Fearing A Chilling Effect On Beck's Hatespeech

Hot Air's Allahpundit uses his uber-fancypants blogging skills to attempt to not appear visably crestfallen that Beck's inane drivel has resulted in advertisers jumping ship from his program.

Even here, the great lefty victory over Beck appears only to have resulted in ads being shifted to other Fox programs. If Media Matters et al. suddenly decide they want O’Reilly and Hannity boycotted too, how many companies will oblige them knowing that it means sacrificing the biggest viewing audience in cable news?

The most depressing thing about this isn’t the fear of lefties taking down conservative broadcasters, it’s the fact that Beck is catching hell while the demagogue di tutti demagogues, a man who eagerly compares Republicans to terrorists when he isn’t busy screaming about right-wing “hate speech,” rests easily in the thought that his own advertising is secure. Exit question: Just what would Olby have to say or do to warrant a rightroots boycott of Countdown’s advertisers? He can’t sink much lower. Someone set the bar, quick!

Of course, I will concede that Allah does have a moderately reasonable point - the same advertisers are still on other Fox"News" programs. So, what we have are these same advertisers allowing their goods and services to be seen being accepted with just another Right-wing sychophant.

But the mistake that Allah is making is that more people shop at places like Wal-Mart or have their car, bike, or truck insured through Geico than watch Beck, O'Reilly, and Hannity combined. To the advertisers, it's not about the message, it' about the audience. Companies rarely care about what channel their goods and servies are shown on, as long as those quick, 30 second, segments trigger that consumerist nature in the viewing public. And when those consumers come together and start threatening to stop consuming, those companies are going to pull ads.

This can easily happen to Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, or any other conservative prattle-box that is successful in wedging their expensive loafers sideways in their ever gapping maw.

The patience issue that Allah attempts to reference is extremely misplaced. Companies patience begins to dwindle when their products aren't selling, not when someone like Allahpundit says it does.