A Face in the Crowd

Keith Olbermann loves to compare Glenn Beck to Andy Griffith’s Lonesome Rhodes character from A Face in the Crowd (whereas in real-life, Griffith, like Olbermann is a fellow televangelist for the Church of Obama), but reading this comment from an Instapundit reader, it’s pretty obvious that Olbermann’s own shtick is a combination of Rhodes and Elmer Gantry:

The act is not at all what Olbermann says it is. It’s a very old act: The fire and brimstone preacher.

The left has become horrifically sanctimonious. They have become what they hated in the right back in the 60s.

Every issue for the left is a moral issue on the level of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. So, their opponents are always wicked devils consumed with sin.

And, it’s their job to save us from eternal damnation.

Olbermann is just the secular version of the fire and brimstone preacher.

Just nowhere near as attractive or moving.

(See also, one radical rightwing neocon deathbeast blogger’s comparison of the New York Times to the Marx Brother’s favorite dowager, Marget Dumont.)

Ace of Spades adds:

Indeed, one can say this rise of fire-and-brimstone political pornographers is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. (How so?, you ask. I don’t know. It’s just what they say about everything so I thought I’d join in the fun.)

Let’s ask Chris Matthews for his take on the situation: