Breaking news: Beck speaks!

Glenn Beck gives few interviews -- he prefers to monopolize the microphone -- so it's worth looking at what he says when he actually talks to a reporter.

In the upcoming issue of the New York Times Magazine, Mark Leibovich profiles the Fox News megastar. Here are some highlights:

-- Beck talks about being a recovering addict and projects that onto America:

"I think what the country is going through right now is, in a way, what I went through with my alcoholism," he told me. "You can either live or die. You have a choice."

"I said to someone the other day," Beck told me, "I am as close today to a complete and total collapse as I was on the first day of recovery." He calls himself a "recovering dirtbag." There were many days, he said, when he would avoid the bathroom mirror so he would not have to face himself. He was in therapy with "Dr. Jack Daniels." He smoked marijuana every day for about 15 years. He fired an underling for bringing him the wrong pen. And, according to a Salon.com report, he once called the wife of a radio rival to ridicule her -- on the air -- about her recent miscarriage.

"You get to a place where you disgust yourself," Beck told me. "Where you realize what a weak, pathetic and despicable person you have become."


In short, he trashes himself, as a way of illuminating the path to redemption.

-- Beck, like Bill Clinton, tried to save his mother from physical abuse:

I asked Beck if he could pinpoint the moment he decided to change his life. "Here's something I haven't told anyone before," Beck said. "When my mother was at her worst, she was dating a guy who was abusive. He was a big Navy guy too." It was right at the end of her life. Glenn got between his mother and the man during an ugly fight. "I just came in and stood between them and said, 'Get out of our house.'

The man left, but he came back a few days later and begged forgiveness. "When I sobered up, I remember looking back to that point," Beck told me.

I asked Beck how he knew that his mother's death was a suicide. The man who drowned with her was that same abusive boyfriend, he said.


-- Has he peaked? His ratings are down. From 2.8 million last year to 2 million now.

-- Beck is not the most popular guy at Fox. Leibovich credits my reporting on the subject of how many staffers are concerned that he is becoming the face of the network:

When I mentioned Beck's name to several Fox reporters, personalities and staff members, it reliably elicited either a sigh or an eye roll. Several Fox News journalists have complained that Beck's antics are embarrassing Fox, that his inflammatory rhetoric makes it difficult for the network to present itself as a legitimate news outlet.

-- I also reported on how Fox executives believe they made Beck into the phenomenon he is today. Leibovich has this nugget:

In the days following Beck's Lincoln Memorial rally, which by Beck's estimate drew a half-million people, Ailes told associates that if Beck were still at Headline News, there would have been 30 people on the Mall.

-- Beck is plagued by self-doubt:

"I wrote Sarah Palin a letter last night about 2 in the morning," Beck said on his radio show in September. "And I said: 'Sarah, I don't know if I'm doing more harm or more good. I don't know anymore.' "

A lot of Beck's critics would be happy to answer that question.