WTDY can no longer carry the Glenn Beck program. Over the last 12 months, the show has devolved into plugs for Fox News (the radio version of which is aired by our direct competitor), his books, and other personal endorsements.

The lack of actual content becomes more apparent daily. Monday's program was the final straw; his unabashed deriding of Madison is unacceptable for broadcast in our community.

WEHNER: It's hard to tell how much of what Beck says is sincere and how much is for show. Whatever the case, and even taking into account the entire MSNBC lineup, Glenn Beck has become the most disturbing personality on cable television.

One cannot watch him for any length of time without being struck by his affinity for conspiracies and for portraying himself as the great decoder of events.

All this is quite troublesome in its own right. But what ought to worry conservatives in particular is that Beck not only has the unusual capacity to discredit virtually every cause he takes up; he also confirms the worst caricatures of the right.

Reform Judaism, a proud and venerable religious tradition, does not accept Mr. Beck as the arbiter of what is spiritual and what is not, of who has faith and who does not, of what constitutes real religion and what does not. We respect his faith and demand that he respect ours.

Our members, who - like others in North America - apply their religious values to the problems of the broader society, are happy to have Mr. Beck disagree with us on any position that one or more of us may take, but not to make pronouncements and sweeping condemnations that he has neither the right nor the knowledge to make.

We are particularly incensed that Mr. Beck chose to compare Reform Judaism with "radicalized Islam." While noting that Reform Judaism is not about "terror," he implied the opposite - or, at the very least, that the religious faith of the largest segment of North American Jewry is extremist and fanatic.

Dismissing the heartfelt religious beliefs of millions of North Americans is offensive. Mr. Beck should be ashamed of his comments, and we hope that he will have the good sense never to repeat them.

What seemed like a joyous and hopeful turning point to most others in the media, including some of his Fox News colleagues, appeared to Beck, instead, as a foreboding and likely ruinous event for Egypt, for the Mideast and possibly for all of humanity.

The author, entertainer and one time stand-up comedian has had many low moments in his relentless pursuit of the lowest common denominator, but this week's embrace of fear and loathing may have been the nadir. Beck again proved he is the current exemplar of what political scientist Richard J. Hofstadter defined as the "paranoid style" in American politics.

In the case of Egypt and its democracy movement, the Fox News performer sees not the energetic amalgam of students, shopkeepers, bureaucrats, intellectuals and professionals who virtually every real journalist in Cairohas described in recent days. Beck's evening chalkboard talks instead fulminate endlessly about the shadowy forces that will surely bring "the coming insurrection."

BECK: These advancements were all happening in the 1920s, and soon as there was trouble, everybody wanted to bail on the free-market system. The New York Times heaped praises on Mussolini. Quote, "Mussolini is a Latin Teddy Roosevelt who first acts and then inquires if it's legal. He's been a great service to Italy at home." Oh, has he? Has he really?

MAHER: I just feel like the most difficult part of his job must be to quelch the rage that somewhere must be inside him to say 'I'm the President of the United States, you don't talk to me like this. I'm not some left - I'm not Al Sharpton you know, I won this job.'

And Bill O'Reilly who claims he's such a patriot - how unpatriotic it to treat a President that way. How does that look to other countries when you're interrupting and belittling?

KRISTOL: Now, people are more than entitled to their own opinions of how best to accomplish that democratic end. And it's a sign of health that a political and intellectual movement does not respond to a complicated set of developments with one voice.

But hysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He's marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

Nor is it a sign of health when other American conservatives are so fearful of a popular awakening that they side with the dictator against the democrats. Rather, it's a sign of fearfulness unworthy of Americans, of short-sightedness uncharacteristic of conservatives, of excuse-making for thuggery unworthy of the American conservative tradition.

KLEIN: This is not unimportant. Kristol lies very close to the throbbing heart of the Fox News sensibility.

And I've heard, from more than a couple of conservative sources, that prominent Republicans have approached Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes about the potential embarrassment that the paranoid-messianic rodeo clown may bring upon their brand.

The speculation is that Beck is on thin ice. His ratings are dropping, too--which, in the end, is a good part of what this is all about. But I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a mirror-Olbermann situation soon.