From: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/11/20/in-south-carolina-glenn-beck-draws-an-adoring-crowd/
COLUMBIA, S.C. — “Can I just tell you guys something? Being here 10 minutes, it’s so great to be out of New York.”
Glenn Beck knows how to work a South Carolina crowd, but he really didn’t have to do anything but show up. Eight hundred people held passes that reserved a place in the line to meet Beck, to exchange a few words with him and to get his signature on his latest book, “Arguing With Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government.” (A sample chapter: “Universal Health Care, Why a Paper Cut May Soon Be Fatal.”) Sarah Palin isn’t the only one who can draw a crowd. Click here for video of the appearance from The State.
Most of the 800 – along with the couple hundred other people estimated to pack the Books-A-Million store – carried several copies of “Idiots,” plus “An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems,” plus “The Christmas Sweater” and its companion picture book. The holidays are coming.
Beck — in blue jeans — showed up about 15 minutes later than scheduled on Thursday night to cheers, camera flashes and shouts of “thank you.” Parents brought children. Husband and wives came in matching “I Am the Mob!” T-shirts. Soldiers from nearby Fort Jackson Army training center waited in uniform.
Bodyguards hovered nearby. Young men in Beck-adorned black shirts handed out cards advertising “A Day in the Life of Glenn Beck” DVDs. As the room warmed up and the crowd cooled down using fans stamped with the Fox News star’s likeness, a sea of fluttering Glenn Becks gazed back at him.
He could not have picked a better state to kick off this nine-city book tour. “I’m with Joe Wilson” T-shirts honored the congressman who shouted “You lie” at President Obama, raising his profile and millions in campaign dollars. The state’s Revenue Department just sent out reminders of a 48-hour “Second Amendment Weekend” that begins just after midnight the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers will pay no state or local sales taxes on handguns, rifles and shotguns. April and July tea party rallies held Beck as an inspiration.
Veterans of those government-spending protests — and others held in cities across the state and in Washington, D.C. — gathered early at the bookstore, replaying highlights. Overheard conversations cursed government takeover of businesses and praised all things Beck. (”I love him. I listen to his show all the time. I love to hear about his family. I know them all.”) He may be over the top at times, some said, but “he speaks from the heart.”
Outside the store, representatives of the Campaign for Liberty, the Patriotic Resistance and Beck’s 9/12 Project passed out fliers announcing a South Carolina Rally for Freedom on Jan. 9 at the statehouse here to “demand government accountability and the protection of our Constitutional rights.”
Talbert Black, a 40-year-old software engineer from Lexington, S.C., who said he’s been involved politically for a while, explained the rally’s agenda: to demand a roll call on the legislature’s votes, “to help with transparency and accountability” and to urge the passage of a resolution reaffirming state sovereignty, limiting the power of the federal government. “Like health care, the Constitution doesn’t authorize the federal government to do anything,” Black said. He said he doesn’t watch much television, but “I like what I’ve seen” on Beck’s show. “He’s learning, figuring out what’s going on.”
Those in the crowd were cheerful, in a party mood, yet agitated and fearful — of government, of illegal immigrants, of the America their children will inherit. The mood was very Beck-like. He both channels and ratchets up the anxiety and general discontent of those who want to “take America back.” From what? “From socialism, a communist leader. Well, maybe not communist, but leaning that way,” said Ted Coles, 51, of Greenville. Coles owns a machine shop and would appreciate more tax incentives for his small business. He and his wife, Jeanne, traveled to September’s tea party protest in Washington. “There were over a million people there,” Coles said, discounting the estimates that pegged the number much lower.
Nancy Matuszek of Columbia doesn’t belong to any of the protest groups or attend the rallies, but Beck, she said, “gives us hope that our country’s going to get back to where it used to be.”
“He’s our voice,” she said. “We’re losing some of our rights, mostly our gun rights.” Matuszek, 54, also thinks the country’s heading down a socialist path, “health care, for one.” It needs to be changed, but “I don’t like what they are covering,” abortion and “citizens who are not citizens.”
“Everything’s in Spanish. This is America.”
She brought her son, Brendon, who displayed his Beck-inspired shirt that read: “I am a 17-year-old ’sick twisted freak’ who gets it.” Brendon said he wants to be a special-education teacher, partly because of Beck, who has talked about a daughter with cerebral palsy.
Pfc. Kari Anderson was one of many who were visibly moved, almost overwhelmed, after meeting Beck — who thanked her for her service. The 19-year-old from Beaufort, who wants to make the Army her career, believes Beck exposes truths that the rest of the media keeps hidden. Her sergeant at Fort Jackson told her the only way she could come was if she got his own book signed.
In the crowd, 37-year-old Erica Brown, a Columbia legal assistant and political independent, stood out as one of a handful of African Americans. “This is different,” she said Beck told her when he signed her copy of “An Inconvenient Book.” (She said she won’t buy “Arguing With Idiots” because name-calling isn’t the best way to begin a discussion.) “I don’t always agree with him,” she said of Beck, “but I admire his passion,” as well as his views on the gradual disintegration of Constitutional rights.
Brown took some grief from her husband, a big Obama supporter, and some friends when she stood in line the day before to get the chance to meet the man who called the president a racist. (”You have to take what he says with a grain of salt.”)
But she told them, “How can you understand someone’s agenda unless you’re ready to read his playbook?” And she doesn’t think he’s as bad as Rush Limbaugh, whom she described as “a whack-a-doo.”
Not so Carl Bennett. He likes Beck but “I’m more of a Rush fan,” he said, “less taxes, less government, the whole nine.” He was there to support his boss, Robbie Allen, who owns a Columbia glass shop and whose wife, Kimberly, waited for five hours on Wednesday to reserve a spot. Robbie Allen, a longtime Beck fan, said he likes “everything that comes from his mouth,” from “common-sense” and “just tell us the truth” to “do not tread on me.”
“Nothing else seems to make sense,” said Allen, who doesn’t mind Beck’s rants, his emotional outbursts. “I like how he’s bold. The truth hurts.” The couple brought their daughter, Natalie, who just turned 5.
Allen, 29, complained about “overwhelming taxes.” He’s not a big fan of the current administration or many of the previous ones. “Ever since Reagan left office, it’s been downhill all the way.” He begrudgingly said Obama is doing OK, but not “the people he’s affiliated with, Anita Dunn, Bill Ayers, the Rev. Wright.”
To Bennett, “Obama’s a joke,” he said. He saved the worst for S.C. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham; he won’t forget his vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “He’s a liar,” Bennett said.
Graham, who was recently censured by state party leaders for working with Democrats on a climate-change bill and other legislation, was as popular as the plague at this Beckfest. On this night, in this crowd, compromise equaled retreat.
When someone yelled that Beck should consider moving to South Carolina, he yelled back: “You throw Lindsey Graham out, I’ll think about it.”
