Glenn Beck Opens Up About Future Plans and Explains Why Culture Is the ‘Dog’ and News Is the ‘Tail’

In the future, Glenn Beck’s focus is going to be more on influencing culture and less on politics and news. After all, news is only “what the culture allows,” he said in a recent interview with National Review’s Eliana Johnson.

This April 26, 2013 file photo shows radio personality Glenn Beck at the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards in New York. (Photo: Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Beck’s interest in taking back the culture is nothing new to those who have been listening to his radio show or watching his television program. In his eyes, culture is the key to shaping the future of the United States of America.

Johnson traveled to TheBlaze’s Dallas studios to get a first-hand look at what Beck is building and — perhaps more importantly — why.

“We are in Beck’s office on the second floor of a sprawling movie studio in Las Colinas, near Dallas, Texas. His company, Mercury Radio Arts, purchased the iconic 72,000-square-foot building last June. Movies and TV shows such as Robocop, JFK, Prison Break, and Walker, Texas Ranger were produced here; it includes three main stages, outdoor shooting locations, and a lot of office space,” Johnson writes. “Beck’s personal office is a fusion of the antique and the modern. It reflects the range of his interests, from history and politics to cinema and technology.”

With the creation of TheBlaze TV, 1791 Supply & Co., American Dream Labs and Mercury Ink, it’s no secret that Beck is “turning his attention to cultural projects like plays and movies.”

He revealed that he is currently working on at least two movies, including one on the “real story of Christmas” and another on the “truth” about Thomas Edison.

“Beck is nostalgic for an America of decades past, and his cultural projects will aim to resurrect and revive it,” Johnson writes. “It’s an America where duty trumped desire and Americans were bound together by a sort of civic religion created by that sense of duty. ‘I want to impact the culture in the way that people see good again,’ [Glenn] says.”

He also discussed how Walt Disney has influenced him:

The item that most inspires him right now is a prospectus of Disney World, hand-colored by Walt Disney himself, which he has propped against a window — or at least, a photocopy of it. He keeps the real item, which he won at an auction three years ago, at his home in Dallas. “I’m now the owner of every book written on Walt Disney in any language,” he says. He doesn’t know exactly how many that is. A year ago, he distributed a biography of Disney to the members of his staff. “I said when I left Fox that this half of my career is going to be shaped more by Walt Disney than anything else,” he says.

His interest in Disney is symbolic of the shift in his attention and efforts toward culture and away from politics. He had a realization: “Culture is the lead. That’s the dog. The news is the tail.”

He pulls out a piece of early publicity on Disneyland, points to a paragraph, and reads aloud. “Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America and it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world.” Beck, known to burst into tears at a moment’s notice, looks like he might do so right now. “That’s what we’re gonna do,” he declares. “That’s how I intend on impacting culture. To do that.”

Read the entire profile, titled "The New Glenn Beck," here.