Author of Time's Beck profile digs a deeper hole

Charles Kaiser offers this pitch-perfect description of Time's profile of Glenn Beck: “Von Drehle's piece is so humiliating on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin.”

Kaiser interviewed Von Drehle about the Beck profile, with hilarious results. Like this, from Kaiser's Full Court Press post:

Von Drehle identified the boycott as “a boon” to Beck's ratings; but he didn't say that it now includes more than sixty corporations, including Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Procter & Gamble.

FCP asked Von Drehle if sixty wasn't a rather large number-one perhaps worth mentioning in his piece. “Well,” he replied. “There are millions of companies.”

See, Von Drehle didn't mention the fact that 60 companies are boycotting Beck's show because there are millions of other companies that aren't. Got it? Millions of companies that have never advertised on Glenn Beck's show make the fact that 60 companies that used to do so now refuse to meaningless.

Oh, and Detroit automakers are doing just fine. Sure, they've lost a lot of customers over the years -- but literally billions of people haven't stopped buying their cars! Bonuses all around!

Then there's Von Drehle's justification for drawing an equivalence between Beck and Keith Olbermann:

Von Drehle also seems to think that the progressive hosts on MSNBC are really just like the right-wing crazies on Fox. But when FCP pressed him about that, he admitted that had no basis whatsoever for making any comparison:

“I haven't seen Keith Olbermann for at least a year and a half,” the Time writer said. “And I've never seen Rachel Maddow. I have four children and a wife. I don't sit around watching cable TV. I don't understand why anybody watches any of these shows. I know what these opinions are based on: they're based on nothing.”

David Von Drehle doesn't watch Olbermann or Maddow, you see, because he already knows their opinions are “based on nothing.” The hypocrisy is jaw-dropping.

My own take on Time's profile of Glenn Beck is here. Hint: It isn't positive.