Glenn Beck = Stupid + Hypocrite?

He is a self-professed rodeo clown and a millionaire huckster – a true American success story.

Glenn Beck said, “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes.”

Really?

Glenn Beck is a Mormon.

As Dwight said in This Boy’s Life: “I know a thing or two about a thing or two.”

Mormons pay tithing – a tenth of their earnings. A portion of that money funds the Mormon Welfare System to aid the poor and the down-and-out. It is the “widow’s mite” that feeds the orphan and the weak.

The Mormon Welfare system has been lauded as efficient and humane – it is supported by church run welfare farms that raise wheat and cattle – by canning operations that package and preserve fruits and vegetables for the Bishop’s Store where the needy and un-employed members can take their chit and buy groceries for their family.

And if you have no money, you work at the welfare farm or the second-hand stores or the canning facility or help deliver clothing and food to shut-ins and the frail. You work for the good of the whole and contribute what you are able so that others can benefit in times of need. Church members volunteer or get volunteered to work these facilities, as a reminder that while you may never need these services – others do and always will.

Mormons are among the first charitable groups to land in disaster zones like Haiti or Chile or Africa or flood and hurricane disasters in Florida, Louisiana, Ohio and elsewhere. They bring clothes, food and aid. Much of it bought and paid for by the tithing and other donations of its members.

So will Glenn Beck renounce Mormonism and leave the Mormon Church?

Church was a bad thing in my childhood – painful and evil and lonely. I rant a lot against churches. As I’ve said before, I don’t do the “church” thing. But that doesn’t mean they are entirely bad or evil.

Preachers and churches bound together for civil rights and for social justice. Many churches run soup kitchens and homeless shelters and do many good works in their communities. Priests and Pastors battle war and racism and poverty and violence.

So is Glenn Beck stupid or just a hypocrite?

Beck wants you to think he is the modern day Howard Beale. The heroic Beale who shouted, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

The brilliance of Paddy Chayefsky’s Network was that Howard Beale, like most of us human beings, was a combination of light and darkness, a fractured wholeness glued together by desperation and hope.

Beck has chosen to be the damaged Beale, the crumpled and broken man who sat before CEO Arthur Jensen as Arthur preached the corporate gospel:

Arthur Jensen: “There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today… The world is a business, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business… One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.”

Howard Beale: “Why me?

Arthur Jensen: “Because you’re on television, dummy…”

Howard Beale: “I have seen the face of God.”

Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.”

Roger Ailes, CEO of FOX News recently reminded his staff to support the FOX family and not air criticisms or doubts about the mighty Beck.

Glenn Beck is a Bible-thumping bunko artist, whose only God is: ratings.

Paycheck principles and snake-oil spirituality can buy million-dollar houses.

Is Glenn Beck a hypocrite or just stupid? I guess you could say –

Glen Beck is wily as a FOX.

A rich stupid hypocrite of FOX.