The Politically Correct Boycott Corp is on the march again! If the show doesn’t fit within your political agenda, then just boycott it and try to “shut up dissent.” According to the Washington Post, around two hundred companies are now boycotting Glenn Beck.
When a journalist who gets great ratings is being attacked for doing what he does (as in the case of Glenn Beck) by those who scream about Freedom of Speech and high journalism, it’s like they have an “I’m with Stupid” tattoo punched into their foreheads. Aren’t progressives the same people who think it is okay to decry every alleged “impropriety” by conservatives while hiding behind the guise of “free speech” for themselves? Is it somehow less appropriate for Glenn Beck to espouse his opinions? Why? Because he might be onto something, and his ratings are high?
Newsflash! Beck is but a reflection of an entire mass of people who believe what he has the platform to say! They aren’t going away. In fact, they are growing in spades!
Fox News executives know that if they let advertisers bully them into booting Beck, he will get another job, and advertisers will next be pressured to abandon O’Reilly or Hannity to try to censor them. Why would they make such a self-defeating, bad business decision?
Liberal companies are all upset because Beck “called Obama a racist” and progressivism “a cancer.” Though it bears no comparison to what less successful journalists have said about Palin, Bush, and other conservative icons and their families, it does beg a question—who decided they get to decide what is appropriate? Moreover, if they make Beck go away do they really believe his followers will just go back to their political obscurity? He speaks for millions!
Why can’t the crybaby liberals who are so used to having it their way for so long realize that times have changed? If you take away our mouthpiece, more of us will rise up and find platforms to say what Beck was saying. If you take Beck away, he becomes more of a hero to those who sense a therapeutic affect when tuning into his show. And if you pull your product from advertising, they stop buying your product. (I will, in fact I will post that list of 200 companies who are boycotting Beck)
At least they are consistent. They boycotted John Mackey of Whole Foods because he publicly expressed his opposition to elements of Obamacare last year. So free-market loving patriots did what they could do and responded with a BUYcott, spending 50,000 dollars in one night at one store in St. Louis, Missouri. The idea spread all over the country, and Whole Foods stock went up.
On the other hand, if Apple and the other 199 notable companies take exception to a journalist as popular as Beck, on a station as powerful as Fox News, they may not fare so well.
Will the Tea Party launch a BUYcott of Beck and the already popular Fox News? They just might! If conservatives built the Fox News that is dominating now by default, can you imagine what they could do if they put in a little effort? Did you see the crowds at last weekend’s Tea Parties? Now imagine that they become the network and journalistic “king makers.”
With Oprah tanking and all networks except Fox News battling for ratings and audiences, maybe Apple ought to consider buying Beck his own network for those who think Fox News gets a little squishy now and then? They could call it BeckNet, and they could have sole rights to advertise on their station. That might be the best marketing tack they could take. If not, conservatives will probably be content to look ahead to the scent of rotting apples wafting through the newly renovated office suite of Mr. Beck, while he opens his computer with a boyish grin and sells a million PC’s that day. Which computer maker’s pitchman will look like an inept geek then?
You'd think that would be amazing enough, but wait there's more! (and a big thank you to Big Journalism and Andrew Breitbart, who is fast becoming the next Matt Drudge)
“More than 200 companies have joined a boycott of (Glenn) Beck’s program,” reports the Washington Post. “A handful of advertisers, such as (IPhone owner) Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether.” We can only assume this Apple “boycott” was prompted by what CBS’s Katie Couric (quoting the Fox commentator’s critics) describes as Beck’s “inflammatory, unfair, despicable, hateful rhetoric.”
This same hyper-sensitive-to-hate-speech Apple, by the way, has just launched an IPhone application featuring Che Guevara’s quotes. Yes! “Now you can carry around Che Guevara’s quotes on your IPhone!"
Viva la revoloucion (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist)
Alas, many of us, though not customers of this unquestionably hip product, suspect that most of Che Guevara’s hippest quotes are missing from this hippest of IPhone apps. Among those we fear were overlooked by the hyper-sensitive-to-hate-speech, Apple are:
The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and booze, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.
My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood… Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!
(This is from Che’s own diaries, later immortalized as The Motorcycles Diaries, though we note that executive producer Robert Redford “overlooked” this unquestionably dramatic citation for his movie.)
Hatred as the central element of our struggle… Hatred that is intransigent… Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine… We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow. The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!
Thus spaketh the icon of the flower children.
The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City!
And this:
Don’t Shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth to you more alive than dead!
These famous last words were whimpered with a Eddie Haskell-in-front-of June Cleaver-esque smile on Oct. 8, 1967 in Quebrada de Yuro, Bolivia, as Che dropped his fully-loaded weapons. At the time, Che, dragging along his guerrilla charge, Willi, was trying to slink away from a firefight when confronted by two Bolivian soldiers.
That’s a grand total of exactly two flunky Communist guerrillas facing two Bolivian soldiers, by the way. But then, Che’s bloodthirsty bluster always had a habit of evaporating when facing men (or boys) capable of defending themselves. His stock-in-trade was blasting their skulls apart from five feet while they were bound and gagged. Amazingly, Steven Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro overlooked any depictions of such guaranteed drama in their recent movie.
More of Che’s Greatest Hits:
“Mexicans are a rabble of illiterate Indians.” (Note the Che Guevara banners and T-shirts at Nation of Aztlan gatherings.)
“Bolivian campesinos are simply Animalitos“ (Note Bolivian President Evo Morales’ frequent genuflections to the ghost of Che Guevara and to his puppeteer, Fidel Castro.)
“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service. The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible. (“Che is our fifth band member!” says Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello)
Che the Lionhearted’s image indeed belongs on college campuses. But it’s usually in the wrong places. He belongs in the marketing, PR, advertising –and especially — psychology departments. His lessons and history are fascinating and valuable, but only in light of Sigmund Freud or P.T. Barnum. “One born every minute,” Mr. Barnum? If only you’d lived to see the Che phenomenon. Actually, ten are born every second.
Here’s a “guerrilla hero” who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war. When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed and surrendered while a sniveling, whimpering wreck.
Here’s a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an “unnecessary bourgeois detail,” who stressed that “revolutionaries must become cold-killing machines motivated by pure hate,” who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions – and today his T-shirts adorn people who oppose capital punishment!
Here’s a humorless teetotaler, a plodding paper-pusher, a notorious killjoy and all-around fuddy-duddy – and you see his T-shirt on MTV’s Spring Break revelers! Perhaps competent psychologists (if any exist) will explain this some day.
Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. He was a Stalinist to the core, a plodding bureaucrat and a calm, cold-blooded – but again, never in actual battle – killer. Che’s true legacy is simply one of terror, murder and sniveling cowardice.
Apple, we trust, will soon become as sensitive to torture and mass-murder by the Stalinist who craved to incinerate the nation that headquarters their office and facilitates their profits, as they claim to be over a few wisecracks by Fox commentators.
Yea suddenly I don't desire to run out and get another iPod but probably will since I have all my shit on iTunes anyway, maybe I could find a cheap one online.
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