Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly have had it with parent companies getting involved with the content of cable news! They are talking, of course, about News Corporation General Electric.

The Republican Party continues to eat itself and Glenn Beck compares himself to Martin Luther King Jr. in one clip!

Glenn Beck updated viewers about David Buckner, the antitax pundit who passed out on his Fox News show yesterday. Turns out he's fine, but Beck has gone gay!

Glenn Beck turned up this morning to bathe in the warm sycophancy of Fox & Friends, and to tell the heroic tale of how he saved a fainting man's life on television yesterday.

David Buckner, an anti-tax professor at Columbia University, passed out live on the air during Glenn Beck's increasingly insane broadcast this afternoon.

Columbia University psychology professor David Buckner appeared on Glenn Beck's show on Fox News this afternoon. Based on the clip above, we're guessing Beck probably won't be inviting him back again any time soon. At least not without a note from his doctor. [YouTube]

• Amazon.com is in the hot seat for stripping gay and lesbian books of their sales rankings, something the bookseller is now calling a "glitch." [EW, WSJ]
• MSNBC is reportedly in the process of developing a weekend political show to be moderated by chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd. [NYO]
• More bad news for barely-living BlackBook: its longtime fashion director is out. And Jann Wenner's marketing chief is leaving Wenner Media. [WWD]
• Alpha Media has laid off a handful of employees at Maxim, including deputy editor Chris Wilson and editor-at-large Steve Garbarino. [NYO]
• Magazines are looking to raise subscription rates to save themselves. [NYT]

The shows sound pretty awful. Fox News host Beck told USA Today his live shows are a sort of "poor man's Seinfeld," which would make them conservative shows about nothing. "Conservative" in this context apparently means "not funny, to anyone," judging from the clip at left.

Specifically, old-fashioned "the commies are stealing our essence" talk followed by this hilarious conversation:

It's worth remembering the fictional newsman of the moment, Howard "I'm mad as hell" Beale from Network, was actually mentally ill. Now Beale's closest modern analog is himself stumbling toward insanity.

Well that didn't take long. America must drop everything and deal with this pirate menace! Where are the Marines? Piracy is the new terrorism! Call out the big jets! We need serious "cannon fire":

Glenn Beck takes his lumps from Fox News colleagues Shep Smith and Dennis Miller, but that's OK, because the Fox & Friends crew will happily fluff his ego back into shape each morning.

Insanely weepy Glenn Beck will probably cry over what it means for our country, but Stephen Colbert's thorough Tuesday-night takedown of the Fox News host is, in one way, a compliment.

Bill O'Reilly is on a media tour this week—he was on The View this morning, gave two interviews published today, and is scheduled to appear on Late Night With David Letterman tomorrow. Take that, Beck!

• Mark Bowden's 11,000-word profile of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. for the May issue of Vanity Fair is now online. And it ain't pretty. [VF]
• In other Times news, the paper is scrapping its "City" section and has shut down the International Herald Tribune website. [NYO, E&P]
• For the first time, CNN will finish March behind MSNBC and Fox News. [AP]
• He's only been on the air two months, but Glenn Beck's "conservative populist anger" has already put him right behind Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. [NYT]
• Adweek, MediaWeek and Brandweek may be folded together. [NYP]
• News Corp. is hiring ex-AOL CEO Jon Miller to lead its digital division. [WSJ]
• The Huffington Post is launching an investigative journalism site. [AP]
• MTV is bringing back music videos! Sort of. [NYT]

Deep down, past the creepy post-apocalyptic conservative rhetoric like "we surround them" and "you are not alone," who is Glenn Beck? "A rodeo clown," he told the New York Times. Or maybe worse.

Glenn Beck has been milking his faux populism for ratings gold, but he's walled off his $4.2 million estate behind a 6-foot barrier to keep the poors out. And we hear his neighbors aren't happy.

Fox News' in-house embarrassment and populist demagogue wannabe Glenn Beck tried to explain the whole economic mess with a dead fish. Which he was so afraid to touch that he had to wear rubber gloves.

Twitter is so fresh and so now! It's where rumors get debunked and celebrities break up! And yet media people like James Poniewozik, Caroline McCarthy, and Bonnie Fuller make it just as banal as ever:

Beck (pictured here, at home) has gone off the deep end, rehashing ancient John Bircher conspiracy theories, pointing his growing audience toward extremist literature, and gleefully (and tearfully) playing at unstable demagoguery. This doesn't sit well with Mr. Frum, who'd maybe like to see the Republican party win elections instead of forming paramilitary militias in fortified rural compounds. (YOU ARE NOT ALONE, WE SURROUND THEM, I'M WORRIED FOR THIS COUNTRY—we think we know where that sort of argument is headed!)