Happy Glenn Beck Week

Apparently we missed the memo that this is Glenn Beck Week. Think of this week as being just like Discovery's Shark Week—only a whole lot nuttier. What else are we supposed to think when we see the Fox News commentator everywhere?

Beck Week started early on last Thursday when Time magazine plastered the self-described "rodeo clown" on its cover and wondered "Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?" The accompanying story, by David Von Drehle, was criticized by some and lauded by others. Beck's Fox News colleague Bill O'Reilly called the cover "Not a hatchet job, but not exactly a Valentine either," because, you know, in O'Reilly's world that's all the media is capable of. Beck told O'Reilly, "[I]t was a huge shock to me to get up, what was it, Thursday morning and see the cover of TIME magazine with my fat face on there." (Apparently it wasn't too much of a shock for Fox News to not link to it prominently from Beck's show's Web site.) The cover also prompted Politico's Michael Calderone to compare Beck to Rush Limbaugh—who also got the Time cover treatment back in the day—and quote The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldafarb saying, "Beck is the man of the moment... Everybody in town is watching him, waiting to see what he'll do next, who he'll take down next."

So true, You can even watch Beck as the first guest on Katie Couric's new CBSNews.com show @katiecouric. (Confidential to CBS News: Throwing an "@" into a title does not make it sound futuristic and/or "cyber.")

In yesterday's New York Times, Couric told Brian Stelter that her show grew out of an impulse to "talk with people and interact and try to peel the layers of the onion back."

Carefully calibrating her words on CBS News' site, Couric says of Beck, "No one has a better feeling for this mood, and no one exploits it as well, as Beck. He is the hottest thing in the political-rant racket, left or right." (Emphasis added for the subtext blind.) Couric, an expert at the smiling takedown and killer soundbite extraction—see her Sarah Palin interview from last year—has been promoting a clip of Beck calling John McCain "weird" and "worse for the country than Barack Obama." That 30-second clip has been reported across the media in advance of the Web series even debuting. You'll have to log onto CBSNews.com tonight at 7 p.m. EST to see if Couric can do the impossible and make Beck cry. Oh, who are we kidding? He'll cry like a kid on the first day of kindergarten.

The New York Times chummed the water this weekend for Beck Week Frank Rich's column and a Week in Review essay by David Segal that compared rappers and Conservative talkers like Beck, an odd premise but amusing in its own way.

Beck Weeks rolls on at Salon where Alexander Zaitchick is filing a three-part series called The Making of Glenn Beck. Today brings installment two, which recounts the host's early days as a "morning zoo" DJ, including this tidbit from Kathie Lincoln, Beck's on-air newsreader on Kentucky's WRKA: "Sometimes he'd prerecord different voices and talk back to the tape, or turn his head side to side while speaking them live on the air. He used to do a funny 'black guy' character, really over-the-top."

A "funny 'black guy' character"? Sounds hilarious.

Since it's only Tuesday, we can only imagine what else Beck Week will bring. Is it too late to get him on Dancing with the Stars?