Glenn Beck Fails at Veganism, Life

Ever since Facebook encouraged me to start counting my friends, I've become more and more aware of certain friend "deal breakers." In a romantic relationship, a deal breaker might be something like "has a quick temper" or "has feet that are too stinky." There's no negotiating when it comes to deal breakers, and they're intensely personal; no two people have the same set of deal breakers.

I'd always known about relationship deal breakers, ever since I discovered my first one: "carries a Vera Bradley man purse (and calls it a 'murse')."

But Facebook deal breakers only came about with the introduction of the news feed. Now that my Facebook friends could broadcast so much information about themselves so quickly (and now that I could access it so effortlessly), Facebook deal breakers started becoming apparent.

I had a Facebook friend who would often update his status with angry/angsty song lyrics followed by vindictive messages directed toward whatever girl he had just broken up with. Deal breaker. Emily was invited to a wedding via a Facebook event. Deal breaker.

But if you want to get un-friended by me, the most surefire way to do it is to post anything that indicates any modicum of support for or belief in anything Glenn Beck says or does.

Photo: redglitterx
(Note: this picture is clearly photoshopped and doesn't represent
an actual "equation" fabricated by Glenn Beck.)

That's why I was so disturbed when I learned that Glenn had gone vegan. As much as I abhor everything he stands for and promotes, I couldn't complain about having another vegan in the world. And it was something we had in common. Shudder.

Of course, he complained about it nonstop. Granted, he was adhering to a raw vegan diet, which is pretty hardcore. But calling the food "vomitus" is a bit much.

More interesting to me is the discussion that ensued in the comments section of the report from vegansaurus!. Some readers, like me, had the initial reaction to be glad about anyone going vegan, regardless of how terrible he or she is. But others believe that veganism is, at its core, an oppositional political position in line with anti-sexism and anti-racism; Glenn, as a sometimes-sexist and a usually-pretty-freaking-racist, is not welcome in the vegan club.

Though I think the connection of veganism to anti-sexism and anti-racism is tenuous at best, I do understand the commenters who are annoyed at Glenn's veganism because of his attitude toward it. It would be one thing if he were embracing it for environmental or ethical reasons; I think it would be awesome to have a conservative personality pushing veganism to his listeners/viewers/cult followers. But he seemed to feel forced into it by health concerns and never had a positive thing to say about the diet. He was just reinforcing the common opinion (which I would imagine is especially prominent among his listeners) that vegans are weirdo hippies. Luckily for my sense of identity, he recently quit:

Photo: vegansaurus!

Said Beck, “I had a bet with my security detail that I could go 21 days on a raw vegan diet, and I made it 20. I made it 20 whole days. I was 23 hours away from winning! And I couldn’t take it anymore.”

If that's not failure, I don't know what is.