Understand this: CNN hiring Glenn Beck is a GOOD sign.

I'll explain.

The television news networks are dying. People don't watch the nightly news anymore...not the ones with web access, at least. And people are learning that you can get a much more objective reporting of the world's events by looking at a few of the better blogs out there.

So these cable news networks are realizing that they have to rely on controversy to boost their ratings. They hire idiot blowhards like Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck because they know the TV dial stops when these people come on screen. They have to have entire one-hour blocks dedicated to "Natalee Holloway: Day 267" because they know that missing white pretty girls touches nerves.

Every time a new extremist ideologue shows up on a news network, take comfort in the fact that you're witnessing a swan song. Every time celebrity gossip is reported as news, understand that these corporate assholes are gasping for air.

What happens every time Olbermann criticizes FoxNews? They shoot back about his ratings sucking. It's all about ratings...none but a few of them give a flying fuck about much else.

They'll all be gone in the next 10 years.

bottom for where CNN is headed.

Glen Beck IS the worst. Here's why, real simple like.

Listen to him for a week if you can stand it and you will see how hateful he really is.

Hannity, O'Reilly and Limpballs have NOTHING on this fucker when it comes to hate speech. the only other guy out there, that i know of, who comes as close to this dickhead in the hate category is Michael Savage (AKA Michael Wiener), but there is one disturbing thing that separates Savage and Beck and that is that Savage will actually RAIL against Bush and the neo-cons, while Beck almost ALWAYS sticks to the GOP party line and rarely, if EVER goes against Bush.

So you see, in Beck you have a blatent racist, homophobic self-proclaimed "Christian" hatemongerer who has undying support for the president and his policies. The average joe repuke eats that shit up. What does that smell like to you?

the age of the wild-eyed right-wing domination of American thinking is on the wane. The powerful logic of our real political situation is beginning to show it's true power. The decision to hire Beck will prove to be one of the worst ever made by CNN. He will be gone with 12 months.

That's the best way to describe it.

The fact of the matter is that we need news and that news has to have the income, budget and drive to chase real stories with something approaching journalistic integrity, or else the information that we use to make decisions about our lives and who to vote for can only come from 30 second infobytes that we fast forward through on TiVo. . . and those blowhards that the dial stops on.

We really need to have news that is untainted by political affiliation, because when those same political affiliations become split along judgemental and polar social boundaries (religion in government = good, homos = bad, war = good, free speech = bad) we no longer have real information about the world beyond our immediate vicinity.

You can see reporting from dozens of sources simultaneously and form an objective opinion. TV news forces you to turn off your brain.

you and I have the capacity and curiosity to seek and accept multiple input, but most of America in the few seconds of idle curiosity they may have about the world can't be bothered not to go to ESPN.com for their "news".

Even DU can take a "tack" that I don't always agree with specifically because we come from all over the political spectrum. As an example, a year ago a poll was given here that asked what minority rights we as a party should be willing to sacrifice if it would guarantee a political victory for Democrats, and over 39% of the respondents answered that gay issues should be shelved.

If you were just poking around that day, you would have believed that four out of ten progressives believed that giving up gay issues was the best strategy for winning an election - and we know that's fallacious.

If you have to give them up to win you have to give them up to stay in office, gay, immigrant, any civil right and legal human decency for any human.

We really do need unbiased, and uninfluencible news desks, and that means NOT endorsing political candidates and NOT following a clear pattern of bias and disinformation or partial information intended to influence your audience one way or another. It's the first step.

After that it's up to people to continue to expand their understanding of a topic through personal research and sharing information, for those of use who need that like air to breathe.

from a different medium...and far better, more factual, and faster, than at any other time in history. Those who continue to expect mega-media-conglomerates to report unbiased news through the television screen are in for a long wait.

and they're not waiting for unbiased news or the internet to knock on their door.

Beck is another RNC operative. He's been playing in the minors and he's been called up to the Bigs because the home team needs some bench strength. Expect him to bat and throw righty. It's all about swaying people's attitudes about Republican corruption. Beck will provide much needed "balance" by trashing Democrats with smears and lies.

He doesn't offer anything even remotely close to the other conservative pundits. He's just an agitator.

I went the entire year of 2005 without buying a newspaper. I fell like they insult me day in and day out.

Wow...

Politics aside, that's pretty low. That would be like a five-star restaurant hiring a cook from McDonald's.

The corporate media gets stranger and stranger.

get rid of two birds at once.

if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

AM talk radio is the dark, dank corner of the basement where they hide.

The more people like Glen Beck talk, the more obvious it becomes that they are full of hatred and bigotry.