Lost in the New York Times profile of rising Fox News star Glenn Beck is any mention of his out-there (in every sense) bio. Sure, Beck (who was a best-selling author and popular talk radio star before Fox lured him away from HLN) cries about how much he loves America and worries about what will happen when Marxism-under-Obama begins and FEMA opens its concentration camps.  But did you know that he is also a recovering alcoholic? The kind that won’t shut up?

As a friend of Bill W’s myself, I have a lot of respect for the power of recovery and the demands of honesty it  places on people, really I do. And in many a 12-step meeting I have grappled with my own feelings of impatience, judgment and flat-out orneriness while someone has droned on about their cat or their printer. “But enough about me, let me tell you about my miserable childhood.” For a good example of what I’m talking about, check out Anne Hathaway’s painful rehearsal party speech in . 

The tendency to say anything, and believe it’s valid and important because I’ve said and felt it, doggone it, can make for good comedy. Al Franken, back before he was an almost-Senator, had great fun with 12-step earnestness in the guise of , and Beck’s own unhinged rants are already being collected as found poetry on Salon. I’m sure many non-conservatives Tivo Beck’s five o’clock newscast just so they can watch him later as they smoke a fatty. (When Stephen Colbert parodied Beck you couldn’t tell which twin had the tony. As Colbert said in admiration, “Crank up the crazy and rip off the knob.”)

But I think underlying Beck’s appeal -- aside from the blatant populism and fear-mongering of Fox’s traditionally paranoid audience -- is his emotional nature. Look at Obama: he’s too cool for school. When Leno asked him about his first ride on Air Force One, he riffed on his daughters who were only interested in the containers full of Starbursts. “That’s a whole ‘nother level of cool,” he said, given that they were now the president’s daughters and they were flying over the Washington Monument. A kind of cool that’s genetic. 

What Beck has is the anti-cool. He’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Shown a clip of Lawrence Harvey’s famous rant in Network (), the anchor said he could relate. Anger is an energy, as  observed. And the right could use some energy about now.