Media Matters for America will watch the lunatics so you don’t have to, and debunk their claims. Color of Change have been running a campaign to get companies to stop advertising on Glenn Beck’s show which has been rather successful thus far.

Ultimately, sane people have to raise their voices to be heard above the clash of extremists. I grew up with the notion that it was impolite to discuss politics because it tended to lead to acrimony; I have since decided that that attitude cedes the field to the people who still discuss politics, so I have taken up being vocal about issues.

There are subtle ways one can go about these things. My wife’s uncle, for instance, is fairly conservative, but when I sent one of his daughters How to Lie with Statistics as a Yule present before going to college, he read it and really liked it, so I’ve been sending him reality-based fact-checking and policy books for Yule ever since. When he mentioned on the phone that he liked Glenn Beck, I said “Better keep factcheck.org and politifact.com handy, ’cos that guy does not do his research”, and about a month later he complained to my wife that he didn’t like Beck much any more. When his wife was worried about terrorists taking over America, I explained why that was strategically infeasible and sent her a copy of Bruce Schneier’s Beyond Fear.

I haven’t tried playing on the family’s Christian views by sending Cornel West books to any of them yet... might be overdoing it...