Importance of Standing Up to Glenn Beck

Excellent article over at Jack and Jill about the importance of confronting the wackos like Glenn Beck immediately and forcefully.

There is no doubt that Glenn Beck has a big platform. But what supports his platform is advertising dollars, and that support is crumbling. To date, 62 companies have pulled their ads from Beck’s show, including six new companies announced yesterday — Aegon, Ashley Furniture, Humana, Luxottica Retail (parent of LensCrafters and Pearle Vision), United States Postal Service and Wyeth Consumer Healthcare. These aren’t liberal activists wringing their hands over Beck’s distortions. These are the bastions of American capitalism saying they don’t want their brands associated with Glenn Beck’s extremism. The only companies left are direct marketers (think Egg Genie and gold coins) and a handful of private companies headed by right-wingers.

In the wake of Van’s resignation, some have wondered whether kicking the Beck hornet’s nest makes sense. I’ve got two thoughts in response. First, Beck and Fox trying to change the topic and counter-attacking with such force is probably a good indicator that we’re getting to them; if anything, now would be the time to go harder. Second, I believe we have no choice. Beck has promised to take his witch-hunt to others in the administration, and has set his sights on Cass Sunstein as his next target. He has no plans to stop, and neither should we.

But it’s not just “czar”-hunting that’s at stake here. The right wing media machine, of which Beck is now one of the leading members, is the single greatest force standing in the way of change. They have already helped derail the conversation on health care, elevating accusations of Obama’s alliance with the Third Reich to some semblance of credibility. And they will do the same to the upcoming debates over clean energy, immigration, and every progressive policy priority. We simply don’t have the luxury of ignoring them. We must challenge them head on, expose their distortions, take away their advertisers, and position their views where they belong: far outside the bounds of any rational political discourse.