Glenn Beck, the Connecticut Years

YPM contributor Mark Oppenheimer provides links to two big profile of Glenn Beck and offers his own observations and questions.

Part 3 of the massive Salon profile includes an extensive look-back at Beck's New Haven period starting with:

Beck and Gray arrived at KC101's dumpy little studio building in early 1992. They were morning-show bounty hunters, brought to town to capture the scalps of the dominant morning team in the market -- the "bad boy" duo of Brian Smith and Bruce Barber of WPLR, which had established a lock on the prized 18-to-34 demo. Beck and Gray were famished for the success that had eluded them in Baltimore. A profile for the New Haven Register quoted their new boss, Faith Zila, marveling that the two spent up to eight hours prepping for every show. "I haven't seen anyone spend that kind of time," Zila said. "These guys would kill for a ratings win and I'm the same way."

It also includes the by-now-somewhat-familiar Lieberman connection:

One local politician who appreciated Beck's regular digs at the governor was the man who had defeated Weicker in a bitterly contested 1988 senate race: Democrat Joe Lieberman. Beck and the senator were friendly throughout the '90s, until they fell out over Lieberman's refusal to back the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998. But before they parted ways, Lieberman would play a role in Beck's search for a worldview and identity by helping Beck enroll part-time at Yale in the fall of 1996. The ADHD-diagnosed Beck didn't last long at Yale. He took one class, "Early Christology," and dropped out.

The Times piece dwells less on Beck's New Haven years, but offers this:

By the mid-’90s, Beck had been married, divorced, pony tailed and seemingly at a dead end. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, reluctantly attending his first meetings in a church basement in Cheshire, Conn. The olive-green-carpet episode was formative but not a singular turning point. “It was more a point of recognition,” Beck told me. “Are you going to stand or are you going to grow up? Are you going to succeed or fail, live or die? What is it going to be? There weren’t any angels or the sky opening up.”

This has nothing to do with Connecticut, but the Times piece has this spot-on observation about what makes Beck different:

There is something feminine about Beck — the soft features, the crying on the air, the reflexive vulnerability. It sets him apart from the standard, testosterone-addled rant artists of cable and talk radio. Women tune into Beck’s radio show more heavily than they do to other conservative commentators, says Chris Balfe, the president and chief operating officer of Mercury, which employs more than 40 people. And Beck’s television show is on at 5 p.m. Eastern, traditionally a slot with more women viewers. (On a typical day, Beck’s show is recorded on more DVRs than any other cable-news program.) But Beck also appeals to a more traditionally female sensibility. “He works through things in real time,” Balfe told me. “Maybe he’ll come back tomorrow and say, ‘You know what, I’ve given this some thought, and here’s what I’m thinking now.’ ” Or maybe he’ll come back sooner. Within a few sentences of proposing Obama’s “deep-seated hatred for white people,” he added this caveat: “I’m not saying that he doesn’t like white people.”