Oh boy. Just when you thought everyone possible had weighed in on Julie Taymor and Bono’s disastrous Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark… it’s time for Glenn Beck to have his say. And guess what? The Fox News host and amateur cultural critic freaking loves the musical, thinks that New Yorkers (with French accents, of course!) hate it because they’re snobby, and goes on to explain how it’s a huge, brilliant metaphor for everything he believes. As Benjamin Sutton at The L Magazine sums it up, according to Beck, “Turn Off the Dark, it turns out, is a musical blockbuster about the American academic-scientific industry’s god complex, the lies surrounding global warming rhetoric, and the villainous research funded by big government.” Aha. Listen to the whole, surreal rant after the jump and follow along as we pick out Beck’s craziest theories and funniest words of praise.
“The reason why Spider-Man is being panned is because, uh, [in a French accent] ‘This isn’t theater, eh? Music by Bono, who is this Bono? Of course he does a lot of charity, which I like, I think he was down in Haiti. But it’s still rock!'” (Glenn Beck has a point here. Liberals really seem to freaking hate Bono. And rock ‘n roll.)
“It’s all global warming, this scientist — an atheist, god-like scientist who’s in bed with a giant government that is using the global warming scientist and all the global warming hype for their own purposes. He’s being used by them, he thinks he’s using them for the money.”
“So you have the press in collusion with an out-of-control scientist madman who’s just trying to save the world by stitching on wings to people and a government that is out of control and using all of them.”
“This is the best show I’ve ever seen, bar none. Heads and shoulders above anything else.”
“I am not a fan of U2. I don’t like U2!… All this music was written by Bono and U2, and it is brilliant. The lyrics! It is hit after hit after hit after hit after hit. When they release a CD of the music, it will be one of their biggest selling albums.”
“Five people, I thought, deserved standing ovations. If I go again, I’m standing at the person who is the fifth one because they’re all better from there.”
“The stage is the eighth wonder of the world.”
“You know how I feel about unions. But you also know how I feel about the people who actually make things happen. It is wrong for the theater and for the cast to take a bow and not have the people, the stagehands, come out and take a bow. I would pay money to sit behind the scenes and just watch the stagehands in the balcony.”
“Here’s my problem with it: They spent $50 million. It will have to be sold out, every ticket, for two years to break even. My problem with this is, I didn’t invest. It will run for two decades.”