Glenn Beck, Time Magazine Coverboy

Well, this should piss off a lot of people. The coming week's issue of Time magazine features Glenn Beck on its cover. The headline of story, by David Von Drehle, asks "Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?," an echo of the magazine's January 13, 1995 cover story Beck's precursor in conservative pot-stirring, Rush Limbaugh, that wondered, "Is Rush Limbaugh Good for America?"

In fact, Time has long shown a tropism to conservative mouthpieces. Remember Ann Coulter as "Ms. Right" in April 25, 2005? (That, too, had an earlier echo: Witness William Rehnquist as "Reagan's Mr. Right" from June 30, 1986.) Newt Gingrich has appeared on the cover five times, including as Man of the Year in 1995. William F. Buckley, Father Coughlin (whom Beck has been compared to repeatedly), Pat Buchanan, Ralph Reed, and Karl Rove have all graced the cover, as has an elephant's wrinkled rear. (And that's leaving out the dozens of covers featuring Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney.) If Time were to do a cover story on its own cover stories about conservatives, it might use the headline: "America's Magazine's Love Affair with the Right."

In the article, Von Drehle calls Beck "the pudgy, buzz-cut, weeping phenomenon of radio, TV, and books." He also favorably compares Beck to some of the mainstream media's biggest stars, writing, "There are bigger one-voice enterprises in the world: Oprah, Rush, Dr. Phil. But few are more widely diversified. In June, estimators at Forbes magazine pegged Beck's earnings over the previous 12 months at $23 million, a ballpark figure confirmed by knowledgeable sources, and this year's revenues are on track to be higher."

Beck as the new Oprah? Yikes. Then again, he does move units like the queen of television. On Salon Wednesday, Alexander Zaitchik looked at Cleon Skousen, a semi-obscure right-wing thinker Beck has taken an interest in and found that Beck turned a reprint of the late author's The 5,000 Year Leap to a No. 1 seller on Amazon this year. Sure, Oprah never picked a book that could be described as "a textbook full of aggressively selective quotations intended for conservative religious schools." But who knows: She has a new Book Club selection today, so we'll know soon enough.