Beck off: Muse ask Glen to retract

As if it wasn't bad enough that he's just led to Waitrose dumping advertising on Fox in the UK, Glenn Beck has now had to withdraw his endorsement of Muse:

He described the album as "absolutely fantastic" and interpreted the album's political lyrics as an attack on the Obama institution and the dangers of "one world government".

He said: "These guys are brilliant, they know the time that we live in. They are libertarians from England.

"All of the lyrics are... dead on, on what's coming our way."

Oh, dear. Muse asked him to recant, and he did (although The Quietus doesn't mention if he sobbed as he did so):

They would like me to retract my endorsement," said Beck. "My apologies to Muse for saying that I like them. I didn't mean to destroy all their credibility and all their coolness.

"It's an awful album and you should never go out and buy it."

Of course Beck made it sound like the band were upset at being endorsed by a big ole square, rather than rejecting a political misrepresentation of their beliefs by a hectoring blowhard. But then he's a man who wouldn't be able to keep things straight if he had a plumb line and set square stapled to his forehead.

Perhaps if he'd found out about Matt Bellamy's desire for internet users to be taxed, he might never have mistaken them for libertarians in the first place.

[UPDATED: It turns out this is all Glenn Beck's idea of a joke.]