Glenn Beck: Duh, winning!

The New York Times' David Carr has a much-talked-about column tonight suggesting that executives at Fox News Channel have the long knives out for the man he calls "Mr. Beck":

But a funny thing happened on the way from the revolution. Since last August, when he summoned more than 100,000 followers to the Washington mall for the "Restoring Honor" rally, Mr. Beck has lost over a third of his audience on Fox — a greater percentage drop than other hosts at Fox. True, he fell from the great heights of the health care debate in January 2010, but there has been worrisome erosion — more than one million viewers — especially in the younger demographic.

He still has numbers that just about any cable news host would envy and, with about two million viewers a night, outdraws all his competition combined. But the erosion is significant enough that Fox News officials are willing to say — anonymously, of course; they don't want to be identified as criticizing the talent — that they are looking at the end of his contract in December and contemplating life without Mr. Beck.

You could see this coming, although I never saw this coming so fast. Even last spring as I was wrapping up work on my book "The Backlash" on the rise of the various Tea Party movements, a book in which Glenn Beck figures prominently, I could see Beck crossing a Rubicon with the passage of health care -- which he and his followers felt certain they were stopping until they didn't. Within days, Beck was less political, more religious, and more apocalyptic, leading up to his head-scratching rally on the National Mall last August. Keeping viewer interest meant stretching the bounds of insanity night after night, and in recent days that rubber band has finally snapped.

These days, I've been more worried about people in a position to do real harm, such as Pennsylvania's scary new governor. But that's the thing. I can't get too happy about what's happening with Beck, because still in a weird way he's duh, winning. In bringin' tha very crazy -- like that coming Muslim caliphate -- he's managed to make the still-pretty-crazy -- high-speed rail is socialism, or Pa's Gov. Corbett's refusal to tax fracking -- part of the mainstream debate. We'll be undoing the damage years after Mr. Beck is gone from your high-def TV.