-out bullshit he’ll spew out next.
My SO is one of those folks who always has the television on, whether he’s watching it or not, just for “company”. Glenn Beck was the first (and I think only) “veto” I pulled on him, but not before I subjected myself to a few episodes to give it a fair shake.
You’re assuming Beck has a sense of responsibility about what he says - that he’s actually conducting careful research into world events and weighing facts.
I think what happened is that Beck heard Glee was a popular show so, even without knowing anything about it, he figured it would be a good topic. Moral denunciation is his schtick so he skimmed through a couple of episodes to find something he could be appalled by and he was ready to go.
Next week, Beck might be denouncing Lady Gaga or Angry Birds or Get Fuzzy.
Nah, only that one episode. And maybe only parts of that. He was all wishy-washy and said he liked the actors and stuff in general, which implies he doesn’t’ hate the show itself.
You may be right. It’s very easy to find information about Glee on the Internet, but if Beck was just going off what he’d seen in two episodes he may well have missed most of the content that he (or his viewers) would find offensive. It may have been just his bad luck that he happened to tune in on a night when a fashion trend had all the girls adapting a modest style of dress AND two teachers made a trip to a pediatric cancer ward to sing “This Little Light of Mine” with the children. So exaggerating the amount of sex on the show and scrutinizing the lyrics to “Sing” may have been the best Beck could do in terms of making that particular episode of Glee sound like “a horror show”.
Funnily enough, he must have missed the episode in which Glee literally became a horror show – there was an all Rocky Horror episode around Halloween.
That was my thought: When I saw the thread title, I figured “Huh, Glee must run on a Fox network” (a point I wasn’t previously aware of). The execs know that something like this can only increase viewership.
In other words he wanted Kurt to hook up with new guy Sam. Well we all did, but stop whining about it Glenn. And I really don’t think there’s a huge overlap in the Venn diagrams of Glee fans and Glenn fans.
Next on Beck: Beck explores the new phenomenally successful social networking site My Space.
There’s plenty to criticize about the MCR song: namely, out of all the songs on the album, I can’t believe it is the one to achieve the most cultural exposure (it’s also been used for an AI commercial.)
This unfortunately means that they will play it at their concert later this month, to the detriment of about 2 albums worth of other songs I’d rather hear them play.
