Addiction is an awful thing. Whether addicted to drugs, or whether one is an "adrenaline junky", there's nothing one will stop at to get that next fix. The other aspect of the addiction is the contradictory problems of always trying to recapture that first time, and the reality that each time it takes a little more just to get to the same level as before. The body adjusts and works against the craving. This is why adrenaline junkies take on bigger risks. In my opinion, Glenn Beck is addicted to fame.

He is certainly an admitted addict. He has battled booze and drugs and is in recovery for those. Like a lot of addicts though, they simply replace their completely destructive addiction with one less so (or more socially acceptable) like coffee or cigarettes. In Beck's case, however, I feel he has replaced it with the rush he gets from fame. It matters not whether it is favorable or critical, he just craves the attention, and he'll do whatever it takes to get it in bigger doses.

After several unsuccessful stints in radio doing the zany zoo crew thing, he found his voice in political talk. After six years on the radio, he found his way onto TV via CNN (thanks CNN ). Two years later, he jumped ship for FOX.

For Beck, this must have been akin to the junky walking into the heroin factory. The atmosphere there seems to reward feeding one's id, and so it has been with Beck. He's applied the outrageous "stunts" behavior of a morning zoo crew to the very serious discussion of politics, with ever increasing offensiveness:

• Asking Muslim congressman-elect Keith Ellison, a guest on his show, to "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies..."


• Saying about President Obama: "This guy is - I believe - a racist"


• Tossing a live frog into boiling water.

Of course, there are also the stupid stunts, the chalkboard, the sets reminiscent of 1984, the crying... Some people may chalk this up to simply being an "attention whore", but given his past addictions, his mother's addictions, it's not really a stretch to say this goes beyond a simple craving. This is a need.

His ratings have been stellar, so there's definitely an audience for it (there was an audience for Jerry Springer too - perhaps the same audience). However, his comment about President Obama was a little too over the top; his advertisers have been jumping ship like rats as the boat goes down. Color of Change has been at the forefront of pushing the advertising boycott, and have done very well at it. According to their website, 62 advertisers have pulled out of his show.

In the TV/Radio business, rating are key because ratings translate to money. However, if the ratings don't translate to money, then there is a problem for FOX. They can keep propping him up and hope the controversy fades, or they can drop him. In the story of the goose that lays the golden egg, the family got greedy and cut open the goose. In this case, FOX's golden egg layer eviscerated himself.

For junkies, it usually requires that they "hit bottom" before the actually get help. With the advertising boycott, the outrage over the frog incident, and the recent murder of a census worker after Beck's conflating the census and ACORN and painting both with the brush of fear, one can only hope that bottom is fast approaching.

Then it will be time for Beck to admit he has a problem. That's always the first step.

EDIT: Apparently, the YouTube that everyone's seen was edited to remove Beck's final comment that the frog was fake. Here's a video segment that shows what happened (note: it's Beck explaining what happened, so steel yourselves). I find it irritating that someone would purposely misrepresent what actually happened in this way. It does not help us.

That said - I think the fact that he pulled this stunt in the first place knowing full well it would create a ruckus does not change the conclusions I drew in today's blog.