This interested me, because I was just thinking to myself that Glenn Beck was probably a dry drunk. If you know someone who's successfully been through a 12-step program, you probably know what I mean. Because the AA veterans I know are some of the most truly compassionate, non-judgmental people I've ever met, and they have a real sense of humor about their shortcomings. They live their principles.

Beck seems to think that speaking calmly and reasonably some of the time simply cancels out all the other hateful, divisive nonsense, and his new line is that it's all just "political discourse." That strikes me as nuts, because what Beck does is deliver his information is a very consistent frame: Certain people are doing unthinkable, illegal, immoral things that are undermining the Constitution and destroying our country. He insinuates this in such a way that any listener who thinks of themselves as a patriotic American simply has no choice but to hate and hopefully destroy the people Beck tells them to hate -- because what moral person wouldn't?