Talk radio is big around here, the Texas Panhandle, that is.

It’s big everywhere it seems. Conservatives rule the air waves these days. They’ve got their devotees who hang on their every word.

The Big Two seem to be Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Throw in some others, maybe Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved and Mark Levin, mix ’em up, and they’re pretty big as well.

Thus, it was with some interest that I read an interesting admission from Beck the other day.

He said liberals were right about the Iraq War and that he — and other conservatives — were wrong.

http://www.newsweek.com/glenn-beck-admits-liberals-were-right-iraq-war-255341

I couldn’t help but think of “Happy Days” character Arthur Fonzarelli, who just couldn’t ever admit to being wr —-, wr —- about anything. Ever. He couldn’t say the word, for crying out loud.

Beck ain’t Fonzie, apparently. He was able to admit it.

“You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else, it doesn’t work. They don’t understand it or even really want it,” Beck said on his radio show this week.

Newsweek.com had an interesting take on Beck’s admission: “This is a major turnaround for the famously right-wing pundit who in 2009 said, ‘The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be president would be ‘What the hell you mean we’re out of missiles?”’

In a perfect world, it shouldn’t really matter what an entertainer thinks about such matters. This world isn’t perfect, quite obviously. So I guess it does matter that a talk-show personality who purports to speak for millions of listeners is willing to do an about-face on one of the more contentious issues of our time.

Who’s next? Rush?

Don’t bet the farm on that one.