Recent Stories with tag glenn beck

Annex fields a large, capable cast for "Her Mother Was Imagination." (Photo: Ian Johnston/Annex Theatre)

Her Mother Was Imagination (at Annex Theatre through August 28), the dystopian satire from local playwright Elizabeth Heffron and collaborators Ellie McKay (director), Max Reichlin, and Daniel Worthington, is at war with many things, one of them being my desire to laugh all the way through the play. It's a fitfully entertaining fever dream, never settling on being either satire that leaves a mark, a timely cautionary tale about the world to come, or an affecting allegory about women's restricted choices.

At $15, you're getting more than your money's worth, except in lumbar support. The play stretches to two and a half hours so that it can fit all its targets in--Beck, LDS, eugenics, climate-change deniers, elderly patriarchs, young men who are dicks, whacked-out revolutionary feminists, subservient artists--but as the play progresses, the satirical impulse that fueled its opening number is sapped by earnestness.

From sketchy scene to scene, the energy level varies, and an unwonted sense of profanely dramatic importance grows, as if Will It Blend had tried works by Margaret Atwood and Mamet. Heffron's knack for dragooning historical figures (see Mitzi's Abortion, New Patagonia) into hilariously effective duty hasn't deserted her, but here her imported personages are made mostly of straw.

A raucous opening pageant retells how the prophet Glenn Beck (complete with mythologizing, homespun song, right out of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett") withdrew from public life as a "TV soldier" to the upper reaches of an empty high-rise (the WaMu tower, apparently). Beck's mask is on top of someone's head (none of the press materials notes who plays what role), so that when the actor's head is lowered, Beck's beady-eyed grin comes at you like a battering ram.... (more)

As the health care reform bill vote approaches this weekend, still no word on the stance of those two undecided Washington State Dems, Brian Baird (WA-3) and Adam Smith (WA-9).  Believe me, I've been checking.  (Whip count here, Washington Post table here.)

I'm just glad that over the past year, we've all been able to keep the discussion on health care reform so civil. From McClatchy, via The Huffington Post:

Conservative talk show hosts and columnists have ridiculed an 11-year-old Washington state boy's account of his mother's death as a "sob story" exploited by the White House and congressional Democrats like a "kiddie shield" to defend their health care legislation.

Marcelas Owens, whose mother got sick, lost her job, lost her health insurance and died, said Thursday he's taking the attacks from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin in stride.

Leave it to American heroes like those three to stand up to Big Orphan.  Rush's comments are particularly patriotic:

"Now this is unseemly, exploitative, an 11-year-old boy being forced to tell his story all over just to benefit the Democrat Party and Barack Obama," Limbaugh said on March 12, according to a transcript his show. "And, I would say this to Marcelas Owens: 'Well, your mom would still have died, because Obamacare doesn't kick in until 2014.'"

...

Talk show host Glenn Beck arrived in Mount Vernon over the weekend, after speaking to a few thousand supporters at Safeco Field in Seattle. The Seattle Times story quotes him as saying he believes "in Norman Rockwell's America," and that he doesn't remember politics being this divisive.

His homecoming was evidence of just that kind of division, after the Mount Vernon City Council unanimously passed a resolution saying that giving the key to the city was all Mayor Bud Norris's idea. Norris, for his part, distanced himself from Beck's broadcast views, saying the honor was meant to mark Beck's professional success, not endorse his politics. Outside the hall where Beck was speaking, 800 people were either protesting or supporting his appearance.

Now Norris knows how Husky coach Don James felt when he was engulfed in criticism for showing up at a Ronald Reagan campaign rally, and making Reagan a gift of a Husky cap and football.

On the other hand, it's perplexing to hear the man who called the President of the United... (more)