Rob Riggle vs. Glenn Beck

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Hard not to watch in morbid fascination the media freak show that is Glenn Beck, even from a distance, via the blogs or the youtube clips or the "analyses" of folks like Matt Taibbi and Don Imus this morning.

As the anecdotes about the show pile up—the tears streaming, the guest fainting, the phony gasoline pouring—you have to wonder where this is all headed. The Alamo for teabagging time. I mean, really. Symbolism, much? This is not going to end well.

Meanwhile, you have the Daily Show. And last night's guest, Elizabeth Warren, Congress' watchdog on the TARP program. Who did more to explain and clarify and contextualize where we are in the economic universe and how we got there and how we may be able to pull ourselves out...if we stay on track and don't keep pulling out the threads of regulation...than all the ranters and pontificaters seen anywhere in teeveeland. That segment alone justifies Daily Show's existence for the millennium.

I am not exaggerating. From kindergarten to Congress, everyone, including the clueless Pensacola teabaggers, should be sat down and forced to pay attention.

And then there was the discrete Zen Moment: Rob Riggle, USMC, promoted to Lt. Colonel. It's not hard for this daughter of a Marine to envision what that means. Real heroes at the Daily Show in so many ways. Semper fi, Rob Riggle. Godspeed wherever your promotion takes you.

But meanwhile, back at the freak show that is the "organic" and "grassroots" teabagging conservative right wing, led by their very own Howard Beale, Glenn Beck. About all that's left is for him is teabagging Smith...and Wesson.

And for the rest of the mainstream media, The Village, the elites of the Beltway and 30 Rock and Murdoch Media? The choice is clear...rise to the standard of The Daily Show...or keep on channeling and megaphoning and stenoing the astroturf of your own inner freak.
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crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette