Here’s a story idea: Glenn Beck is a superhero (stay with me) and the theme park that he’s building is going to be his headquarters. He’s out to save America not only by fighting its enemies directly, but by informing people of the hidden enemies within. Now, hold on, here’s the catch. See, Beck is often criticized for his revisionist views of history, where verifiable facts seen twisted and distorted to fit a particular agenda. Except that Superhero Beck is actually from an alternate reality where things did happen the way he says they did, and there are sinister people with hidden agendas trying to manipulate society. How he got to our reality is unknown, but he’s actually seen these things happen, and he’s operating on the assumption that was was true on his Earth is equally true here.
Now, remove Beck’s name if it makes you uncomfortable, file off the serial numbers and make it an original character. Imagine how this character would be written by Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis. We’re left with a guy who’s really sincere in his beliefs and absolutely trying to save the world. Unfortunately, he’s in the wrong reality, with the wrong facts, and he ends up as an unwitting supervillain. There’s a lot of potential for interesting stories in there.
Interesting idea, but some of Beck’s economic claims seem like they wouldn’t work in any reality, even one with conspiracies. It would have to be an alternate universe where human nature was radically different.
I agree that in the United States society has historically been manipulated by various groups for various reasons. Not all bad or good. A couple that come to mind are the Skull and Bones and Freemasons. Both predominately white organisations.
Glenn Beck is a member of yet another secret society, Mormonism. People outside of the influence of the church do not have a clue how much power the Mormon church wields today in society. We dodged a huge Mormon bullet by defeating Romney. Yet another Mormon Beck, pounds the Mormon agenda to millions across America on a daily basis. I consider Beck, like Sean Hannity, very dangerous because people actually believe the crap they say.
Actually, the published universe of 5th/6th Edition Champions RPG has a very similar concept. It’s nearest equivalent to Marvel’s Magneto is the mutant kinetic energy controller Kinematik (previously “Momentum”). Kinematik had been a superhero in a universe parallel to the Champions U, until a popular totalitarian regime took over the UN, beefed it up into a world police-state that scapegoated mutants. As they were rounded up and gulaged and/or exterminated, Kinematik escaped to the CU with experimental tech. Seeing parallels there with the early rise of the anti-mutant regime in his native universe, he became a mutant-rights extremist villain doing anything to prevent a similar outcome.
That’s cool. I’ll have to check it out.