He’s taken on a cultural mission.
Glenn Beck is tired of politics.
“I think politics is a game, and I think people watch politics as a game, like they watch the NFL,” he tells me, leaning back in his chair. He once thought Washington politicians “actually believed in something.” Now, he says, “I don’t think they do.”
Beck hasn’t lost respect for all politicians, just most of them. On the right, he likes Utah’s Mike Lee, Texas’s Ted Cruz, and Kentucky’s Rand Paul. He respects anybody who goes to Washington and sticks to his principles — even the socialist senator Bernie Sanders. “I’m sure Bernie would disagree, but Bernie and I could be fast friends because he’s doing what he said he’d do,” he says. “Same with Dennis Kucinich, aliens and all.”
Beck’s disenchantment with news and politics aren’t just for show. Though best known for his flame-throwing political commentary, he is turning his attention to cultural projects like plays and movies. His years in TV, he says, have taught him that news is secondary to culture. “News,” he says, is simply “what the culture allows.”
A former top-40 DJ, Beck tells me that his foray into TV news wasn’t meant to be permanent. “I hate politics, I always have,” he says. He was working on a TV drama along the lines of HBO’s Newsroom — about the news of the day and the people who put it together — when, in 2006, he got a call from Headline News, CNN’s sister network.
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