Glenn Beck's Book "The Christmas Sweater" Is Appropriate For Kids, Not for Imus

Glenn Beck's emotions today ranged from boisterous and sarcastic to sincere and reflective as he discussed his children's book The Christmas Sweater. Beck, host of Fox News's Glenn Beck, also provided commentary on President Obama's speech last night, which he had not watched.

"I was playing with my kids!" he said. He knew the gist of it (the U.S. will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, then begin to draw down 18 months later), and was opposed.

"Time to come home," said Beck, who has family members in the service and zero faith in the government's ability to support them. He agreed with Imus's observation that the people of Afghanistan have been "kicking people's asses for 4,000 years," and the U.S. is unlikely to change that anytime soon.

Beck is one of few authors to have fiction, non-fiction, and children's books as bestsellers, leading Imus to wonder how much money one man needs.

"They're printing money at the Treasury for you!" Beck shot back.

The Christmas Sweater was released last year a novel, and then Beck retooled it for kids. The fictionalized story is based on his childhood; more specifically, it centers on the last Christmas he spent with his mom.

"Is it sad?" Beck asked, repeating the question posed by Imus. "Well, yeah."

Beck's mom was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and not long after their last Christmas together, she committed suicide. Her final present to him was a sweater.

"When you're a kid, you don't really know you're poor," he said. "There was only one present under the tree for me, and it was a sweater, and I hated it."

A few days later, Beck's mother found the sweater rolled up in a ball on the floor of his room. She picked it up and said, "Please don't treat it that way," Beck recalled. He realized how difficult his mother's life had been, and that this "crappy present" was all she could afford. Shortly thereafter, she died.

"That was the first sort of rocky area that screwed me up for many years," said Beck, who battled alcoholism and suicidal tendencies himself for years. "My ex-wife backed me up in a garage and said, 'You are not going to repeat your mother's life and do to your children what she did to you.'"

He sobered up, and learned a lesson that became the moral of The Christmas Sweater: "You've got to walk through the storm. It's warm on the other side."

This is what Imus took away from Beck's heartfelt story: "So you found a way to turn this heart-wrenching story into a big payday?"

-Julie Kanfer