New Orleans   In the land of the bizarre there was a brief interview with Glenn Beck, radio personality and rabid right winger in the Times recently.   Finally, we can get a better sense of what really drives Beck:  he just wants to be loved.

            He is one big, smiley lump of deeply felt grievances over real and imagined slights and in no time there was a torrential list of them cascading off the page.

• Al Gore supposedly didn’t talk to him about his interest in buying Current TV, according to Beck sending a message back that he “didn’t want to sell” to Beck. 
• Beck on the other hand both believes that Gore sold Current for twice what it was worth, proving what, that Gore is Mr. Free Enterprise and Beck is opposed to letting the market set the price? No, Beck draws the conclusion that Gore likes Al Jazeera better than him.  I think Gore has proven he likes the big dollars more than either of them.
• Beck has his feelings hurt that in his words “I’m the guy who lives in Dallas who did not get an invitation to the George Bush Presidential Library opening.”  We are led to believe that Beck thinks he should have an invite even though he had called for Bush’s impeachment.  Here is a guy missing some big social clues.
• Beck loved New York City he says, calling it one of the “greatest towns in the world” and claiming he wanted “to live in New York my whole life” but found the city “unbelievably close-minded.”  He is surprised that people “hate” him “all over the world,” yet promises to hunt down progressives like an Israeli Nazi hunter” because we “are the biggest danger in the world.”  He claims to believe that anyone who disagrees with him about the size and responsibility of government “always leads to millions dead – always.”  Then elsewhere claims that “most Americans want to get along.  Why can’t we do that?  What has happened to us?”   Dude, listen to your own show.   Read your own quotes!   You can’t be a cheerleader of hate, and really wonder why everyone is not showing you the love.

In a final piece of ridiculousness  he believes that Levi’s jeans, which he also claims to love, “branded themselves the uniform of the progressive movement,” so he started his own jeans company for something to wear.

I’ve always found Beck fascinating, but it appears talking to himself on the radio and listening to little but his own voice has made him a conservative teddy bear on one hand, and a bull goose crazy person on the other.