That didn't take too long. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has a column coming out tomorrow (which I won't link to because of my theory that this is all about the flame bait and web hits). The article basically states that Glenn Beck is more admired than The Pope. Ah, the cherry-picking! So, the original poll (Gallup, based on 1025 surveyed adults, estimated +/- 4% error rate) does seem to show that if you look at one particular piece of it whilst ignoring everything else. However....

If you actually read the numbers, you see that in the Men category, everybody below Barack Obama (for the aggregate general public of all political persuasions) are literally within the margin of error of ZERO. That's right, nobody but Barack Obama had more than 4% of the combined total, and only George W Bush (the Republicans' #1 at 11% of Republicans) and Nelson Mandella had more than 2% of the combined total.

Even when you go to the Republicans only, Glen Beck still had 3%. To me, this looks like the Washington Post is paying their columnists for either the # of comments or the # of hits on their web site, because that'd be about the only reason to write such a reactionary piece of drivel.

And, I'm not even sure that you could argue that this is "good for the liberal cause" as he likes to be. Most people will read maybe the headline and the first paragraph, and they'll believe that this is true. Republicans will think that Beck is well thought of by everybody but them, and Democrats will think that all Republicans are idiots because they admire this guy. In the end, neither is the case.

Today, we heard of the passing of Deborah Howell, the former Ombudsman of the Washington Post. I can't say that she was a personal friend, but I did have correspondence with her on a few occasions and she was one of the reasons I thought the Post might recover...I can't help but think that I'm happy she never had to read this drivel.