Year: 2009

What a difference 16 months makes! (And wow, does the Daily Show have an amazing video archivist!)

Last night, the Daily Show did the public a great service by airing two clips. The first was from January 2008 featuring faux journalist Glenn Beck talking about how terrible the care he received at the hospital it was and how it reflected the sad state of the American healthcare system. In true Beck-ian fashion, his piece was called Beck from the Dead.

The second clip is from May 2009. Sixteen months later, the American healthcare system has become, in Beck’s own words, “the best in the world”. Now that the Socialist Kenyan Usurper is driving a movement to bring universal healthcare to the United States – the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t provide it to its citizens – it’s now the best system in the world, which the lefties are trying to dismantle. It’s quite impressive how it went from terrible to “best in the world” in so little time.

You really have to watch the clip to see Beck say one thing and then say the exact opposite thing afterwards, with the same fire and conviction. If you’re in Canada, you can watch the clip on the Comedy Network’s site; if you’re in the U.S. the Daily Show site has the clip.

It’s ironic that a show that purports to be a comedy show that just comments on current events is doing a better job of telling the truth than a network that purports to tell you the truth but ends up doing unintentional black humour.

Gawker sums up Glenn Beck perfectly in a couple of paragraphs:

This should serve as yet another bright, shining example of how much of an utter fraud Beck is. You gotta give the guy some credit though — he’s a charlatan’s charlatan, a near-perfect modern television bullshit artist who fully understands how the slightest glance, vocal inflection, or codeword can plant a seed deep down inside of a feeble mind and germinate.

But still, it’s hard not to watch this clip and come away feeling that he’s an even bigger piece of shit than you probably thought he was previously, because it’s just so goddamn obvious that the man will do or say anything to dig his hook even deeper into the sad dolts who tune into to his show each day seeking guidance.