Mike Madden sees Glenn Beck's Christmas show, so you don't have to!
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2009/12/04/glenn_beck_christmas/index.htmlThe show got started with some weird, spacey music, as if Beck was trying to prepare his audience for an alien invasion. Then the host took the stage (accompanied by a mostly black choir singing Christmas carols). Signs for Napa Auto Parts, the program's sponsor, hung incongruously in the wings, visible whenever the camera shot Beck from the side. "Two years ago, I wrote a book called 'The Christmas Sweater' because I knew that a storm was coming," he said. What inspired him to write the novel was a memory of his own storm. One Christmas, back before he became a Mormon and got sober, Beck found himself drunk, depressed and too broke to shop for his kids' presents anywhere but at CVS. "I felt like a loser," he said, tears welling up in his eyes.
Those tears would turn out to be the leitmotif of the night, especially once the replay of last year's show got going. Acting, à la Glenn Beck, apparently consists mostly of choking up -- with sadness, with rage, with fright, with anything. The staging of his performance didn't help, either. Wearing a microphone taped to his head and at least three T-shirts (all of which he wound up sweating through by the end of the show), Beck stood in front of six video monitors, which flashed images and colors to help suggest scenes. An orchestra played along from the side of the stage. Beck played every character in the show -- from Eddie, the little boy who's clearly supposed to be Beck, to his mother and grandparents, to Russell, the story's Jesus figure. (Because what good is a Christmas story without a Jesus figure?)
The plot goes like this. Eddie's father has died, which we learned, in the stage version, through a hokey series of voice-overs, and his mom is struggling to pay the bills and raise Eddie. Though Eddie has his heart set on a shiny, red bike with a black leather banana seat for Christmas, his mom can't afford it, and she knits him a sweater instead. He freaks out and throws it on the floor of his room, saying it's itchy and he doesn't like it. They go visit Eddie's grandparents, and Eddie sulks the whole night. Instead of staying over on their farm, he makes Mom drive him back home through the snow. He falls asleep in the car. So does Mom! They crash, she dies, he goes to live with Grandma and Grandpa.
Then things start to lose the narrative thread a little bit. Feeling sorry for himself -- understandably, you'd think, since he's now a 12-year-old orphan -- Eddie lashes out at his grandparents, too. His life's been spiraling out of control; first his dad died of cancer, then his mom died in a wreck, and to top it all off, he never got the bike he wanted! So it's no wonder he starts hanging out next door, at an apparently abandoned farmhouse where he meets the mysterious Russell (whom Beck played with an exaggerated farmhand voice that he'd rip a liberal for using to mock hardworking Americans). Russell tells Eddie he has only himself to blame for his problems. So he gets back to sulking. Eventually, Eddie discovers that he was going to get that bike on the night his mom died, but his grandfather had hidden it to give to him the next day; when Eddie demanded to go home, he missed his chance to get it. He winds up taking it from the barn and fleeing the farm. Then he gets lost in a cornfield, the bike breaks down, and a massive metaphor -- er, storm -- blows up the road. Suddenly Russell appears out of nowhere, telling him he's got to weather the storm if he wants to get home. "Eddie, don't fear the storm," Russell says. "Fear the cornfield, don't fear the storm." Wise words, indeed. With more tears, some prayers and some repentance, Eddie survives the storm. Russell shows him around a heavenly meadow, and tells him his parents are there watching over him. Then Russell starts glowing white, and tells Eddie, "You are joy, Eddie! You are joy!" before turning into pure light. Eddie collapses, then wakes up ... back home at his grandparents' farm -- with Mom there! His sorrow has given him a second chance to go back and stop being such an ungrateful brat about the sweater. And everyone lives happily ever after.
MUCH MORE AT LINK
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