Glenn Beck's novel "The Overton Window"

[Little_Nemo]

I’ve always felt there’s a special genre of literature. It’s books for people for whom the phrase “if you only read one book this year…” is the literal truth. And the thing that gets me is that these readers seem to pick such godawful books for their annual read.

I mean, geez, people - just walk into Borders and grab a book at random and it’s almost certainly better than anything Glenn Beck, Dan Brown, or Doctor Phil has ever written.

[Kyla]

This looks amazing. If the local library doesn’t get it, I bet the university library will.

I wonder which of the two libraries I owe the least amount of money to…

[joebuck20]

@BrainGlutton

Ooh, this is priceless!

Oh man, that’s rich. His ghost writer is a left winger who plagiarized himself, and not only that, but plagiarized an earlier work he had written attacking the right wing.

[AWB]

@Enfant Terrible

Book burning is wrong. Book burning is wrong. Book burning is wrong. Book burning …

Only in the sense that you’d have to buy copies of his book to burn them. Waste of your money, and it lines his coffers.

[Clothahump]

@BrainGlutton

No, you are confusing Glenn Beck with Thomas Paine.

And probably not you alone.

Sigh. No, I am not. I’ve read both.

[Camus]

@Clothahump

Have you read “Common Sense”? Reading that book is a sign of intelligence, not the other way around.

Speaking of which, here are some reviews of the Common Sense comedy tour(???) that Beck did to help publicize the book.

The authors certainly do not go in opinion-free, but they’re interesting reads nonetheless.

[crowmanyclouds]

The big question the thought of Mr. Beck “writing” a novel raises for me is this;
Does Glenn use a word processor or does he write it all out long hand … on a chalkboard?

CMC fnord!

@Bosstone

… It’s entirely probable that this book is a joke like Colbert’s Tek Jansen adventures.

Hmm,
the Tea Party-like group Glenn creates for the novel The Founders Keepers,
the Tea Party-like group Glenn creates in real life The 9-12 Project.
Glenn’s just not imaginative enough to pull off a “Colbert”.

(The Founders Keepers? :rolleyes: I’m working on a novel about a detective agency staffed by retired barrel makers, The Finder Coopers.)

[Kyla]

Anyone else read Founders Keepers as Finders Keepers? Maybe they like gloating over finding nickels on the sidewalk or something.

[crowmanyclouds]

The real “Founder’s Keepers”!

Gene Roddenberry’s estate should sue!

CMC fnord!

[JohnT]

From Brain Glutton’s quote:

… figures out that 9/11 was an inside job carried out by an unsuccessful 1976 presidential candidate and a bunch of backwoods racist loons.

Gerald Ford? Man, I knew it!

[Gangster_Octopus]

Can a whole book be submitted to the Bulwer Lytton Competition?

[BrainGlutton]

@Clothahump

Sigh. No, I am not. I’ve read both.

Then you ought to know well enough that taking Glenn Beck seriously is not a sign of intelligence.

(Whether his intention is to be taken seriously is not entirely clear, and sometimes debated around here.)

[Little_Nemo]

figures out that 9/11 was an inside job carried out by an unsuccessful 1976 presidential candidate and a bunch of backwoods racist loons.

Gerald Ford? Man, I knew it!

No, Ford got the nomination. But there was a conservative who unsuccessfully challenged Ford for the nomination in 1976. So I guess this guys is saying Ronald Reagan masterminded the 9/11 attack.

[Miller]

@Kyla

Anyone else read Founders Keepers as Finders Keepers? Maybe they like gloating over finding nickels on the sidewalk or something.

When I’m looking at it, I keep reading it as Finders Keepers, too. When I’m trying to remember it, I keep thinking it’s Trapper Keepers.

[BrainGlutton]

FTR, the real-life independent presidential candidates in 1976 included two far-right-wingers:

Lester Maddox, American Independent Party (the party originally founded to run George Wallace for POTUS in 1968).

Thomas J. Anderson, American Party (which split off from the above).

The character in question could possibly be based partly, also, on Bo Gritz, who was the Populist Party candidate in 1992.

[Little_Nemo]

And there’s a lot of American Independents that are still bitter at Anderson for splitting the party and costing Maddox the election.

[JohnT]

@BrainGlutton

FTR, the real-life independent presidential candidates in 1976 included two far-right-wingers:

Lester Maddox, American Independent Party (the party originally founded to run George Wallace for POTUS in 1968).

Thomas J. Anderson, American Party (which split off from the above).

The character in question could possibly be based partly, also, on Bo Gritz, who was the Populist Party candidate in 1992.

Maddox and Anderson were in their 80’s when 9/11 happened… I just don’t see it.

Bo Gritz pronounces his last name with a long-I vowel sound. As a Southerner, that’s just wrong on so many levels.

[BrainGlutton]

I just came across a fascinating review of “Beck’s” “novel” by conservative Catholic intellectual John J. Reilly.

The title of the book, the Overton Window, refers to an analytical device formulated by John P. Overton (1960-2003) of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It refers to the range of policy choices in public discourse on a given issue. The familiar and “normal” options are in the center at any one time. Ever more extreme options in both directions of the political spectrum are listed in order of public unacceptability above and below. The model implies that previously extreme options can be normalized, moved to the center of the Window, by placing far more extreme options in the spectrum.

A little Internet research will reveal that the Overton Window is often used to justify a “base first” political strategy. In this view, a party with an ambitious policy agenda would be ill advised to seek to appeal to indifferent voters: that would actually limit the range of options that could be argued for. The better course is to cultivate the active base in the party. This faction can be trusted to enter ever-bolder policy options in the Window. Very quickly, the items that the party actually wants to enact will no longer look so exotic.

This take on the Overton Window, however interesting, is absent from the novel. Instead, our hero finds the button that starts the multimedia display in his father’s inner-sanctum:

Noah clicked the remote, and the screens all began to change. The slides that had been incomplete filled in with callouts, numbers, names, legends, and dates to illustrate the long-term agenda within each area of American government and society at large. Some of these agendas spanned only a few years, others more than a century.

Pointers along the time lines began to move; text formed and then faded as significant events in recent history were reached and passed by. Milestones appeared, enclosed in the Overton Window of each screen as it moved slowly from left to right.

It was far too much ever-changing information to absorb, like watching all the movies in a multiplex simultaneously. But as they turned and took it all in at the center of the circle of screens, Molly suddenly touched his hand, and gripped. It seemed the same realization had come over them all at once, at the same instant: This wasn't eight separate agendas. It was only one. 

Readers familiar with classic science fiction will recognize the similarity between this scene and certain scenes in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series: the mathematics of Hari Seldon’s psycho-historical plan for the creation of the Second Galactic Empire were sometimes displayed on user-interactive wall screens that seemed, when the novels were published, quite as speculative as the space ships. Indeed, readers will note the similarities of other items in this story to those in the familiar bookshelf of totalitarian-dread fiction. The Founders Keepers memorize the works of the Founding Fathers, for instance, against the day when the Progressive Conspiracy purges the libraries and the databases; that was what the reactionary literates did in Fahrenheit 451. Also, the young PR man eventually undergoes the Torture Tutorial where the final secrets are revealed, just like Winston Smith in *1984. *

<snip>

The Overton Window explains that America’s decline began in the Progressive Era because, in those days, the people began to neglect to give affairs that degree of attention the Founding Fathers thought would be necessary to maintain the Republic. The Administration of Woodrow Wilson (or possibly of Theodore Roosevelt, also a known Progressive) is a strange point from which to date the decline of the United States. Stranger still is the claim that the following decades were marked by popular indifference to politics. Quite the opposite happened. The period from the beginning of the Great Depression through at least the first half of the Cold War marked the apogee so far of the identification of the American people with the federal state. Never were people so active in political parties or intermediating entities, such as labor unions. Never was voter turnout higher, never (as far as I know) were major public institutions more admired. Commercial television networks devoted a substantial fraction of prime time to public–issue White Papers of a kind so boring that it can be found now only on C-SPAN at 3:00 A.M. People demanded increased economic security and public services and then watched the state like a hawk to make sure they were delivered.

One may question whether all this mid-century togetherness was a good thing. Certainly people recoiled from it in the 1960s, and not without reason. Be that as it may, we should recall that the neglect of public affairs is far more a characteristic of the Libertarian Era than of the Progressive one. Yes, after Big Government was declared to be the problem, sophisticated people focused on the Long Boom and public issues became less interesting to everyone except political junkies. The results were predictable.

A final word about The Overton Window: I do not know whether the forces of evil are priming a new Gavrilo Princip to assassinate another archduke before he can call 911 from a desert phone. I do know that this book is priming people to respond badly to the next public emergency. This is not in the public interest.

[BrainGlutton]

@crowmanyclouds

The big question the thought of Mr. Beck “writing” a novel raises for me is this;
Does Glenn use a word processor or does he write it all out long hand … on a chalkboard?

CMC fnord!
Hmm,
the Tea Party-like group Glenn creates for the novel The Founders Keepers,
the Tea Party-like group Glenn creates in real life The 9-12 Project.
Glenn’s just not imaginative enough to pull off a “Colbert”.

(The Founders Keepers? :rolleyes: I’m working on a novel about a detective agency staffed by retired barrel makers, The Finder Coopers.)

Apparently the Founders Keepers actually exists. It has a website, anyway.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@BrainGlutton

Apparently the Founders Keepers actually exists. It has a website, anyway.

Whois gives a creation date for founderskeepers.com of Dec. 9, 2005. So they apparently predate the novel.