Ta-Nehisi Coates says it all much better than I did:
Glenn Beck has emerged as the Lich King. Whereas the Lich King embraced death, destruction and mayhem, Beck marries a stridently paranoid style with political views rooted in the 1850s. But like the Lich King, Beck terrifies mainstream liberals, who see something sinister in the fact that both Beck and the Lich King endorse brain-eating as a healthy pass time. And just as the Lich King is a blatant rip-off from countless other fantasy tropes, Beck seems to be self-consciously situating himself as the latest iteration of Father Coughlinesque crazy.
And though Beck is scrupulously inclusive–I was particularly struck by the Lich King’s repeated bashing of those he derisively refers to as “the living”–his people are by and large white and almost undead. Among Americans expected to not rest in peace, but instead rise as abominations, crypt fiends and ghosts, 80 percent are non-Hispanic whites, an artifact of an earlier era in which haunting your children was a marker of white privilege. This population of brain-eaters, well represented in the ranks of the Lich King, has tended to be the most hostile to President Obama’s agenda. Not coincidentally, the average viewer of Fox News tends to endorse the ingesting of brains.
taylormattd
Oh, well then, this might be good. We’re going down him on heroic soon. :D
TheNickronomicon
I saw the first lines of Coates’s piece in my RSS reader this morning and nearly snorted milk through my nose. I find it nearly impossible to approach politics in a reasonable manner these days, and have resorted to mostly pointing and laughing lest the burning rage of my hatred scour my skull clean from the inside out, in the manner & style of Ghost Rider. It’s a relief to see others employing the same tactic.
jacy
TNC does snark most artfully. The thing that cracked me up was the commenter on his post who just didn’t get the satire and started squalling about how he wasn’t being helpful by likening Beck’s followers to zombies.
Get it, she didn’t.
LarsThorwald
Neeeeeerrrrrrrrrrds.
Max
OMG! I know what this means! The fiance is a WOW dude / priest and we’ve negotiated that he can “raid” three nights per week.
I feel hip.
TooManyJens
I’m a little confused by the “Crock Pot Craziness” tag. Should we be posting recipes? Can you cook brains in the crock pot?
TheNickronomicon
@TooManyJens: I think it’s hot craziness that’s been marinating in its own delicious stew of madness for a good long while.
JGabriel
I was really hoping The Lich King would be an allusion to a really cool book, maybe something new from Susanna Clarke or something old still left for me to discover.
So it was kind of chagrining (can we make that a word? it seems necessary. does it need two n’s or one between the i’s?) to find out it was a World of Warcraft reference.
.
kommrade reproductive vigor
The Lich King is a podgy hyperactive douchenozzle who cries piteously after bunghole surgery?
Zifnab
I enjoy your analogies and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Citizen_X
Could someone please explain this analogy further for someone who knows little (and doesn’t really give a shit) about WOW?
Shinobi the Kingslayer
Man I’d definitely be up to raiding more than my previously imposed limit of 3 nights a week if we could slay Glen Beck. Do you think he drops sweet loot? Probably just a lot of gold. /sigh
stuckinred
What in the fuck are you talking about?
Karmakin
And Beck is pretty good with Infesting people with stupid.
Silver
@Karmakin:
Unfortunately, the analogy breaks down. If a defile dropped in the middle of Washington last weekend and spread and swallowed up everyone there, we’d all be better off.
Unless you were an electric scooter repair guy, I guess…
It’s an interesting analogy when you consider that Beck, like the Lich King, is perhaps a necessary evil to prevent a greater catastrophe.
Joey Maloney in paradise
Broken thread alert – the Paypal thread at comment 12, strikethrough gone amok.
El Cid
This is drawn from Shakespeare’s original narrative poem, The Wrath of the Lich King. It’s also a painting by Titian.
Comrade Javamanphil
I was really hoping TNC was kicking it old school. Ah well.
Shinobi
@Silver: I dunno, I kindof feel like the analogy falls apart because Beck lacks the true control of the Lich King. He’s started this, but he wont be able to stop it, no matter what the eventual consequences are.
jacy
@Citizen_X:
The point wasn’t the analogy. I know nothing of and couldn’t care less about WoW either. TNC was pounding Reihan Salam’s comparison of Glen Beck to Malcolm X by going one step further down the road of utterly meaningless analogy. It was really just a big fuck you to Salam and his crappy philosophizing.
(although I do think, in a geeky way, it’s not THAT bad an analogy to compare Beck’s followers to brain-eating zombies…)
NobodySpecial
And now you know why Death Knights start at 55 and are lame as sin.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This snark is funny, but after a good LOL I’m left with this thought: Beck and his fellow hucksters are a symptom. The Koch brothers are the disease. Why are we spending so much time paying attention to the symptoms, and not doing more to seek a cure for the disease?
MikeTheZ
Because I’m so sick of Beck, an OT…
Top Story on MSNBC.com: CEOs at companies that fired the most people took home the most pay
CNN.com: Blair praises Bush
FauxNoise: Hurricane Earl
Origuy
I don’t play WOW, but liches are fairly common in fantasy fiction and gaming. They’re like zombies, but they’ve retained their intelligence and self-will. Usually they’re a sorcerer who’s sacrificed his humanity for immortality.
Omnes Omnibus
@TooManyJens: I know nothing about WoW, but I am pretty sure you can cook almost anything in a crockpot.
MacsenMifune
Short version the Liche King is very similar to Darth Vader, good person that gets corrupted by evil.
Long version you can read on this wiki. Liche King Its a little more complicated than I gave in the short version.
AnnaN
Coates is wrong – the Lich King has undead minions of EVERY race. Even gnomes, for God’s sake.
Coates also forgets to add another comparison: both Beck and Arthas are completely self-absorbed ASSHOLES.
And most terrifying of all: Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi.
We will never be rid of Beck and his ilk.
Citizen_X
Also, I hate to point out misspellings to a favorite writer, but “healthy pass time?” Pastime, TNC, pastime!
singfoom
I’ll out myself here as a WoW nerd, but the main part of the analogy that makes sense to me that in WoW, the Lich King is basically concerned with turning every single person into a servant of his.
He desires the entire world to be undead and in service to him.
Beck is after the same thing. Making as many brain-dead minions as possible to serve whatever ultimate purpose he has.
The purpose? To continue to hide the betrayals of middle class by all stripes of U.S. political and financial elites by making them angry at the other, which ever other you want that to be. He’s mostly after the muslims/liberals/jews/african-americans/non-white people.
geg6
It might actually be a good analogy if you have a fucking clue as to what or who the Lich King is. This is one of the reasons I have quit reading an awful lot of TNC’s posts that aren’t about his Civil War reading. Too much inside baseball garbage that you only get if you are a gamer.
Which I am most emphatically not and never will be.
Punchy
Aktivest Gudgez!
Look for the TeaTards to demand a Consty Amendy outlawing Supreme Courts.
JGabriel
ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Because Jerry Lewis won’t host our telethon.
.
boognish
So I need to get 24 friends together and kill him, and we get phat loot. Got it.
Chad N Freude
@El Cid: Titian Free Association:
The model climbed up the ladder
As Titian, the painter, had bade ‘er.
Her positon to Titian
Suggested coition,
So he climbed up the ladder and had ‘er.
Now back to the serious stuff.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Ooops. No edit available. That should have been “position”. But you knew that.
TooManyJens
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Fair point. I think it’s because pounding on Glenn Beck is easy and entertaining, whereas it’s hard to know how one would even start to make a dent in the Koch brothers’ influence.
Cat
@boognish:
Well, you can just get 10. The purpz are almost as good. Honestly its so ezmode you can pug half the group as long as their GS is over 5000.
But don’t forget to check their achievements!
Shinobi
@boognish: No loot, Glenn Beck only drops Gold and I think a couple of patriot badges. But I’ll come, after Lich King this should be easy.
El Cid
Making others go Galt for fun & profit.
Southern Beale
And now you can buy the T-Shirt:
“I think therefore I am not Glenn Beck“
Violet
It’s weird to read that TNC post and know that it must mean something, but have zero idea what it actually is talking about.
Then google “Lich King” in an attempt to understand, find the WOW Wiki, skim it, find lots of additional characters, culture, info that you probably need to understand to begin to understand the place and role of the Lich King.
Then give up.
I guess it’s funny? Witty? Sarcastic?
I feel dumb.
El Cid
Patriots continue to fight back against the Al Qa’ida Mosque du Triomphe at Ground Zero and their Caliphate minions, and also people who just look Muslin.
MikeJ
@boognish: at least I have chicken.
Southern Beale
I must say it’s been discouraging to hear Ed Schultz devote his entire radio show to Glenn Beck today. Why give the attention whore the one thing he craves?
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin live to piss off liberals. That is their entire purpose. When they tell blatant lies or do something offensive like gather a bunch of white people to “reclaim” civil liberties they never lost, then yes we should call them on it. But for fuck’s sake it’s over now. Ignore him.
Anoniminous
Eating brains greatly increases the risk of contracting a Prion disease. The more Beck and his encephalonivores nom, nom, nom on their chosen diet the probability of becoming diseased approaches 1. Those infected with a Prion disease will slowly lose higher cognitive functioning; this process can be observed as the sufferers exhibit abnormal and irrational behaviors such as:
1. claiming the President of the United States is not a citizen of the United States
2. paranoia in their assessment of Out Groups, such as brown people
3. tight epistemic closure loops
4. magical thinking – casual reasoning (sic) based on Formal and Informal Logical Fallacies, e.g., use of post hoc ergo promptor where when A happened before B then A must be the cause of B such as diminished inter-religious strife in Iraq was preceded by a increase in US soldiers the increase in the number of soldiers WAS the cause of diminished inter-religious strife.
Unfortunately, there is no cure for Prion diseases. The sufferers will slowly descend to a psycho-epistemological and behavioral state known in the technical jargon as “crazy as a bedbug.”
Suicidal Zebra
Apropos the original post: All they want to do is eat your brains.
Silver
@Violet:
No, the point is that Salam’s little writeup was so shitty, almost anything works better.
Comrade Kevin
Glenn Beck is the Lich King, Sean Hannity is Overlord Drakuru, Bill O’Reilly is Stitches?
Southern Beale
Patriots continue to fight back against the Al Qa’ida Mosque du Triomphe at Ground Zero and their Caliphate minions, and also people who just look Muslin.
Ah yes well it seems BOTH sides are EQUALLY evil! Yes indeedy, Our Lady of Perpetual Victimhood Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the anti-mosque activist plaguing Tennessee’s Rutherford County, now says to ignore the vandalism at the Murfreesboro mosque construction site because someone who was “Arab-speaking” left her a mean voicemail message that included the words “Allahu Akbar” and so THAT PROVES SHE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG!!!!
I smell another Daily Show mocking ….
Corner Stone
Ok, without looking someone tell me who recently said this:
kwAwk
Who’s afraid of the big bad Beck?
I guess I’ve learned two things during this debate. The first since I’m not afraid of Beck apparently I’m not a mainstream liberal, and secondly with the help of Google I learned that a Lich King is a character from World of Warcraft who likes to eat brains.
Learn something new everyday I guess.
I think though that in Beck, liberals are creating their own boogey-man. He’s a dork with a TV show and Kathleen Parker seems to sum him up pretty well.
The more defensive the left becomes with regards to the actions of Beck, the more it will convince people on the right that there is some there there. The fact that we on the left hated Bush and derided him at every turn only made them like him more. I’m afraid it works the same with Beck.
Southern Beale
Violet don’t feel dumb. I didn’t know what the Lich King was either. I think I’m too old for this reference, and I haven’t played a video game since I sat down with a roll of quarters at the laundromat and killed time playing Ms. Pac-Man.
That said, I’d say Glen Blech’s audience is too old to know what a Lich King is too.
McWaffle
Hey now, I was killing liches in D&D before WoW even started. WoW can’t hog all the lich action.
4tehlulz
OT: Thomas McInerney goes full birther :
This is so fucked up.
Delia
@Origuy:
This is why I continue to read BJ. I always learn lots of shit I didn’t know before.
And it sounds to me like Voldemort is the lich par excellence. But he’s waaay smarter than Glenn, who remains a cheap huckster who is still riding for some sort of spectacular blowout.
Southern Beale
Yes I agree. Like I said we can’t completely ignore them because their revisionist history and outright fabrications should be challenged but we don’t have to cede the entire national discourse to them either.
Southern Beale
I do believe that was our POTUS. Yes?
chaseyourtail
@Corner Stone: It was the President and of course he has to say shit like that. There a lot of stupid ass Americans who believe Republicans when they start preaching about deficits and big government/tax and spend liberals. Obama knows how to neutralized the usual Repig arguments before they can gain any traction.
Silver
@chaseyourtail:
The problem is that the same guy says a lot of stupid shit about Afghanistan, and I thought that was also just ass covering so that the GOP couldn’t call him a pussy.
Oops.
jacy
@Violet:
a repeat of my other post:
(although I do think, in a geeky way, it’s not THAT bad an analogy to compare Beck’s followers to brain-eating zombies…)
Blue Neponset
Arthas!!
RobertB
I think I’ve died to LK in just about every way he can kill you, but I don’t recall him ever eating my brain. Although that time I jumped off the ledge after the first transition might count. Yeah, we’ll go with ‘brain eaten’ for that.
And it’s too bad he’s _not_ the Lich King. 24 other decent raiders, and three hours or so if we don’t care about hardmodes, and problem solved.
Jason Bylinowski
@geg6:
Yeah, geg6, God forbid we take part in the evolution of an interactive universe which, after much struggle and innovation is just now coming into its own, and has finally begun to reach the potential (just as cinema did, after the first few decades) of leading to great works of art, the likes of which the world has never seen.
People who don’t get gaming truly mystify me.
sparky
does a nominally more clever version of witless free association constitute an effective rejoinder to that manner of free association or does it instead underscore the original practice of witless free association, thus affirming rather than limiting that practice?
discuss.
or not.
Sly
So I suppose the role of Arthas is being played by a drug-addled “morning zoo” host, and the role of Ner’zhul is being played by the Mormon John Bircher Cleon Skousen.
NOW… WE ARE ONE!
Corner Stone
Welp, I guess that’s that then:
Halliburton wins contract for Iraqi oil
Andrey
@kwAwk: Uh, what? Few if any self-described liberals I’ve talked to have expressed a fear of Beck. They’ve expressed a dislike of Beck, possibly even a hatred of Beck, but not so much a fear of him. As for Bush, his ratings even among Republicans maintained a steady downward trend from the jump after 9/11; if there was any “reaction effect” like what you describe, it was a trivial amount.
jnfr
@Suicidal Zebra:
This version is more appropriate, I think.
Lich King is not whiny, therefore Glenn Beck cannot be the Lich King. Now Thorim, that’s whiny.
Svensker
Boy do I feel old.
This isn’t English being spoken on this thread, is it?
Corner Stone
@chaseyourtail:
How many times is he going to talk about the debt and deficit, and set up deficit commissions, etc, before people understand that the debt and deficit is actually what the fuck he thinks is most important?
silentbeep
@geg6: You know the thing about google, is that you can put it “lich king” and find out what’s going on. It’s simple like that.
Steve
I thought this was a really funny post. It’s a shame people feel like they need to understand who the Lich King is to get the joke. The entire point is that it’s a nonsensical analogy, so if you feel like TNC is speaking in tongues you’re on exactly the right wavelength.
martha
@Omnes Omnibus: You, like I, know this because of where we live… next door to the land of the hot dish suppers…
Cain
I killed the Lich King before Wow.. it was a great little game called “Secret of the Silver Blades”. I was with this hot chick named Vala and we took that lich king’s ass down.. hard. Fireballs, lightening bolts, dead animals, you name it, it was falling all over the place and I had this great weapon – Silver vorpal weapon.. oh yeah. Vala and I celebrated afterwards. *wink* *wink*
This is why women always think guys who play D&D are wierd. *grin*
cain
martha
I had to Google “lich king” too. But you know what? Now I know something I didn’t and can sound smart at some point in the future when I’m not, at least about WOW. It’s come in really handy before, it will again… like the fact that I knew all about Lady Gaga before certain people I know who are half my age…you had to be there but it was pretty funny.
Chyron HR
@Corner Stone:
I dunno, has it been anywhere near the number of times he talked about the Public Option during 2009? (I’m sure you never expressed the opinion that he was just pretending to support that, though.)
chaseyourtail
@Corner Stone: 100x, 1000x, pick a number? Until Americans grow a brain, he will talk about how the debt and deficits are the most important thing ever.
Cain
@martha:
The lich king is older than WoW. A lich is a sorcerer that used the black arts to extend his life indefinitely by turning into the undead but with all his marbles intact. Think a mummy with all his wits around him and can still cast spells.
cain
Svensker
@silentbeep:
I did google it but I still don’t get the joke. I mean, I do when it’s explained, but I don’t “get” it. It’s like my Dad when he would watch SNL and say, “this isn’t funny, why is everyone laughing?” , he just didn’t get it. My cursor has disappeared, is that because I’ve aged to eleventy billion in the last 10 minutes?
slag
@Corner Stone:
He may think debt and deficits are important, but I’m not willing to concede that he thinks they’re most important. Especially since he’s also talked numerous times about job creation. And he encouraged Congress to create a stimulus bill toward that end and eventually signed it. Plus, he’s encouraging a job-creation bill.
Besides which: Hell, I’m concerned about debt and deficits too. Which is one of the reasons I’m against extending Bush’s tax cuts. And it’s also one of the reasons that I’m in favor of getting our economy back on track…because we need the income.
wrb
@TooManyJens:
CERVELLES DE BŒUF A LA POULETTE.
BEEF BRAIN A LA POULETTE. (Entree.)
PROPORTIONS.–For five persons:
Beef brains……..3 or 4.
Onion…………..1.
Parsley…………1/4 handful.
Yolks of eggs……2.
Milk……………2 tablespoonsful.
Butter………….4 tablespoonsful.
Flour…………..1 tablespoonful.
Vinegar…………1/2 glassful.
Time.–3/4 hour.
PREPARATION.
1st. Take the skins off the brains and let them freshen from 3 to 4 hours in cold water, change every hour.
2d Cut the brains in two, place them in a crock pot with one sliced onion, 1/2 glassful of vinegar, some salt and pepper, and enough cold water to cover them well. Let cook three hours.
3d Let them drip, cut each half in four and place in a warm, hollow dish, which you keep in a warm place.
4th. Melt in another sauce pan 2 tablespoonsful butter, mixed with one tablespoonful flour. Mix well with one glassful of water, in which the brain has been cooked. Let boil awhile, then add some chopped parsley and when ready to serve, place the sauce pan on the corner of the range, add 2 tablespoonsful butter, mix it with 2 yolks of eggs and 2 tablespoonsful milk. Do not let boil again and pour over the brains.
wasabi gasp
Yeah, this is meme is going places.
Aet
” The entire point is that it’s a nonsensical analogy…”
But if you understand the source, its _not_ nonsense. The metaphor is disturbingly accurate.
There has to be a Lich King. If there wasn’t, the Scourge supposedly runs rampant.
There has to be a Beck/O’Reilly/Limbaugh/figurehead in these people’s lives. If there wasn’t, we’d have a million little nutcases who would stop watching Fox and start committing actual crimes. Their steady diet of hatred also anesthetizes them. They couldn’t be any more radical without actually doing something.
They want their overarching will/daily affirmation. Taking that will/affirmation away from them is more dangerous then letting them keep it.
Adrienne
@NobodySpecial:
If your sinning is lame, you’re doing it wrong.
Cat
@Corner Stone:
But… But… He has to say stuff like that to appear bipartisan and get things done! Its all about the art of the possible! The only thing possible is to reduce the deficit by cutting social programs so he has to do that to appear to be doing something!
I mean doing something thats detrimental to the US is better then doing nothing, amirite?
/snark
Corner Stone
@Chyron HR:
I don’t think your example does what you think it does.
JGabriel
McWaffle:
So this is all YOUR fault. Face it, if you hadn’t gone around indiscriminately killing liches without so much as a how-do-ye-do?, they might never have felt obligated to politically organize themselves under a royal banner!
burnspbesq
@4tehlulz:
I have a great deal of faith in the intelligence and common sense of our officer corps. I assume that this affidavit will be stuck in the file and never spoken of again, and will have no effect on the court martial.
This is nothing but grandstanding for the Faux News crowd, and to the extent that it calls the fairness of the military justice system into question, it is utterly despicable. Conduct unbecoming, to the max.
maus
I’m a huge nerdy nerd nerd who played WoW for years and whose girlfriend is in one of the D&D books as a playtester, and yet this analogy is still somehow too nerdy for me.
I’ll just go with the Married to the Sea response to all political cartoons-
Pee pee, doo doo, Glenn Beck is a bad person.
MikeJ
@maus:
I used to work for Tenser and shared an office with the first person to ever beat Civ on Diety level.
Cat
@slag:
Every single penny of that should be spent on stimulus, infact they should raise the top income brackets tax rate and spend that on stimulus too.
It probably wont be enough, but its time to stop redistributing the wealth to the top 1% .
Aet
@78: Nerd check! What you’re describing is the ‘standard’ Lich. An evil mastermind wizard-zombie whose soul is stored in an inanimate object, and whose body is twisted, immortal, and regenerating. For the less Dungeous and Dragons inclined, think Sauron, the big bad guy from Lord of the Rings, and you’re mostly there. Voldemort from Harry Potter also kindof works.
The Lich King, as a pop culture reference, is from World of Warcraft. You can find a host of references on Wikipedia without much effort. Using it in a pop-cultural context should be pretty easy, since the game has about 10 million US players.
burnspbesq
@Jason Bylinowski:
Shocking as this may be, I rise in defense of geg6 (who needs no defense, but I’m doing it anyway).
De gustibus non disputandum. I’ve never met a computer game, other than bridge and Scrabble simulations, that doesn’t bore me to tears inside 10 minutes. Just not my thing.
I’ve met an awful lot of hardcore gamers whose people skills are seriously deficient. Why do they prefer fantasy worlds to the real one? Which is cause, and which is effect?
People who don’t get post-1964 John Coltrane truly mystify me.
Capice?
eemom
This is just another anti-old people thread.
MikeJ
@Aet: 10 million WoW players who will know what a lich king is. Wikipedia says Glenn Beck has 10 million weekly listeners. Coincidence?
McWaffle
@MikeJ:
What an honor! Knowing the first guy to beat Civ on deity? I beat Civ Revolutions on deity, but that game was super easy.
TooManyJens
@wrb: I believe the thread is now complete.
Aet
@94: I’d be offended if I wasn’t chuckling.
slag
@Cat: I’d be totally cool with that. But the money has to come from somewhere. I don’t want to continue to borrow money from Communist countries to prop up our top 1%. That’s not what I want America to be about.
JGabriel
@Svensker:
Lich goes back at least to Middle English, more likely Anglo-Saxon, as there are cognates in German and Danish.
.
Steve
@Aet: I understand the source very well, but I’m confident the point was not to draw an actual analogy. Sure, a good debater can find similarities, just as someone can make a case that Glenn Beck and Malcolm X have something in common, but that’s not what it’s about.
MikeJ
@McWaffle: I actually don’t know the first guy to beat it on Deity. Jen was the first person of either sex to beat it.
chaseyourtail
@slag:
I agree. Obama doesn’t think d & ds are the “most important” priority but he knows most Americans still listen to Repig lies. This isn’t about bipartisanship, quite the opposite…It’s about neutralizing Repiglican talking points.
JGabriel
Cain:
It goes back a lot further than fantasy novels. Originally, it just meant corpse.
.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@slag: This.
Violet
@Silver:
Didn’t read all of Salam’s post. Just skimmed it before heading to bed.
wrb
@TooManyJens:
I suspect that Beck neglects letting the brains freshen, and from that the problems grow.
MikeJ
Stupidity is a prion.
morzer
Anyone notice that former east coast liberal writers like Jane Austen and the Brontes have suddenly begun producing undead versions of their previous novels for real Americans?
Coincidence? I think not!
Cat
@slag:
Actually it doesn’t. The Federal Reserve buys Treasury bonds at auction and they just create the money to buy the bonds out of thin air. The same with a lot of the RMBS and CMBS they bought recently.
The key to exploiting Fiat currency is to get everyone else to be afraid of printing money while you secretly print money to fuel your growth. If you do this properly you’ll have imported tons of goods and raw materials at discount prices and increased your standard of living even if the value of your currency isn’t that world leading powerhouse your ego would like.
Corner Stone
@slag:
He was asked:
“BRIAN WILLIAMS: What are you thinking about your jobs these days?”
And he answered:
“I think the next couple of years, we’ve got to focus on debt and deficits. We’ve got to focus on making sure that we make the recovery stronger. And a lot of that is attracting private investment.”
Now, I don’t want to get us into a parsing contest because I agree a President should have many things that are important to work on. But in this example, when asked about his “jobs” he responds debt, deficit, private investment.
I for one, and it’s just IMO, wish we could acknowledge the possibility that government is needed. Here, now, and a lot of it.
Why can’t government be cast as a positive actor?
JGabriel
Meh. Original content deleted by author: joke didn’t work.
.
ruemara
Awesome, because I’ve got my tier 10 gear & raid awareness in spades!
@Shinobi the Kingslayer: Shoot. I’ll take the gold, I need to fix my beater. Or do you mind if I need on the mount?
@AnnaN:
is Ed Schultz our Fordragon? That’s not too bad.
Corner Stone
@chaseyourtail:
It doesn’t neutralize anything, it reinforces it.
jayjaybear
@Blue Neponset: That should be “Arthaaaaaaaas!”
Bnut
@MikeJ:
Diety level. Cause and solution to many old high school problems.
MikeJ
@Bnut: Speeling was fixed the next time I used the word. Noticed my typo right after the timer ran out. Mea culpa.
Zipperupus
In a fit of maximum dork, I likened Cheney to a lich whose real heart needed to be found and burnt in order to ride ourselves of his malefic influence. I wrote this in Table Talk in 2002.
I feel so avant garde!
catclub
@Corner Stone:
Easy peasy Barack Obama
JGabriel
wrb:
True. Beck just spritzes the brains with club soda to make them look freshened before serving them. He’s like the McDonald’s(tm) of prepared brains.
.
George
Problem with the analogy- Was Beck ever a good guy? I think the Lich King, as evil as he is, is at least a little better than Beck.
ruemara
@MikeJ:
Damn. Deity level. and DAMN, I am an old nerd.
asiangrrlMN
I didn’t get it either, but I got the general gist of what TNC was trying to do. And, every time I see Lich, I think lichee/lychee which is a delicious Asian fruit. The initial comparison by Salam of Beck to Malcolm X was lazy, stupid, and meaningless.
geg6
@Jason Bylinowski:
See now, people who are gamers absolutely mystify me.
To each their own. What I find mind numbingly stupid and boring, you love. And vice versa.
Glad to see you’re as open minded as I am about how others choose to spend their time. WTFever.
maus
@geg6:
To be honest, it’s a bit shoehorned, even to someone who loves all sorts of modern and classic myths.
geg6
@maus:
I guess I only clicked on the thread hoping that someone would actually explain the analogy for those of us completely uninterested in gaming or sci-fi or whatever was being referenced. I googled the term and found it had to do with a video game or online game or whatever the hell they are and knew, after a few lines that were incomprehensible to anyone not in the know, that even the Wiki explanation would do me no good whatsoever.
Disappointingly, I still have no idea why Beck could possibly be compared to the Lich King but I did get some asshole gamer all insulted because I don’t play his little games.
So I guess there was some entertainment value to the whole exercise. ;-)
Shalimar
@singfoom: I tend to agree with you that the entire Republican party and part of the Democratic party exist so greedy rich people can rig society so they get richer at the expense of the middle class. Everything else is just an ever-changing snow job. But I don’t think that is Beck’s plan.
Unlike Limbaugh, who at least used to know what he was doing before all of the drugs, Beck isn’t smart enough to even comprehend any kind of bigger plan. For Beck, the plan is about Beck personally getting richer. All the followers are most likely just an abstract bonus feeding him cash. Maybe eventually he will succumb to the temptation of using his followers for his personal power. So far, all he seems to care about is separating them from their money.
kwAwk
@Andrey:
It was that Coates guy who said it, not me.
Batocchio
It’s a funny post, but TNC should have linked something for people not familiar with the character and game, and/or given some brief explanation.
kestrel
Also outing myself as a minor MMO nerd here. Forgive me.
…If Beck’s the Lich King, then who’s Tirion in this tortured analogy? (Methinks the writer of the original article didn’t think this one all the way through before posting it.)
Also: for the Alliance. And stuff.
CalD
Part of me wonders what the hell you people are talking about. The rest of me would is laying bets that I don’t really care to know.
For the record though, I’m generally pretty liberal and Glenn Beck doesn’t scare me. I just think he’s an idiot. I grew up in a John Bircher’s house during the height of the cold war, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. I’ve heard crazy talk before.
Larry Signor
@CalD: You don’t want to know. My 25 yr. old son tried to explain Lich King to me. Took me back to the days of Spiro and acid. I know that house. Grew up in one just like it.
Remember November
So who is the hero who is going to take the crown and mind all the mindless Beckerheads milling about?
“I see only whiteness…”