Education Be Damned

For several years, starting perhaps after 1998, I began having problems sleeping. It wasn’t so much a problem of getting to sleep. Rather it was waking up, sometimes quite early in the evening, and not being able to get back to it. Not a particularly uncommon malady. I found my best answer to this problem was the radio. I would plug a single earphone in and listen to talk stations. Often within an hour or so I’d be back to sawing logs.

The difficulty with my solution was that our radio market in Richmond, VA had no FM talk shows in the evening, or anytime that I’m aware of. Further, AM reception was so bad that my radio could only pick up two AM stations; the local major ultra-Conservative talk/news station and a sports network. Well…it was what it was. Not being sports savvy I’d listen to Conservative commentary earlier in the evening and talk about space aliens and Bigfoot if I awoke in the wee hours. I mean, what the hell, the object was to get to sleep, right?

It was sometime around then that I started listening to this guy named Glenn Beck. He did me no favors toward my goal of slumber. I’d actually started paying attention to his mostly run-on commentary. I would find myself participating in a phantom dialogue with Mr. Beck trying to get him to explain any of the outrageous pronouncements that flowed unceasingly from his microphone. That was not good in the quest for rest. I was literally amazed that this guy was on the radio at all and thought he was possibly just the opening act to discussions about animal mutilations and crop circles that would air soon after his signoff. I had heard Rush Limbaugh during the daytime, again because he was the only (talk radio) act in town, and felt that Beck was much like Limbaugh, minus the crude but clever humor. Cancel out Limbaugh’s humor and you’d might as well be listening to captured conversations down at the bus station.

As my sleep problem improved I more or less lost touch with Glenn Beck, although I’d hear his name from time to time. It’s only been in the last two years that I’ve been forced to become aware that Beck has joined Limbaugh as the preeminent spokespersons for Conservatives in the US today. I found that awareness mind-boggling and not a little disturbing. How could it be? His commentary, as I recalled it, was unintelligible regardless of the content. His presentations made any Dr. Seuss book read like a Harvard doctoral dissertation in Sociology. Beck now lives in a $5 million mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut, has his own TV show and churns out bestselling books and other publications like he was Isaac Asimov. Who is this guy?

There is a serious problem in our country which I have commented on in previous postings (see The Most Evil Man in America 3/4/10). It is part of the current landscape so rooted that few can escape its effect. It’s so socially disabling that I’m waiting for the term “war” to be applied to it (which is America’s best solution to the seemingly unsolvable). It is the Conservative verses Liberal social debate, although I view it more accurately as the Conservative verses Non-Conservative social conflict. The point of this posting, however, is not to engage in the debate, rather to examine its de facto leaders and ask the question: why is education considered by Christian Conservatives to be socially debilitating? It occurred to me, as I considered Glenn Beck, to examine the leaders of ideological commentary and see if there is something to be gained to answering that question.

Beck and Limbaugh are arguably the current standard bearers for Christian Conservative commentary (Sarah Palin is coming on strong). Limbaugh has been for years and Beck the most recent messiah. It is the huge We Love Glen Beck posters that one sees at the Tea Party gatherings. I don’t think it is the least bit coincidental that the debut of the Glenn Beck TV program took place the day before Obama’s inauguration. There are two “liberal” media commentators that have been the most frequent targets of Conservative ire, and also labeled as the prime examples of mindless left-wing counter rhetoric by some considered moderates. They are Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow. Let’s take a look at these folks.

Rush Limbaugh barely graduated from high school, his mother describing him as “flunking everything”. After two semesters at Southeast Missouri State University, he dropped out to pursue a career in radio, eventually making himself one of the richest men in America. Glenn Beck also barely graduated from high school, did not attempt college, choosing to work in radio even before he finished high school. A self-confessed abuser of alcohol and drugs till he was in his mid 30s, he struggled to survive until he found “salvation”, first from AA, then in the Mormon Church. Both men proudly proclaim themselves as self-educated, which is something to be proud of in most cases.

Keith Olbermann, unlike Limbaugh who came from a well-to-do family, was the son of a pre-school teacher and commercial architect. He was accepted into Cornell University at the age of 16. Graduating with a degree in Communication Arts and Journalism he began his career as a sportscaster in radio, given his love for baseball, and later evolved into political commentary. Rachael Maddow came from a middle-class military family and attended Stanford University. She was made a Rhodes Scholar and eventually received a PhD in Political Philosophy from Oxford University. From there she went into radio. Are we seeing a contrast here?

It isn’t necessarily the education, and arguably cerebral fire-power, that Olbermann and Maddow represent that make them better than Limbaugh and Beck. In truth, Limbaugh and Beck are better at the business they're in. What bugs me is the Conservative argument that such education makes them (Maddow and Olbermann) incapable of understanding the purity of the Conservative message and, in fact, essentially makes them (and those like them) subversive. It is the same ethereal argument leveled universally by Conservatives against college and university faculty across the country. Glenn Beck is not a plumber or insurance salesman. The reality that Conservatives will not even consider is that all these people, including Beck, are in the business of selling ideas, and when it comes to determining the quality of an idea education counts. It doesn’t count to sell an idea though, no matter how inane, as one uneducated, army corporal named Adolf could have attested.

The reason Beck and Limbaugh are so much better than their counterparts is that education gets in the way of certitudes. It is so much easier to argue with Tarzanian certainty “Government bad…Freedom good” than to get into the nitty-gritty of how to make things better, which carries with it a plethora of uncertainties. Maddow spends almost all her commentary debunking absurd generalizations by Conservative leaders or commentators. It doesn’t resonate…it doesn’t sell, and eventually it gets boring. Too many people want to hear from John Boehner that “we have the best healthcare in the world” instead of getting bogged down in those nasty “subversive” facts to the contrary.

Education has become a paradox in the Christian Conservative marketplace. They want their children to obtain education, however they really don’t want them to be educated. You could possibly trace this problem back to ancient Greece and the conflict between the city states of Athens and Sparta. One proclaimed the purity of ideas, the other the idea of purity. Sparta won by the way. Education be damned.

I still have problems sleeping on rare occasions. Now, however, I just turn to the sports station and listen to them talk about all these players, coaches and teams I hardly know. Glenn never could drop any sand in my eyes anyway. I suppose that’s a good thing.