Glenn Beck is a bold, truth-telling journalist; a man who has revolutionized the world of cable news as we know it.  On the other hand, he’s also a dangerously unbalanced individual; the kind of guy who would grab you by the shoulders at a party and yammer on for two straight hours about the Illuminati and the Federal Reserve.  …In short, Glenn Beck walks the razor’s edge between genius and insanity.

And so, we are proud to unveil THE GLENN BECK INSANITY WATCH, in which we analyze the latest statements of Mr. Beck, in order to see what level of crazy (if any) they contain.

(And by the way, your humble reporter would like to apologize for missing Glenn Beck’s comments on the Census and slavery last week.  For that would have made a great column!  But your humble reporter was busy working at his second job…)

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And so, without further ado, let’s begin the inaugural Insanity Watch.

Question:  What is Glenn Beck acting crazy about this week?

Answer:  Christianity.

And here’s the relevant quote:

Where I go to church, there are members that preach social justice as members — my faith doesn’t — but the members preach social justice all the time.  It is a perversion of the gospel.  You want to help out? You help out.  It changes you.  That’s what the gospel is all about:  You.

Social justice was the rallying cry — economic justice and social justice — the rallying cry on both the Communist front and the Fascist front.  That is not an American idea.  And if we don’t get off the social justice economic justice bandwagon, if you are not aware of what this is, you are in grave danger…

I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website.  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!

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The genius of Glenn Beck is that he sees conspiracies where an ordinary human would see…  nothing at all.  “Social and economic justice,” in this context, just means the idea — preached by Jesus in the gospels — that Christians should help the poor and the downtrodden.  But where a normal person would say:  “Aw, isn’t that nice?”, Glenn Beck says:  “No!  Fools!  This is all part of a vast interconnected network of Communism and Nazism!”

Question:  Just how crazy a thing was this to say, anyhow?

Answer:  Fairly crazy.

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First of all, Glenn Beck has apparently never heard of Godwin’s Law, where the first person to compare something to the Nazis…  loses.  But then, Glenn Beck compares everything to the Nazis (Democrats, Obama, health care, college professors, etc).  Glenn Beck could probably link the Nazis up with Starbucks Coffee if he really felt like it.  “You want me to give you my NAME so that you can get my coffee order?  You know, there was ANOTHER group of people who took lists of names.  A little group called THE NAZIS.  …Maybe you’ve heard of them.  Now give me a free biscotti for my trouble.”

Also, Glenn Beck seems to have a uniquely…  odd view of the Nazis, in that he thinks of them as running around helping poor people all the time.  Most of us think of the Nazis as being the dicks who invaded Poland and who were assholes to the Jews.  But perhaps Mr. Beck thinks that World War II movies are full of lies, because World War II movies are generally made by liberals.

…And finally, it’s pretty crazy of Mr. Beck to attack Christians, since about 50% of Fox News’s audience is made up of fundamentalist Christians.  (The other 50% is made up of people who think that Ayn Rand was the greatest writer ever.)

And not only did Glenn Beck attack Christianity, he attacked what is really the nicest part of Christianity.  I’m no Christian myself.  But my favorite thing about Jesus is that he talked constantly about helping the poor, the meek, and the helpless.  If you’re going to attack Christianity, you might want to complain about, oh, I don’t know, the Crusades, say.  Or sexual molestation in the Catholic Church.  Or the way a lot of Christians seem to hate gay people, etc…  But no, Mr. Beck went right for the jugular with his strong “Encouraging people to help poor people is WRONG” stance.

On the other hand, Glenn Beck does get some points for consistency here.  You see, Glenn Beck is terrified of Communism and Nazism, even though these are completely imaginary enemies.  Because no current human being is running around saying, “Hey!  You know what was a great idea?  Communism and Fascism!”  …No one is doing that, because no one would ever say that.

But still, Glenn Beck sees phantom-like Commies and Nazis everywhere, and boldly rants against them.  He rants against them even at the expense of alienating his core audience:  conservative Christian-folk.  That’s a crazy thing to do, but it’s at least consistently crazy, and so we’re going to bump up his final score a little bit.

And so…

FINAL INSANITY SCORE:  87% CRAZY

(On a scale of 0 to 100, with “zero” being the least crazy person in the world, and “one hundred” being “Lindsay Lohan,” Glenn Beck scored 87 points.  Better luck next time, Mr. Beck!)

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