SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- Conservative, conspiratorial, and controversial, FOX titan Glenn Beck announced yesterday that he would be leaving the network to pursue other projects that would better enable him to warn Americans of the pending socialist threat creeping in from the progressive quarters of the country. At the conclusion of Beck’s show on April 6, the host noted that his decision to leave was something he had been considering for a long time. He reassured loyal fans that “we will find each other…I will continue to tell the story and I’m going to show you.” Network executives admitted that they had no idea what Beck was intending to “show” his audiences in his new pursuits, but Roger Ailes praised Beck’s contributions and relevance: “We felt Glenn brought additional information, a unique perspective, a certain amount of passion and insight to the channel, and he did. But that story of what’s going on and why America is in trouble today, I think he told that story as well as could be told. Whether you can just keep telling that story or not, we’re not so sure.”

Beck, true to his idiom, concluded his broadcast by comparing himself to Paul Revere, an iconic hero of the American Revolution, which immediately provoked criticism and outrage from liberal commentators.

Glenn Beck’s Midnight Ride
At the end of last night’s show, Beck said, “Paul Revere did not get up on the horse and say ‘I’m going to be doing this the rest of my life, he got off the horse at some point.”

Despite the backlash over Beck aligning his actions in the media to the patriotic risks taken by Paul Revere during a war, Janus Heuchler, director of San Narciso’s Poeslaw Institute for Social Research and Development (PISRAD), praised the comparison:“Glenn Beck is precisely this generation’s Paul Revere.”

Heuchler found the statement incredibly prescient. “Glenn Beck and Paul Revere share so many similarities. They both had troubled family lives. They both fought in a grassroots revolution against a mightier oppressor. In Revere’s case, it was the invading British military. In Beck’s case, it was the Nazi-esque fascism encroaching on the nation’s freedoms.”

Beck and Revere, Two Halves of One 18th Century Coin
Among the eerily parallel histories between Beck and Revere, Heuchler singled out several instances.

Paul Revere’s life was significantly complicated by a death in the family. Glenn Beck’s mother drowned – an incident Beck himself labeled suicide – while traveling in a boat with a mysterious male companion.

Both men were widely considered political agitators.

When not rambling on about political conspiracies and threats of enemies coming to destroy American liberties, both men shared an obsession with precious metals such as gold.

Both men belonged to exclusive, cultish societies. Revere was a Freemason. Beck became a Mormon.

Beck, while suffering through bouts of substance abuse and addiction, admitted that he had contemplated killing himself to the music of Kurt Cobain. Paul Revere’s journals revealed that he too, while struggling with a growing reliance on laudanum and something called “whore’s mead,” had considered taking his own life.

Revere wrote: “The fancy of meeting my Maker prematurely overtook me whilst attending a Baroque Quartet in the Conservatory of a close Companion. Of particular Ill Humour was the plaintive and melancholy Dirge offered by Heinrich Todfreund, a weirdly unconventional Lute Player with a solitary Disposition and mangy Dress, to which all in the Audience were unaccustomed. He sang of Ailments and the anguish of the Lonesome and of the Genteel’s inability to comprehend his Plight. I found the Experience troubling but deeply affecting. His Melody haunts my waking Languor still, and urges mine Hand toward self-sustained Doom. Why so subject to these Dreads am I? It’s positively Womanish. Silver poisoning, the Curse of my Trade? The many Elixirs concocted at Ned’s Tavern? Nay. I fear that injecting the Poppy’s cloying Milk into my flaccid Mutton, to stave off the Harlot’s mad Kiss of Syphilis, has spawned this Mood in me. ”

But Heucher believes that “all of these things pale in comparison to the one undeniable characteristic of both men: they will each be celebrated as the most famous alarmists in United States history. Paul Revere mounted a horse and rode all night spreading the fear of the British among the colonists of Charlestown. By today’s standards, his actions would’ve required little more than the equivalent of a Twitter post. You know, ‘Brits coming by boat. Look out.’ Glenn Beck rode high in the saddle of this century’s most powerful media workhorse to put the fear of socialism into the hearts of Americans too ignorant to see their invading enemies pulling into shore; the enemies of free market capitalism and Jesus and the Founding Fathers – the Democratic Party, led by a Muslim from Kenya. But he used overly elaborate diagrams and chalk boards and algorithms. Ironically, he could have just used Twitter. You know, ‘Obama’s a foreign terrorist. Look out.’”

And in the end, according to Heuchler, Glenn Beck will continue to follow in the steps of Paul Revere by abandoning his political causes to better support his fellow Americans through nurturing a successful commercial enterprise that will perpetuate revenue-generating industry or create consumable goods, the real backbone of the Revolution.

“I think FOX, with its fair and balanced programming, became too left leaning for Beck,” Heuchler concluded. “He’ll be better off creating his own network, where he won’t be pressured to bow to the agenda of the liberal media.”