This Glenn Beck fellow has certainly managed to hog the front pages lately.  It seems that he is everywhere I turn – well on television at least.  The blog world is full of entries.  All over Facebook and he has several websites.  People either adore him or despise him. Hot or cold.  No in-between and no ambivalence about the guy. So who is Beck anyway? 

He was born in 1964 in Everett, Washington and raised a Roman Catholic. He is descended from German immigrants who came to the States in the 1800’s. He got his first DJ gig at the ripe old age of 13 after winning a contest. His parents divorced in 1977 after his father alleged that his mother was an insufferable alcoholic.  Two years later she and another man drowned in a boating accident.  Interestingly, a Coast Guard investigator speculated that she could have intentionally jumped overboard even though a police report said she appeared to be a “classic drowning victim.”  Beck has previously described the death as a suicide.

After his mother’s death he and his sister moved in with his father and Beck graduated from high school in 1982. Beck admits to heavy drinking during his last two years of high school. Beck then got married and had two children and was divorced in 1994.  He admits to heavy substance abuse during this marriage. He admits to suicidal thoughts during these times.  By his estimation his drug and alcohol abuse started at age 16 and continued unabated for at least 15 years.

 Beck’s college education seems to have been one theology course at Yale while he worked in New Haven, CT.  He then went on a spiritual quest and credits the following authors with informing his beliefs: Alan Dershowitz, Pope John Paul II, Adolf Hitler, Billy Graham, Carl Sagan, and Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1999 Beck remarried and he and his wife converted to Mormonism.  Beck’s ideological beliefs were shaped by many conservative forces.  Quoting from some Wikipedia passages : “ An author with ideological influence on Beck was W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006), an influential conservative American Constitutionalist and faith-based political theorist An anti-communist, supporter of the John Birch Society, and limited-government activist, Skousen's works involved a wide range of subjects: the Six-Day War, Mormon eschatology, New World Order conspiracies, even parenting. Skousen believed that American political, social, and economic elites were working with Communists to foist a world government on the United States.” 

Beck created his own media production company in 2002 (Mercury Radio Arts) and now he takes in an estimated 25 – 40 million dollars per year.  Beck has been a Top-40 deejay and co-hosted a morning zoo drive-to-work show. His on-air history is replete with off-color and tasteless comments about others.  He has moved numerous times from station to station and city to city. (Seattle, Provo, Corpus Christi, Louisville, Phoenix, New Haven, Houston, Baltimore, Tampa, Philadelphia).  Beck got his CNN break in 2006 and moved to Fox in 2008.  The rest is history and doesn’t need repeating here. 

So who is Beck anyway? He is a descendent of German immigrants and a reformed Roman Catholic.  His mother was an active alcoholic who died a tragic death while Beck was in high school. He is not formally educated past high school; although, he seems to read a lot. He admits to being an alcoholic and drug addict and now claims sobriety.  He appears to have tried many geographic cures for his uneasiness and anxiety with life.  

He is financially very wealthy.  He lives in New Canaan, CT with his wife and four children.  He gets weepy-eyed a lot. He is prone to grandiosity and to needing recognition and affection/adoration.  Here is what I think drives him to need more and more attention (honestly, a Restore America Rally on the 47^th anniversary of “I Had a Dream”?)  He has a hole deep inside his psyche that needs to be filled every day.  I know about this because I have this hole too. 

Here’s how it worked for me:  I had a need to be successful and to do well. I would achieve and I worked hard to be successful.   These are all worthy attributes; but,  deep inside I knew that I did not like myself and I always carried around a sense of anxiety, shame, and not measuring up or being good enough.  That was the hole.  A bottomless pit that needed to be filled every day.  It was as if it drained away at night while I slept.  I could do a day-long workshop in front of a large group of people and receive glowing reviews and comments.  I felt good.  I went to bed.  I woke up the next morning and started all over. That damned hole needed to be filled again. It was tiring.  Real tiring. 

I engaged in therapy for many years, I tried cognitive self-talk, I anesthetized myself with booze and nothing made the hole go away. Then one day on a bus ride a friend said to me that I needed to quit trying to fill the hole or make it go away, and instead accept that it was there.  Ah, a moment of clarity.  Acceptance. Once I accepted that the hole existed then it  disappeared (for the most part.)  The acceptance was achieved through awareness, and ultimately through simple prayer. 

Beck’s grandiosity and megalomania can be understood in the context of him needing to refill that hole every day. For now he’s getting plenty of help in the hole-filling.  It won’t last forever.  He will continue to need more and more until he just “tires out.” Let’s all pray that he soon learns to accept that the hole exists within.