WWE recently debuted a new character named Zeb Colter, a Vietnam veteran with a particularly negative view of the current direction of “his country,” complete with racist undertones and far-right political views. Thrust into the spotlight as the manager of wrestler Jack Swagger, the duo quickly gained infamy and raised the ire of Tea Party conservatives who believed they were being villainized, eventually finding their way into the crosshairs of conservative uber-pundit Glenn Beck. Suddenly, the fighting spilled outside the ring and became a major news story for both sides, covered by The Hollywood Reporter, ABC News, and CNN.

While the issue is ostensibly about the negative portrayal of a certain politically-minded group in this country, Glenn Beck and especially WWE have taken advantage of the situation not for political gains, but for the oldest reason in media: publicity. While WWE is no stranger to complaints for its sometimes controversial, violent, and objectifying content, they rarely provide a direct response. More often, they skirt the issue by touting their various positive outreach outside their television programs, with efforts like the anti-bullying Be A Star Campaign, their WrestleMania Reading Challenge, and Superstar John Cena’s 300 plus Make-A-Wish wishes. But in this particular instance, WWE saw a perfect window to not only respond to this criticism, but gain more attention at the same time. They did so with the following video, released on their official YouTube page:

WWE’s response is, like most of their work, over-the-top, direct, and begging for attention. The video begins with a standard WWE-style ‘promo’ where Zeb and Jack run down illegal immigrants, non-English speakers, and World Heavyweight Champion Alberto Del Rio for his Mexican heritage. About one and a half minutes in, however, the characters break the fourth wall, revealing they are standing in front of a green screen with professional lighting and cameras surrounding them. Even more out of character, literally, both men reveal their true names (Wayne Keown and Jake Hager) while emphasizing their nature as entertainers and their role as antagonists in the current story WWE is telling.

What is phenomenal about this presentation from WWE is a complete break in standard operating procedure for the company. For years, WWE has generally insisted upon its performers staying in character during media appearances, sometimes extending into their personal lives as well, as was the case when Serena Deeb was released in 2010 for (allegedly) drinking in public while the character she was portraying was meant to be living a ‘straight-edge,’ alcohol-free lifestyle. What would make WWE change this policy in such a sharp direction, not only allowing performers to break character but officially having them do so?

The answer is, you guessed it, publicity. As I mentioned before, when Breitbart and Glenn Beck originally reacted to the storyline and characters, WWE suddenly saw more mainstream media attention than usual. It didn’t matter what people were saying about the WWE, it only mattered people were suddenly looking in their direction. And with their flagship show WrestleMania just one month away, the extra eyes could not come at a more opportune time. Even before this fight broke out, WWE had been positioning itself strategically to bring in more casual and unconverted fans, resigning Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and making him the new WWE Champion as well as announcing a partnership with Paramount to help promote two of their upcoming releases, both of which, of course, star The Rock. And just this past Monday, they announced Donald Trump as the newest ‘celebrity member’ of their WWE Hall of Fame.

Clearly, WWE saw the increased attention as another opportunity to build buzz during the most crucial time of their year. This is made clear in the video, as Wayne and Jake (now out of character) take the opportunity to promote WWE’s success and PG nature. Although responding to Glenn Beck, they find a way to slip in nuggets of information that sound meant for an investor’s meeting: 14 million US fans, broadcasting in 145 countries, a desirably audience that’s 20% Hispanic, 22% African-American, 35% female, and covers a variety of age groups, oh, and the #1 show on USA Network. Phew. But that’s not all! After comparing themselves to hit shows like Glee and NCIS, WWE takes a shot at primetime television, touting their PG rating by mentioning they do not depict murder, rape, or gun violence.

In the end, WWE extends a challenge to Glenn Beck, offering him five minutes of unedited time on Monday Night Raw to offer a rebuttal. Beck’s response: “Unfortunately, I am currently booked doing anything else.” While seemingly ending the grudge, WWE wouldn’t let a “no” from Beck stop them from keeping the feud going, mocking Beck on this past Monday’s Raw to yet more media coverage, even posting a video of their own Michael Cole trying to get an interview with Beck at Glenn Beck Studios.

For WWE, the extremely rare moment of ‘truth’ and peek behind the curtain offered in these videos were well worth it. The larger controversy they’ve generated with the Tea Party is exactly what they wished for, and the video gave them a chance to not only fend off attacks from a powerful political segment, but gain more mainstream publicity and an outlet for corporate promotional content. As the title of wrestling promoter and former WWE rival Eric Bischoff’s best-selling autobiography says: controversy creates cash.

With Glenn Beck’s upcoming departure from the cable news network that made him a household name and political player, it certainly seems time to reflect on the impact he has had on television news. Although Beck had been in cable news (CNN) prior to his arrival at the Fox News Channel in January 2009, it was the unfettered platform that the conservative network provided Beck to unleash his “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” persona that enabled his stardom. What has transpired since that time is that Beck (with Fox News) has been an enormously influential force in redefining cable television news and the role it plays in the construction political reality. Thus, as he departs Fox News to create his own network (GBTV), here is a cursory look at his legacy:

1. News is Political Entertainment Too: Certainly the lines between entertainment television and serious public affairs programming have been blurring for decades. When we speak of “political entertainment,” though, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher typically come to mind. But Glenn Beck has demonstrated the meshing of entertainment and politics from the other side, that is, “journalism.” For Beck, politics and current events were simply the raw material for his spectacularly entertaining performances of right-wing ideology. With a wardrobe of Viking helmets and 3D glasses, demonstrative stunts (gasoline cans and boiling frogs), and a professorial chalkboard, Beck entertainmentized public affairs on a news channel, all while arguing that he was delivering valuable public information important to a democratic polity. As he ventured on comedy tours and political rallies outside the television box, he demonstrated further how politics and entertainment are largely one and the same, free and open to all performers who can capitalize on public passions and the audience’s desire to participate in such “non-fiction” performances.

2. News Creates Political Reality: Following J. L. Austin’s theory of performativity, speech acts—including the news—don’t just report on reality, they are capable of creating reality as well. A variety of political players have honed this to an art form in the contemporary political arena (Sarah Palin’s “Death Panels”), but Glenn Beck became a regular and reliable fount of such political reality creation. It doesn’t matter whether what he asserted was untrue—Obama as racist; Obama favoring the Muslim Brotherhood; socialism=fascism; Van Jones as “radical revolutionary communist;” Sharia law in America. It only matters that his viewers believed these things to be so, and they do so in part because of the authoritative platform from which Beck speaks. When numerous Republican presidential contenders assert their vigilance against the assertion of Shariah law during the first Republican presidential debate of the 2012 campaign season, one begins to see just how powerful such reality creation has become.

3. There Is No Such Thing as Too Crazy for Journalism: Through Beck, Fox demonstrated that if a host can draw and keep a large audience, that is sufficient for staying on the air, irrespective of the wildly irresponsible and bat-shit crazy statements, antics, and rantings Beck produced. While one might think such antics would hurt Fox’s credibility as a “fair and balanced” “news” network, in fact, Beck served a quite useful purpose in building its brand as a place where liberal ideas and pieties would be attacked with full force. What is more, with Beck defining just how far out the far right could go, he made others at the network—Steve Doocy, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly—seem sane and somewhat moderate by comparison. To stay with the analogy to the movie Network, Sybil the Soothsayer seems, well, completely natural and normal when placed beside Howard Beale.

4. Conspiracy Theories Constitute Legitimate News: Gone are the days when the John Birch Society peddled its conspiracy theories via newsletters, pamphlets, and other small time means of communication. With his “expert” guests, blackboards, documentaries, and readings lists, Beck demonstrated that a news network was the legitimate place for the presentation of all sorts of fanciful political renderings to millions of viewers. A self-taught man, Populist Beck nevertheless saw it his duty to connect the dots of an overarching grand conspiracy of liberal and progressive agents destined to subvert “traditional American values” from within. Beck’s blackboard was literally his canvass, and his viewers were cast a studious pupils ready to receive their lessons in order to save democracy. And here again, the overtly ridiculous nature of Beck’s conspiracy theories only made the network’s other grand conspiracy narratives offered up in its “news” programming—the Ground Zero Mosque, Obama’s birth certificate, Black Panthers intimidating voters—seem legitimate and not too far fetched.

5. News Credibility Is Not What You Think It Is: Irrespective of Beck’s wild assertions and conspiracy theories, Fox felt fully comfortable in having Beck appear across a variety of Fox programs in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Typically an appearance on another program suggests some level of expertise or credibility as a source. Fox smartly realized that Beck, like network contributor Sarah Palin, need not have any credibility as someone with a relationship to truth or facts, only credibility in his or her relationship viewers. If viewers trust in his or her opinions, then the credible truth is what viewers and hosts make it out to be.

Upon announcement of Beck’s departure, Fox noted that it would maintain a relationship with the host as he continued to develop future projects for the network. It is hard to fathom, though, how any such projects could be as significant as these fundamentally redefining aspects of that which now (legitimately?) comprises television news.

Jeff Smith argues in his excellent book, The Presidents We Imagine, that in the Great Depression, we conjured presidents (in various fictional treatments, if not also in the real life FDR) “who could reach deeply enough into citizens’ lives to solve their everyday problems.” In contrast, Glenn Beck conjures a villain—an “other,” a foreign exotic (including name, ethnicity, color, but also education and intellect) who is reaching deeply enough into citizens’ lives—marriage, health care, gun ownership, taxes, liberties—to destroy their “way of life.” If presidents are, like the nation, something we imagine, then the rhetorical project to connect Socialism and Fascism to Obama is not simply a political power play. Socialism and Fascism were real historical dangers (though sometimes they too were imagined). But the residue of those real and imaginary battles with the enemy linger. Obama, thus, is not an opponent in a democratic political arena. He is an enemy that must be eradicated, just as those previous threats were “eradicated.”

The right seeks an escape clause by arguing that what Beck does is no different than the vilification of W. Bush by liberals. Perhaps they base this claim at the level of affect, for in terms of factual specificity, they are simply wrong. Liberals pointed to specific Bush policies—such as the invasion of a sovereign nation, the suspension of the Constitution, an imperial approach to government powers, etc.—as reasons for why he should be voted out of office, if not impeached. For the current rhetorical project of the right, however, it is the vagueness of the attacks—the symbols without concrete or factual referents and their lack of correspondence to reality—that is their power. Sure, they point to specific things like health care reform or the federal stimulus legislation, but those are opposite of what the right says they are—both are efforts that bolster and sustain capitalism. Beck, in particular, has been successful at conjuring other specifics, again as shadow objects (Van Jones, Acorn, “Social Justice” Christians)—entities whose vagueness and obscurity are also their value.

Furthermore, Beck’s usage and deployment of the same techniques as that which he charges Obama of being gives this rhetoric power as well. He employs Fascist techniques in his accusations of Obama as Fascist “other.” As political scientist Murray Edelman argued, we mirror our enemies. Thus, Beck animates the Obama-Fascist he has created—he gives it life. Perhaps the audience should be forgiven for mistaking the exact location of the Fascism in the spaces between the reality and its (mirror) image. But we shouldn’t let Beck’s audience off the hook so easily. For such open signifiers allow audiences to fill them with an array of fears and hatreds, including that of racist thinking (blacks, immigrants, Arabs), economic anxieties (fat cat bankers, the deficit, taxation), and culture war fissures (abortion in the Health Care Reform legislation, supposed federal gun legislation, gay marriage).

Which leaves us with the question of the news media: Does the Miltonian self-righting principle apply here (“Let truth and falsehood grapple; whoever knew truth put to the worst in a free an open encounter”)? Who will supply the truth to counter this (beyond Jon Stewart)? Is this simply partisan speech or clever hate speech? If the former, should it be addressed as aggressively as if it were the latter, with the full moral and ethical weight of the community in near universal rebuke? Does the fact that he appears on Fox News make it seem simply partisan, therefore giving it cover as “acceptable” political speech? All of these questions need answering, and soon, for as history has demonstrated, demagoguery rarely exists without the collatoral damage of real-life victims.