Sejanus is a term I use in honor ofLucius Aelius Sejanus, the most powerful man in Rome under Tiberius and best known today perhaps for being played byPatrick Stewart in I, CLAUDIUS. The real Sejanus was a soldier who who rose through the ranks and by manipulation and luck and ruthlessness to become in many ways more powerful than the emperor himself and the most feared man in the Roman empire. The patricians he’d resented (he was equestrian, not plebeian, which probably made him resent them more since he was almost but not quite one of them) soon accepted him as their equal- reluctantly- and then came to tremble at the mention of his name. Nobody could touch him.
Then, just as quickly, he fell from grace. Big time. One day he was as powerful as he’d ever been, a week later he and his entire family were killed.
A sejanus as I use the term- lower case- is somebody who rises to ‘absurdly-beyond-their-abilities-and-intellect’ power and wealth, usually rapidly, and believe themselves untouchable and perhaps are for a season, but then they do something so arrogantly stupid or crazy that they crash and burn just as quickly and splendidly. There are many many many celebrity sejanuses, but those with power (other than the namesake) would include Thomas Cromwell (Henry VIII’s chamberlain), Ernst Roehm (Hitler’s henchman), and Joe McCarthy. Beck is more celebrity than public figure but has aspects of both; unlike Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter however he doesn’t have the intelligence or the sanity to hold onto it. Like Phaeton with the reins or James Dean in his Spider he’s a really bad wreckage waiting to happen.
To answer the OP though: I think he’ll slip and use a racial slur or sexual slur on live TV, and or he’ll get involved in a major drug scandal. Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, O’Reilly, et al, who I think already resent him for getting more popular, will be only too happy to watch him sink back into obscurity, perhaps giving “Poor Glenn” comments on air while secretly making sure he falls further, whereupon he’ll do something really obscene and pathetic to get attention- a botched suicide attempt perhaps. He’ll end badly, probably broke and deeply in debt and completely absorbed in self pity. He’s a whale shark swimming with the Great Whites.
“And what kind of goon bait believes in an archangel named Moroni? Moroni, for Chrissake! Somebody bring me a cuppa coffee, a shot of whiskey and a doobie! Almost forgot: Rush, you really are a big fat idiot…”
In addition to the miscarriage story the salon article mentions that Beck had sabotaged a rival’s wedding with a stunt, slapping bumper stickers on every car there. When caught he got in his car and made a run for it. (This is from the same Kelly whose wife’s miscarriage he later mocked on air.)
Beck also has stated repeatedly on air that his mother committed suicide in 1977 when he was 13, leaving a cruel note. His mother in fact died in 1979 when he was 15 along with a friend; she drowned in a boating accident. It has never been proven to be suicide and the death was recorded (for both) as drowning. Beck has said repeatedly since becoming nationally famous that it was the most important event in his life and led him to drugs and his “other demons”. His ex-wife says he never once mentioned to her or anyone else that his mother’s death was a suicide or that there was a note until he became famous, which sounds a bit suspicious. (One option is that it was so painful he repressed it, the other is that he suspected it was a suicide, but decided a definite suicide was a lot more sympathetic and even moreso at 13 than at 15.)
He has a daughter with CP, yet made fun of Obama’s Kenyan aunt on air for having a limp. Repeatedly.
They were shock-jocks, not a breed known for being sweet. And Beck had disrupted his friend’s wedding and then, per Kelly, tried to run him down. Not defending the spit, but I think it’s more defensible than mocking the miscarriage, which I don’t care how many drugs he was on or what personal problems he had, that’s the act of a remorseless narcissistic asswipe.