You wouldn't see the beams from the side, you only see the light if the beam is directed at you.
From far away it looks just like a blinking star, from up close it would probably look like any ordinary neutron star.
Not that a animated pulsar with visible beams wouldn't look cool, just not very scientific accurate.
They'd be visible, they just wouldn't be bright compared to viewing straight down the barrel. There is enough material in the space around a neutron star to illuminate the beam. It's like a searchlight. You can make out the light beam of a search light aimed away from you from the faint illumination of the particles in the path of the beam. Aim the searchlight straight at your face and you get blinded.
The beams are also magneto-particle beams so electrons and protons in the beams will scatter and interact, leading to a visible beam from synchotron radiation. (well, visible in the broad sense of emitting em radiation. visible spectrum light may be washed out by the central star in neutron star energy spectra. I'll look that up.)
Here is a picture of a bipolar jet not viewed head on to prove my point. It's from a galactic core black hole in the giant Elliptical galaxy m87, but the physics are the same as a neutron star, and a neutron star polar jet should be just as bright when viewed from within a few AU.
although this image is false color near infrared mixed with near ultraviolet on the red and blue channels, the jet is visible throughout the optical spectrum.
also cool: time lapse video in x-ray and infrared of the crab nebula pulsar.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bfobar/astronomy/2002-24-a-low_mpeg.mpg