A video posted to YouTube a few weeks ago making the rounds across the internet apparently shows Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck having Vicks applied under his eyes in order to cry on cue for a photo shoot.
One blog, Sensico, mocks, "This is only shocking video to those that love Glenn Beck and think he cries non-stop because he 'loves this country.'"
The blog links to a montage of Beck crying jags put to the theme song of "The Crying Game" as sung by Boy George: YouTube link.
In April, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert mocked one of Beck's tear-ups, by pretending to be choked up about it: "I'm sorry. I just love Glenn Beck's sanity -- and I fear for it."
Of course, using Vicks to cry during a staged photo shot wouldn't be the same as using it to produce tears on television about how the country "is turning Socialist." So, until another tape surfaces showing Beck getting the Vicks treatment before a rant on Fox, it would be premature to speculate that he only emits fugazi tears.
But if Beck is outed as a Vicks-enabled weeper, then there are other tricks of the trade he can employ.
A wikiHOW manual offers many suggestions such as, "Make a crying face, which usually involves closing your eyes and scrunching your face."
"Turn the corners of your lips down a little," the manual advises. "Try to force the inner corners of your eyebrows upwards. Wrinkle up your chin like people do right before they start bawling."
However, the manual notes, "This may look faked." So, another suggestion is to "try pinching hard in some sensitive parts of your body," and "tears will automatically flow down."
UPDATE
In a post entitled "Internet Finally Discovers Glenn Beck Photoshoot Video, Freaks Out," Huffington Post's Jason Linkins blogs, "Depending on your point of view, this is either the object demonstration of a time-tested photographer's trick, or the SMOKING GUN THAT WILL BRING DOWN GLENN BECK'S EMPIRE OF FAKE TEARS! As you might surmise, I am opting to err on the side of calmness and serenity, because Gawker posted this video about two weeks ago, and the Republic survived."
Gawker did indeed post the video about two weeks ago, after it was first "published exclusively in June," which we (staff and readers who send tips) somehow missed.
From Gawker's two week old blog post:
It's difficult to take a performance artist like Glenn Beck too seriously when he keeps breaking out of character. For instance: Time's new cover is another photo of him by Jill Greenberg, a liberal he pretends to hate.The photo comes from a shoot Greenberg — whom Beck has lambasted as a liberal photo-agitator — did for a GQ story on Beck back in June, in which she made the emotionally unstable Mormon cry. Hey, as long as she makes him look good, right?
Here's the deeply unsettling behind-the-scenes video we obtained of a bawling Beck at that shoot, which we first published exclusively in June.
From Gawker's June post:
GQ assigned photographer Jill Greenberg to shoot Glenn Beck for an interview, in a cheeky homage to Greenberg's notorious series of crying children. Funny! Hey, didn't Beck accuse Greenberg of "terrorizing" children for those photos? Of course he did.Beck's penchant for hysterical tears makes the pairing obvious—why not ask a photographer famous for taking pictures of crybabies to shoot a blubbering TV personality? But Greenberg is an officially designated public enemy of the right wing: Last year, when she was hired by the Atlantic to shoot John McCain, she boasted of taking extra shots of McCain deliberately lit to make him look old and leaving "his eyes red and his skin looking bad." Also, she posted photoshopped outtakes on her web site featuring a monkey shitting on McCain's head.
The following video was posted to YouTube on September 17:
