Not too long ago, Glenn Beck was to Alex Jones and the truther community what Nirvana once was to the Replacements and fans of alternative rock: The first to take an element of an underground counterculture and sand off most of its roughest edges in order to sell it to the mainstream.
But things have changed, and now Beck, stuck on the lucrative fringe with his subscription site the Blaze, is no longer mainstreaming Infowars. He's reduced to half-assedly theorizing about President Obama's secret disdain for the sacred Oval Office instead.
"There's a problem with the Oval Office and this president," Beck darkly prophesied on the Thursday edition of his radio show. "There's something wrong there."
What had Beck so concerned was President Obama's recent speech on the war he plans to wage on the extremist group ISIS. As he has for major addresses in the past, Obama delivered his remarks from the White House's East Room, rather from behind the famous Resolute desk in the Oval Office.
Obama does this, reportedly, because he doesn't like sitting behind a desk while speaking, preferring instead to stand and "gesticulate." But Beck isn't so sure.
"It is part of the fundamental transformation [of the U.S.]," Beck said. "This guy's in for eight years, not speaking [from the Oval Office]. He has erased eight years of what that office means. You know," Beck continued, "you build up a relationship with the image and he's changing that image."
Beck added that the president was "changing the image of the United States," as well as that of the presidency. "[H]e's changing the image of what a president looks like," Beck complained, before quickly adding, "I'm not talking about [skin] color, I'm talking about what he looks like, what the optics are."
"They're so fascinated with optics," Beck said, referring to Obama's advisers and media team. "Why won't they use the Oval Office? Something's not right."
You can watch Glenn Beck try to gin up anxiety over a desk below, via Right Wing Watch:
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