Glenn Beck is in on this conspiracy By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

Glenn Beck is in on this conspiracy E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY   NEW YORK — Glenn Beck, the love-him-or-despise-him conservative radio and Fox News talk-show host, is not only a best-selling author, he's an Oprah Winfrey-like force in publishing. When Beck touts a book on radio or TV, it becomes a best seller. "Reading is my favorite hobby," he says. But, he confesses, "I don't write. I speak. I get bogged down in writing." Which is why he takes a team approach to writing his own books, including his first political thriller, The Overton Window (Threshold, $25), on sale Tuesday. On the title page, Beck shares credit with three contributors. He calls the conspiracy novel "my story," but he says Jack Henderson, one of his contributors, "went in and he put the words down." Others novelists might not acknowledge such help, but Beck, a self-described "fiscal conservative and common-sense libertarian," says, "I'm a team kind of guy." Beck and 34 employees have built a $32-million-a-year media empire that includes books like Glenn Beck's Common Sense (No. 1 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list in 2009), his own magazine (Fushion, $34.95 for 10 issues a year) and a one-man stage show. The company's slogan: "The Fusion of Entertainment and Enlightenment." Depending on your sensibilities and politics, Beck is courageous or outrageous. On air, he's as likely to get worked up about why "Oprah is fat again" as he is over "what's wrong with Obama's health care plan." In an interview in his corner office at his production company in Manhattan, he says he packages "what I believe in consumable formats in order to try to get as many people outside the box and consider opinions they never considered before." His non-fiction best sellers mostly deal with what he sees as the threat of government becoming too powerful. So does his novel. The Overton Window takes its title from an actual theory about the "window" or range of politically acceptable ideas. As Beck sees it, that window can be manipulated so that ideas once thought of as radical — say, gun control — seem to become more acceptable. His own view: "Guns are our friends." In his novel, a federal conspiracy is aimed at suspending individual rights in the name of security and a new world order. The unnamed president is barely mentioned. The villain is a public relations executive contemptuous of all politicians. The opposition is led by a group that, like Beck, quotes the founding fathers. One of their leaders, attractive and idealistic Molly Ross, is the love interest for Noah Gardner, brash and cynical son of the evil PR executive. With a loose nuclear weapon threatening Nevada, the plot turns on whether Noah can save the world while finding true love with Molly. There's a touch of PG sex. Beck has never met former president Bill Clinton, but one of his fictional characters says, "Clinton could read you a fairy tale and you'd be down to your panties by the time Rapunzel let down her golden hair." "That's as sleazy as it gets," Beck says with a laugh. "That's the whole sex scene in the book." Nor is there any profanity: "I wanted people to be able to see the story without all the tricks and trappings." He says he's not predicting such a conspiracy, "but there are a lot of pieces out there in the world right now leading us somewhere and it's not The Sonny and Cher Show." He's braced for critics: "They always say my non-fiction books are fiction. This one, they'll say is fact." (Comedy Central's Indecision website quips that with Overton, Beck is leaping from "best-selling author of paranoid political opinion to best-selling author of paranoid political fiction.") Beck calls his novel "faction" — fiction based on facts. A 28-page afterword citing books, articles and websites is "the homework part ... it's there if you want it." The novel was inspired by two other ideological thrillers: Michael Crichton's State of Fear, which challenged conventional science on global warming, and Brad Thor's The Last Patriot, about a secret that could end the threat of militant Islam. Thor, one of more than 40 thriller writers who has been interviewed by Beck on TV and radio, calls him "our Oprah." The Guardian, the liberal British newspaper, amended that to "the Oprah of right-wing fiction." Like Winfrey, Beck sells books. Last Tuesday on the radio, he discussed The Road to Serfdom, Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek's 1944 best seller linking socialism to totalitarianism. It quickly rose to No. 1 on Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com. "When he backs a book, he really supports it," says Amazon editor Tom Nissley. "He'll devote an entire hour to it." Other titles that recently soared on Amazon's best-seller list after Beck's endorsement include Peter Lillback's George Washington's Sacred Fire and Andrew Allison's The Real Thomas Jefferson. Beck laughs at liberals who, he says, "talk about 'uninformed people on the right.' We sell books hand over fist. I challenge you to find a group of people that read as many and as eclectic books as our audience does." In person, he shows little of his TV and radio persona: an angry populist who's "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore." (One of many photos of Beck in his office corridors is a blowup of the 2009 Time cover of him sticking out his tongue, headlined MAD MAN.) A little bit of everything At 46, he has come a long way from his origins as an itinerant top-40 radio DJ. He began his national radio show in 2002 and moved from CNN to Fox News in 2009. He's a recovering alcoholic (he says he has been sober since 1994) and Mormon convert who credits his second wife, Tania, for helping turn his life around. He lives in Connecticut but for security concerns won't say where. He has four children from his two marriages, "from young to college." Asked to define what he does, he says, "I'm a little of everything." That includes "concerned dad," "faith-based guy," "businessman," "entertainer" and, after a long pause, "journalist." "I don't have formal training as a journalist, but I think that works to my advantage." He says too many reporters don't follow Thomas Jefferson's advice to "question with boldness." He says he doesn't enjoy controversy, "believe it or not," but it's rare when he isn't embroiled in one. He recently apologized for mocking President Obama's 11-year-old daughter, Malia, for asking her father about the oil spill "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?" On radio, Beck said, "That's the level of their education." "Shameful," Beck now says. "I broke my own rule. Never include family." His explanation: "So much hatred going around, I got sucked into it. I pray that's my bottom." His prediction for the 2012 presidential race? "That assumes we're going to have an election." He pauses. "Just kidding." He laughs. "The Republicans are in trouble. The Democrats have united. I don't think the Democrats exist anymore. ... The extreme left have united and gobbled the Democrats. "And the Republicans? It's like they're watching old NFL films from 1972. The game's changed, guys. ... Both sides still think it's a game. And Americans are done with it. They know it's our children's future at stake." He concludes: "I haven't seen the come-to-Jesus moment for the Republicans. I haven't seen, you know, the come-to-Winnie-the-Pooh moment for the Democrats, let alone Jesus." The "team" writing process Kevin Balfe, Beck's vice president for publishing, and Josh Raffel, his public relations representative, sit in on the hour-long interview, occasionally offering clarifications, as when Beck calls himself "more and more, a militant libertarian on individual rights. Government has grown far too powerful — under Bush, as well." Balfe suggests "militant" be softened to "strong." Beck adds, "Please don't print militant because then they'll say I'm telling people to pick up arms." As for his team approach to writing, Beck says, "There's clearly no way that I'm sitting behind a typewriter or word program and pounding this out. ... I have my vision and need someone to make sure that vision stays there." Balfe offers this explanation: "Glenn has a three-hour radio show every morning. That's obviously 100% Glenn. But if you wanted to translate that into a book, you could take those transcripts. But then, someone has to go in and make it sound good to read in that format. And that's the way I describe the writing. It's all Glenn, but you've got to have the right thriller technique," which is where the contributors come in. Beck calls his 321-page novel "half the book I wrote. They didn't think an 800-page book, which would have become a 1,200-page book, would be flying off the shelves. So this is only the first half." A sequel? "If it sells." Any doubts? "I never take anything for granted."   Carl Ray Louk "FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS" SG-1996 "LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY" SG-2000 "THE PHOENIX SHALL RISE" SD "EVEN A MAN WHO IS PURE IN HEART AND SAYS HIS PRAYERS BY NIGHT, MAY BECOME A WOLF WHEN THE WOLFBANE BLOOMS AND THE AUTUMN MOON IS BRIGHT." LT-1941 "FLESH OF MY FLESH; BLOOD OF MY BLOOD; KIN OF MY KIN WHEN SAY COME TO YOU, YOU SHALL CROSS LAND OR SEA TO DO MY BIDDING!" 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