Beck attacks Wash. Post for review of his book: "[I]t's tomorrow's Pravda".

Glenn Beck has been upset by The Washington Post's review of his new work of "faction", "The Overton Window", which Beck here admits that he wrote for his fans to give to the friends they have who "are so close to getting it". "It" being, I suppose, the vast progressive conspiracy to destroy the US Constitution which Beck speaks of so often.

But Beck here calls The Washington Post "tomorrow's Pravda" and accuses them of being more paranoid than himself by stating that the book might be found "tucked into the ammo boxes of self-proclaimed patriots". Oh, Beck is outraged by that claim.

The success of Glenn Beck's novel, "The Overton Window," will be measured not by its literary value (none), or its contribution to the thriller genre (small), or the money it rakes in (considerable), but rather by the rebelliousness it incites among anti-government extremists. If the book is found tucked into the ammo boxes of self-proclaimed patriots and recited at "tea party" assemblies, then Beck will have achieved his goal.

Beck is constantly asking his audience to rise up, and has stated that there is a conspiracy to destroy him, so him calling The Washington Post "paranoid" really takes some chutzpah.

The danger of books like this is that radical readers may take the story's fiction for fact, or interpret the fiction -- which Beck encourages -- as a reflection of a reality that they must fend off by any means necessary. "The Overton Window" risks falling into the tradition of other anti-government novels such as "The Turner Diaries" by William L. Pierce, which became a handbook of extremists and inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. As Beck tells his soldiers in the voice of Noah: "Put up or shut up . . . go hard or go home. Freedom is the rare exception . . . not the rule, and if you want it you've got to do your part to keep it."

The truth is that Beck is simply a shameless self promoter, and is saying the stuff he says because it is making him terribly wealthy. But the danger, which the Post is highlighting, is that there are people out there who take this nonsense seriously.

Tags: Glenn Beck, The Overton Window, The Washington Post