httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9nVpO1Dvfk
For those of you whose work environment/Amish fundamentalism prevents you from watching a YouTube video all the way through, that’s Glenn Beck boiling a frog alive on national television. He’s attempting to illustrate “the old saying,” that if you throw a frog into boiling water he’ll jump right out, whereas if you start the frog in lukewarm water and gradually heat it to boiling, “the frog won’t realize what’s happening and die.” Nietzschean aphorist Glenn Beck is not. Huck Finn-ean frog catcher he ain’t, either, and the several seconds he spends trying to get hold of one of the frogs—which turn out to be alarmingly small and cute—give the viewer a chance to realize that this is something he actually intends to do. “Barack Obama has galvanized this country,” Beck says, citing the number, size and urgency of the bills the President has ostensibly proposed. “He’s forced us to wake up and think.” I wouldn’t go that far, but okay. Unlike John McCain, who’s been slowly heated, the American people have been thrown into our present political situation all at once. “And what happens when you throw ’em in?” Beck demands. Then he throws his frog into his kettle of boiling water, from which it completely fails to jump out, possibly because its skin and outer layers of musculature have been flash-cooked and its eyeballs have burst. Beat. “Okay, forget the frog,” Beck says. Then he tells us to forget about both Democrats and Republicans, too, because they are fake. And…scene.