The Overton Window

Target demographic:

Beckanalian Beckolytes 

My antithetical demographic:

Squishy bearded liberal. I don't even have Fox News

The cover of Glenn Beck’s novel, The Overton Window, features the typical poorly designed thriller layout: the title in large type at the bottom, the author’s name in even larger type at the top, and paranoia inducing artwork underneath. A Statue of Liberty like figure stares out into a faceless sea of skyscrapers. The tone is all blue and looming, with a spattering of birds flying up into the dark clouds. It’s an awful cover. There’s even a lens flare.

Unfortunately the back isn’t any better. More than half of it is devoted to a portrait of the man himself, Glenn Beck. He’s decked out his standard issue shit-eating, ain’t I a stinker grin.

Stinkers

The rest of the back cover features pull quotes, with the most gushing and, frankly unbelievable, parts bolded and capitalized for easy scanning.

Both sides of the dust jacket are embarrassing for me to display. The front looks awful even without Beck’s prominently displayed name, and the back seethes with his smarmy mug. Since I got it from a library, I can’t even take the jacket off: they taped the damn thing to the book. Carrying it around is a never-ending exercise in Sisyphean obfuscation. The least embarrassing position for this book is open. Unfortunately that’s also the worst position for this book to be in.