“Have you seen their posters outside? Apparently I’m the head of the Tea Party,”
Glenn Beck attempted to humanize himself with his audience by joking and making small talk before the cameras sta
rting rolling. He was referring to the large anti-Fox News protest in the front of the building where his studio was located. The cameras in the studio were preparing for a taping of his political talk show. For a television studio, this one was fairly small. The audience only numbered to 25 people. The ages of these studio audience members however mostly ranged from 35 to 65. There were blonde women in long fur coats, middle aged men in business suits, and the occasional tee shirt and jeans clad man holding up a Glenn Beck book in hopes of having it signed by the author himself.
Beck was wearing a purple sweater with a purple plaid button-down shirt stuffed inside. His outfit gave a more casual and relaxed feel in contrast to the serious topic.
He grabbed a Ziploc bag filled with nuts and dried fruits from the center table in the studio. “I’m a vegan now. If you don’t know what that means, it means that I don’t eat any animal products now. No milk, no dairy, no meat. Nothing.” There were several groans and gasps heard around the room. The blonde women in fur coats made snarky jokes about how Beck was joining the dark side.
“I like calling it the “sticks” diet. My diet mainly consists of dirt and sand now. And sometimes a few rocks,” he said sarcastically.
The episode focused on talking about current issues through a religious prism and how to make sense of it all among religious communities. It was going to air that Friday on Fox News. There was a table set up in the front with four chairs. Four guests arrived: David Barton, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Rev. James Robinson, and Dave Roever, all politically conservative religious figures.
During the taping, the guests compared the divorce and abortion rates between Christians and Atheists in the United States, citing that the divorce rates were lower for atheists. Most of the audience gasped, followed by a discussion of how Christians need to step it up and act practice their faith better. If Atheists, unbound by morals according to this audience, were acting “more Christian” than actual Christians, there was definitely evil lurking about in society.
The pious audience clapped resoundingly, full of passion and support for those comments. There was one audience member however who did not clap with everyone else. The short brunette in the back corner did not agree with statements. She didn’t agree with most of the statements of the evening in fact. She was there to simply observe. Ashley, a self-proclaimed Democrat, decided to go to a taping of the controversial show out of curiosity. She always made fun of right-wing talking heads and even went to the Rally to Restore Sanity hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The taping somewhat changed her perceptions towards the host. She saw him in a more humanized light, although she disagreed with most of his passionate statements regarding the presence of religion in the government.
She did enjoy seeing his chalkboard in person however.
Andrea, you gave yourself an ambitious assignment here, covering a celebrity in a complicated scene. I think you did excellently with the reporting -- the quotes you chose were interesting and revealing and you provide a vivid depiction of the night. Some of the descriptions I had to read a couple of times to fully understand, one example being this line: "Beck was wearing a purple sweater with a purple plaid button-down shirt stuffed inside." Stuffed inside what, his sweater or pants or something else? Next post it might be an interesting experiment to try to give us one of the characters' point of view, rather than describing the blow by blow of the scene. All in all, good work -- your ability with quotes I think will work well when you write about the SNL fanatic, who I imagine will have a lot of good things to say. You may be able to reveal his character in a kind of Capote-ish way, by which I mean having him talk in extended bursts. Could work well, not sure, depends what you get from him of course. Will be curious to see how that turns out.
ReplyDeleteAndrea,
ReplyDeleteI think this is great! I think the choice to leave Ashley out until the end was a good one, and very Talese-esque. I also think your description of Beck and the people in the audience was good, and more effective than simply writing about the show itself. You painted a full picture of the scene, which is something Talese does again and again. I also think this sentence was good:
"If Atheists, unbound by morals according to this audience, were acting “more Christian” than actual Christians, there was definitely evil lurking about in society."
Like Talese, you are sharing the audience's opinions, but subtly. Instead of just saying, "they thought that evil was lurking and blah blah," you make it sound more concrete with that last clause: "there was definitely..." That is something Talese does throughout Thy Neighbor's Wife, expresses people's opinions but presenting them as truth (but at the same time making sure the reader knows it's not actually the truth, it's an opinion). Does that make sense?
Great job! And great subject.
Kim
Andrea,
ReplyDeleteYou do a really good job in this piece at capturing Becks essence and keeping his sarcasm and character consistent throughout the story. It also helped to set the mood you are conveying by starting the piece off with that specific quote. I liked how you structured the piece and built up to your main idea as oppose to just jumping into it. Like your previous blog post, you kept your descriptions, mainly of people, short and sweet yet still detailed enough to get the feel across. In the short sentence where you describe Beck I like how it is its own paragraph, the effect of its isolation helps to get across his uniqueness even more. Overall really good job with good quotes!