One of Michele Bachmann's *biggest* fans is "Rush Limbaugh-knock off" Glenn Beck. Beck is the host of nationally distributed cable news program. He has become notorious for using his airtime to take unsubstantiated right wing craziness into the mainstream of news broadcasting. (Beck is mentioned by name (so is Bachmann) in this year's Southern Poverty Law Center report on the resurgence of hate groups in the United States since the election of Barack Obama.)
Well (according to this story) now even folks who advertise on Fox News are beginning to get sick of Beck's "conservatism":
Aug 14, 2009, 8:32 a.m. EST
Advertisers deserting Fox News' Glenn Beck
Cable host calls Obama 'racist' and sponsors move to distance themselves
By William Spain, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- In what is shaping up to be one of the more effective boycott campaigns in years, advertisers are abandoning the "Glenn Beck" show on Fox News following the host's incendiary comments that President Barack Obama is a "racist" and has a "deep-seated hatred for white people."
Among the advertisers to pull spots from the popular cable talk show are Geico, owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway ; Procter & Gamble ; Sargento Cheese; and Progressive Insurance , according to the companies and Color of Change, one group that is organizing a campaign against the program.
Beck, who made the remarks during another Fox News program late last month, is among the network's biggest draws, pulling in an average of about 2 million viewers.
I'm a Dump Bachmann guy who listens to conservative broadcasting. In light of remarks some of you make in the comment threads, I assume most of you readers *don't* listen to conservative broadcasting. You guys don't know what you're missing.
If you want to hear what angry right wing crackpots are going to say on the threads of this blog (or other blogs) *tomorrow*--listen to what people like Beck and Bachmann are saying *today.* It's like a crystal ball into the future that lets you see the bizarre arguments, lies, and smears that you're going to hear, 24 hours later.
Look at that figure--a regular Beck audience of 2 million, in country with a population of over 270 million: and he is teaching them that Obama hates whites and telling them that FEMA may be setting up concentration camps for the patriotic... and lot of these two million in Beck's regular audience own firearms... can you see why you may want to take this "conservative demagogue" thing more seriously, instead of just trying to laugh it off?
John Greening, a Northwestern University professor of marketing who spent 28 years in the advertising business said, "depends on Beck's level of contrition or how he explains it. But unless he does something to rehabilitate himself, he has probably crossed the line into obscurity."
I don't know about obscurity. Conservative media personality William Bennett was an expert on personal virtue and turned out to be an habitual secret casino gambler--he's still working as a conservative media personality. Conservative media personality Rush Limbaugh was caught buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal Oxycontin to finance a secret drug habit--he's still wildly popular.
So why should Beck head into obscurity, when all he did was say what his audience wants to believe? I see people making the same mistake with Bachmann, all around the country: she tells a crazy lie on television, it's exposed as a lie--so liberals think "well, she's just a joke, she's over, no one will continue to support a crazy liar."
Wrong. That's exactly what modern American conservatives do. So If Beck goes off the air for hatemongering, he's likely to resurface somewhere else, quickly--and more popular than ever with conservatives. And Michele Bachmann keeps that same Bachmann-friendly forum...
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