The photo comes from a shoot Greenberg — whom Beck has lambasted as a liberal photo-agitator — did for a GQ story on Beck back in June, in which she made the emotionally unstable Mormon cry. Hey, as long as she makes him look good, right?

Here's the deeply unsettling behind-the-scenes video we obtained of a bawling Beck at that shoot, which we first published exclusively in June:

And now a tear-free shot from the same series is on newsstands around the country promoting Beck's pudgy mug. Which is funny because Beck berated Greenberg almost exactly one year ago for photoshopping her Atlantic portrait of John McCain to make him look like a vampire, and for "terrorizing" children in her infamous series of crying toddlers.

As for the Time story itself, it's a masterwork of equivalence journalism. You can literally feel reporter David Von Drehle's terror at being accused of "taking sides" in the "debate" about whether Beck—who didn't consent to an interview—is a populist hero or a paranoid spinner of conspiracy theories. It's a bizarre, claustrophobic world that Time reporters inhabit, one in which it is literally impossible for the subject of one's reporting to make an objectively untrue assertion. One false move, and Von Drehle might be forced to actually defend a proposition to thousands of outraged, irrational commenters. Better to equivocate.

So we get tortured sentences like these:

Between the liberal fantasies about Brownshirts at town halls and the conservative concoctions of brainwashed children goose-stepping to school, you'd think the Palm in Washington had been replaced with a Munich beer hall.

• Liberal fantasies? Men armed with assault rifles and pistols and wearing shirts calling for the "blood of tyrants" to be shed have attended Obama's public events. A woman shouted "Heil Hitler!" at an Israeli Jew defending Obama's proposals at one healthcare townhall. But on the other hand, the president of the United States told America's schoolchildren to do their homework.

He is afraid that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" - which doesn't mean, he hastens to add, that he actually thinks "Obama doesn't like white people."

• Here's what Beck actually said, which, thankfully, was actually recorded by a video camera, a device that creates a record of objective reality: "This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture—I don't know what it is." [Emphasis added.] But on the other hand, Glenn Beck's characterization of his own thoughts at the moment that he expressed them ought not tell the whole story about what Glenn Beck thinks.

Like William Jennings Bryan whipping up populist Democrats over moneyed interests or the John Birch Society brooding over fluoride, Beck mines the timeless theme of the corrupt Them thwarting a virtuous Us.

• A Democratic populist once inveighed against actual, real wealthy people who wielded actual, real power over our political system. On the other hand, avowedly racist right-wing xenophobes once accused the U.S. government of undermining the Constitution by adding a common dentifrice to the water supply.

And so on. After discussing some of the truthful things that Beck has publicized, like Van Jones' trutherism, Von Drehle does another "on the other hand" pivot to examine just one of the many falsehoods Beck has promoted: "But he also spins yarns of less substance. He tells his viewers that Obama's volunteerism efforts are really an attempt to create a 'civilian national-security force that is just as strong, just as powerful as the military.'"

Von Drehle is correct in characterizing Beck's claims about Obama's attempts to create a civilian national-security force as having less substance than his claims about ACORN and Van Jones. Because they have no substance at all. They are lies. But saying that outright—as opposed to locating them on some mythical metric of truthfulness in which all claims seem to have some "substance"—would constitute an assertion about Beck's honesty and reliability. Time is clearly not the appropriate forum for such a conversation.

As we noted yesterday, Beck blasted photographer Jill Greenberg last year as a left-wing "nut job" who "terrorizes children" because she made fun of John McCain after shooting his portrait for the cover of Atlantic and once shot an infamous series of crying toddlers. When GQ assigned Greenberg to shoot a portrait of Beck to accompany a Q-and-A in its July issue, Beck naturally put aside his concerns and did whatever Greenberg asked him to do because he doesn't care about anything but getting people to look at pictures of him. Greenberg has no doubt that Beck knew exactly who he was crying for.

"He and his public relations people, at the shoot, said they love my work and had checked out my website," Greenberg told Gawker. "I believe they Googled me, like most of my subjects' PR people do. He was super nice on set."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

And if Beck knew who Greenberg was, then he almost certainly would have known that the crying bit he was so eager to play along with was a sly reference to End Times, her 2006 series of photos of crying toddlers, which she shot by giving kids candy and then taking it away from them. Beck called that "terrorizing children" last year.

"The crying was my idea, and Glenn was cool with trying it," Greenberg says. "We used mentholated balm to make his eyes tear up naturally. From then on it was acting on his part. He had fun with it and was a great sport."

Beck's penchant for hysterical tears makes the pairing obvious—why not ask a photographer famous for taking pictures of crybabies to shoot a blubbering TV personality? But Greenberg is an officially designated public enemy of the right wing: Last year, when she was hired by the Atlantic to shoot John McCain, she boasted of taking extra shots of McCain deliberately lit to make him look old and leaving "his eyes red and his skin looking bad." Also, she posted photoshopped outtakes on her web site featuring a monkey shitting on McCain's head. Republicans didn't like that. Beck got angry and called her a "nut job" on his show and said the Atlantic should sue her:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser."The Atlantic" is sending a letter of apology to McCain. They will not be paying her, and they're considering a lawsuit. Good, they should. Greenberg said that, since some of her artwork was anti-Bush, quote, "Maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them to hire me." Wait a minute. Let me see if I have this right. She does a horrible job and then she blames her employer? That's right, I forgot. She's a liberal.

By the way, this isn't the first time this photographer has been in the middle of controversy. In 2004, to describe her political helplessness, she took a series of supposedly artsy photos of toddlers crying. How did she get this shot? Well, she gave the kids candy, and then she snatched it away from them. They'd cry uncontrollably, and she'd just click away. Isn't it just fantastic art? Nothing more beautiful than a child being terrorized.

Whatever, evil liberal lady. As long as you take one of my chins off, just do what you do. We asked Greenberg if Beck had any idea who she was when she took his picture—and if she has any outtakes with animals shitting on his head—but haven't heard back. How exactly did she get those realistic tears when her subject is an adult? Did she start talking about the Fed or something? To judge by Beck's sympathy for the children Greenberg "terrorized" in her crying toddler series, her strategy probably didn't change much: "And, as a guy that would kill you if you take away my candy, I feel their pain."

The interview itself has Beck saying crazy things like how Jon Stewart is his biggest influence and he's taking up painting, because he contains multitudes.

(There's also one of a monkey shitting on McCain's head, in case you want the full, appetite-robbing effect.)

The Atlantic said Greenberg "disgraced herself" and that it assumed she would act more professionally. The writer of the cover story called it "juvenile."

Greenberg, meanwhile, told PDNPulse it was "irresponsible" of the Atlantic to hire her in the first place for "heroic" shots of McCain, given her well-known anti-Bush photography. And she gloated over how she tricked McCain:

Greenberg asked McCain to “please come over here” for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. “That’s what he thought he was being lit by,” Greenberg says. “But that wasn’t firing.”

What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. “He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.

The photographer would like to sell her more provocative photos to another magazine.

So, counting NBC/MSNBC, this makes at least two news organizations whose contributors have been bitterly divided over political and ethical issues around the 2008 election. Who will be the third?

[PDNPulse via NewsBusters, Post]

(Photos via Imagebam)