GLENN BECK IS OUT OF LINE! HIS RACIST RANTS HAS CAUSED THREATS AGAINST OBAMA TO GO UP 400%!

Glenn Beck, the hottest right-wing voice on the air, worried aloud to his listeners the other day that powerful, sinister forces trying to destroy America might soon "shoot me in the head."
But there's fear among his critics, including calmer conservatives, that the victim more likely will be one of Beck's many broadcast targets.

After a summer of mob anger at town hall meetings on health care - some of which featured gun-toting protesters - and a burst of Beck-fanned hysteria over President Obama's back-to-school speech last week, the former top 40 deejay has emerged as a goofy dark prince of the right.

His gift for spinning apocalyptic visions of the future is matched only by his melodramatic skill to gin up his listeners.

"'The world is going to hell in a handbasket' - I think that pretty much summarizes Glenn Beck," said Charles Dunn, a Regent University professor and author of "The Future of Conservatism."

"But I also think he's become the head cheerleader of getting people to respond - the tea parties, the health care town halls."

"Glenn is great at what he does," added Michael Smerconish, a conservative whose show runs in New York on WOR, the same station as Beck's show. "But I just wonder - at what cost?

"I mean, disagree with the President - absolutely," added Smerconish. "But be leery of using some of the words that have now entered this debate."

A sampler:

Beck, 45, has called Obama a "racist" who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" - comments that have sparked an advertising boycott of his Fox News Channel show.
He declares the nation is headed toward a "fascist state" and that the White House is infested with "radical, revolutionary and in some cases Marxist" advisers.
He claims Obama's entire agenda - including health care - is designed to "settle old racial scores" and that Americans must rise up to take back their nation. "The time for silent dissent has long passed," Beck warned last week in a typical call to arms.

It's an us-versus-them view of the world, with Americans' freedom and very lives in imminent peril; a foreboding, racially polarized vision of America under siege by a conspiracy of liberals, "anti-capitalists" and other players in an Obama "thugocracy" who must be stopped at all costs.

Ron Kessler, author of "In The President's Secret Service," notes that although it is impossible to single out Beck as a cause, threats against Obama are up 400% compared with those against President George W. Bush.

"A lot of those threats are racially based," Kessler said. "So there is a real basis for concern."