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Glenn's Show Prep

What is happening to American entertainment?

August 14, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Earlier this week, TheBlaze reported the story of Rebeca Seitz, a publicist and mother who is fed up with Hollywood’s exploitation of sex. According to TheBlaze:

It all started last week as Rebeca Seitz of Naples, Florida, was enjoying some morning television. As commercials began to air, she could hardly believe her eyes. While she was watching “Good Morning America,” an advertisement for the ABC show “Betrayal” came on, featuring a male and female in the midst of a steamy sex scene. The commercial for the show was apparently graphic, exposing her 8-year-old son to extremely unpalatable content.

Seitz, who first posted the story on Facebook (before being asked to remove the post because of it’s graphic content), wrote a blog post about the incident that has now gained national attention. On radio this morning, Glenn spoke to Seitz about her experience and how conservatives can reclaim the culture.

Below is a rough transcript of the interview:

GLENN: Now the third story is somebody else who's doing the very same thing. This is a story I read about last night on the Blaze. It's about just a mom. She was watching ABCs good morning America. And she was watching with her 8-year-old son. And there was a graphic sexual image on the screen. I mean really graphic. And it was for a show called Betrayal. And she about lost her mind. The story is up on the Blaze but she's with us now. She's Rebecca Seitz. Hello Rebecca, how are you?

REBECA SEITZ: I'm better today than I was Thursday morning.

GLENN: Tell the story exactly what happened.

REBECA SEITZ: Well, my husband was on a business trip and school starts here pretty soon, so I'm letting the kids sleep in a few more days and we slept in and they slept in my bed with my because daddy was gone so we did not roll out of bed until a little after 8 and my son a got up at the same time we came into the living room and most mornings, we turn on the news. We flip back and born between GMA and headline news and I do that so that he can see what's going on in the world. We can talk about what's going on in the world. I can seek him to process things there will always be wild fires and earthquakes. And it went to commercial. And I looked up and I thought, that, I did not just see what I just saw. There's no way they just aired that at 8:30 in the morning and I turned to my son and his, his eyes had gone so wide and he looked at the T.V. and he looked at me and I quickly, I got it off. And I pause it on a different image. And I told him to go to the refrigerator where he couldn't see the television and my daughter, thankfully she was waking up and she was still in my bedroom. She couldn't see yet and I rewound it thinking it won't be what we think we saw. And so I'll be able to explain to him that's what we just saw. When I rewound it and saw, no, these were two completely nude people, similating sex with, with the camera was four inches below their waste, I thought, oh, okay. My husband will have to have a conversation request him about this. So I snapped the picture and I texted it to my husband and I said your son just saw this, you'll need to have a conversation with him when he goes home. I'm talking to him now, but you'll have to do the man to man thing when you get home. And he couldn't believe it. And I thought, you know, I worked in the entertainment industry the media industry a long time. And for most of my friends op Facebook are also in that industry and I thought they won't believe this we'll be an I believe to do something about it. If they knew about it.

GLENN: Nope.

REBECA SEITZ: I put it up on Facebook.

GLENN: No, they are not going to do anything about it. What happened then, Rebecca?

REBECA SEITZ: I then got a note from Facebook telling me I had violated their community standards, which I replied yeah, that's kind of the point here. And they took it down. And a friend of mine, people had already started commenting on it. A friend of mine messaged me. She said you need to put in on your blog so people can keep talking about this if Facebook has taken it down. I said okay. My blog is this, it's not this big, you know, media destination. It's friends and clients go to see what I've been thinking about. I put it on my blog so that those people on Facebook could still go over there and talk. And it just, it went nuts. All of these people seeing it going, I cannot believe that was on your television. At 8:30 in the morning.

GLENN: It's amazing to me that ABC has lower standards than Facebook does.

REBECA SEITZ: I know.

GLENN: That's amazing. You wrote, I understand that we've seeded the idea of morality in prime time a moron in this case move. But one, we in, by we, I mean, Jesus, following folk, have to own. What do you mean by that.

REBECA SEITZ: Well, I grew up in that generation where our president told us that it depended on what the definition of is. And everything became very relevant. At least in my generation. So you made your own truths. You made your own standards. There were no absolutes. That he is what we were being taught anyway. We were taught if we believed there were absolutes, moral absolutes, we needed to hush. We were completely not cool. Out of the mainstream. We needed to shut up. I think a lot of us did. I know I did. And so, I think in, in shutting up, and sitting down. We ceded a hat of the ground that we're looking at now going, oh, my gosh, how did it get to that point? It got to that point because we weren't there. And that's been the big eye opener to all of these responses on my blog and on TheBlaze, of how many of these people are posting, I just throughout the cable box, I throughout television years and we just don't have it and I keep asking these people, if you do that, then what will our children have in ten years if we just leave, then we have no voice. We have no say in what's on that T.V, if we just leave. We have to stay and fix it. We have to stay and have a voice. And so this has been the big eye opener for me.

PAT: Rebecca you mentioned that you've been in media for a long time. What, what do you do or what have you done?

REBECA SEITZ: I started an agency for novelists and I have an agency side at Glass Road and we manage artists and help them get their work out there and a couple years ago, we, I started getting more involved in film and television from a creation standpoint. I always booked my clients on film, on television. But I had not had a part in creating it. A couple years ago I started going into that realm and I realized that there was this incredible bias on the production side. If you are conservative or a person of faith, that pretty much the closet you have to stay in if you have to get anything maybe.

GLENN: Not anymore.

REBECA SEITZ: I thought that's insane. I'm not saying you can't make a movie because you don't share my faith. Why are you saying I can't make a move fees because I have faith. That makes no sense. So these when we started spirit of signs to sort of gather other people faith who were feeling this way who weren't making necessarily religious movies or T.V. shows or books, just good solid entertainment, that they were running into walls trying do get it out there.

GLENN: So Rebecca, I mean, I don't mean to be an egotist here at all by any stretch of the imagination by asking you this question: Do you know who I am?

REBECA SEITZ: You know, it's funny that you ask because when we started, my husband took up the mantra, you have got to get to Glenn Beck and I kept saying, do you know who Glenn Beck is? Do you know how many people are around him? That will happen in the Lord's timing. It will happen if the Lord has that, which I guess he did.

GLENN: Yeah. That's amazing. Well, it's happened because you were braver and you did the right thing. But that's, you know, I just, I just bought a movie studio. This is the movie studio where she shoot an in studio a. We have three studios we're about to build. I think five more. But they are these movies studios, this is where they did Robocop. This is where they did Silkwood. This is where they did some of the other for Forrest Gump was in here I think. This did prison breakout of this studio. And we just bought it. And one of the reasons I mean people think that we're just going to do the news. But we're not. And I'm not going do be doing religious shows per se. I'm going to be doing shows that have values and principles that won't, that won't insult people. And I will tell you, that one thing that came to mind here is, like-minded people, a have to stand together. So, you should get to know us. And we should get do know you. But the other thing that I wrote is, it's time now. We've been toying around with a, a, with one another show, and it's a morning show. These morning shows like ABC, Good Morning America, it's crap. And it's, when people understand and you know, you're kind of just kind of coming into it and you've booked, I've done these shows. And I know what these shows are and I know how they work and I do this for I an living. This is business. And what they are doing is, they are selling a lot of these segments to corporate sponsors. The reason why they talk about health or global warming whatever, is because they are sold. And so, they sell that as a package. So what you are digesting every day, and you're saying with your son, you're seeing these things, they are only there because they were sold and they are making money for these people. And that's the only reason why they are doing the story. And the rest of it is TMZ. The rest of it is garbage news. And, and we've been talking about that it's, it's about time to launch a morning show, on television. That can compete. Because this either just vac cue with us, and it's just happy talk, nonsense, or, it is just Hollywood, and, and sold sponsorship nonsense. Mornings are a dumping ground for networks and they can't be a dumping ground because too many people get up every morning and watch it. And I think there's a better way of doing it. May I make a recommendation that you don't stop on this. And because I know, because I know how this industry works, if you want to make an impact with ABC you don't go do ABC. Don't worry about ABC. Don't worry about anybody that works at ABC. You go to the mouse house. And you start kicking up dust about how your a, a mother, and you are starting to gather steam and you're going to start protesting in front of, Orlando and in Los Angeles and you're going to start a campaign, against how the guys who are trying to bring your children in, are the same people that are exposing your children to pornography and I guarantee you, you will see changes. I guarantee it.

REBECA SEITZ: Well, we will absolutely get on that. We have, we do have a gathering in October, of all of these other film makers and television production people and author's, who are coming here to Naples to talk about this. About how go we make better content. How do we get it out to the masses. So --

GLENN: I tell you what, I'm going to put you on hold. I'm going to have you talk to one of our producers. They're going to put you in touch with Joel Cheatwood. He's the president of content for my company. But I don't want you to lose focus on what you're doing here. Also on this, on the bringing this up to ABCs attention. Because you're exactly right. We cede the ground and it not time to draw line in the sand. That time is over the time to draw a line in the sand and say we're not passing this point that's over. It is now time to walk across that line, and advance the flag. And you have the opportunity to do it. Because you're a real genuine person. Get them.

REBECCA SEITZ: Thank you for that.

GLENN: Thanks a lot, Rebecca.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.