MacDailyNews Take: Also, whose co-founder Steve Jobs agrees with Rush Limbaugh (as do we) that U.S. public schools are ‘unionized in the worst possible way’. So, maybe it’s not so unlikely, after all (just adding a missing color to the portrait Elmer-DeWitt’s trying to paint).
Elmer-DeWitt continues, “The issue is an iPhone ad that appeared on the Aug. 7 broadcast of the Glenn Beck show on the Fox News Channel.”
“Under pressure from advocacy groups, more than a dozen companies, including ConAgra, Geico, Procter & Gamble and Progressive, have pulled their commercials from the conservative commentators’ show,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
“The boycott was launched last month by ColorofChange.org after Beck made remarks on Fox and Friends that labeled President Obama a ‘racist’ with a ‘deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture,'” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “The campaign was picked up by democrats.com, which provided its members with a list of advertisers and an e-mail form letter that threatens to stop buying the sponsors’ products as long as they advertise on Fox News.”
“Although the boycott began after Beck’s July 7 remarks about Obama’s alleged racism, it was broadened by democrats.com into an attack on Fox News and what it calls the cable network’s campaign of ‘outright hate-mongering and incitement of violence’ following Obama’s election,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, they’ve never watched Olbermann. Like most people. Or, those that have watched him, happen to agree with him, so they fail to identify it as “outright hate-mongering and incitement of violence.”
We try to watch bits from all sources. It’s often great fun regardless of the politics they happen to be peddling; you can sometimes catch interesting and telling looks in the faces of those participating. TV political shows strike us as a rather nasty game to play, but they can still be fun to watch, if you know which brand each is selling and what to look for.
As for this Glen Beck business. We’re not picking sides here. We haven’t seen the full Beck video. However, we consider any boycott to be free speech and we will – as you might guess – back free speech any damn day of the week, regardless of who’s speaking. We’re just pointing out the blatant hypocrisy, that’s all.
Daily Kos surmises that any ads that were pulled “were replaced by advertisers that probably didn’t even know that their ads would be aired during the Glenn Beck show. Advertizers like Apple who in all likelihood bought ad money on Fox News on the cheap during latenight, but who due to the vaccume of advertizing on Beck’s show, had their ads instead moved to the more expensive primetime slots of the Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity shows. For more proof of this, anyone who is DVR’ing Beck’s show as a part of this boycott can jump to minute 56 of today’s (Friday, Aug. 7) 5PM show and see an ad for the Apple iPhone.”
Daily Kos reports, “Apple never used to have any ads on the Glenn Beck show. Their ads mostly showed up mid afternoon or very latenight on Fox News, and sometimes on the O’Reilly Factor, but never during either Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity. In all likelihood, Apple’s ads purchased for very late night airings were moved free of charge to more lucrative spots, without Apple’s knowledge.”
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, Apple should carefully target their ad buys and, if they’re buying them in such a way that they do not know exactly where they are airing, then they should rethink their ad placement strategy. They have enough cash to steer clear of the cheap buys.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, we’re not picking sides here, but taking what we know about the treatment of Apple over the years — and without seeing in full exactly what Beck said and how he said it — we’d guess that the real problem that some people have isn’t so much about what Glen Beck said, but more about his continuing success in the ratings. Those who are perceived to be “dangerous” by the opposition are the ones who are attacked most: Apple (upsets the status quo in multiple markets), Glenn Beck, Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich (back in the day), Bill Clinton (back in the day), Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, etc.
We’d arrive at exactly the same conclusion if the show in question were deemed to be “liberal” and faced a “conservative” boycott.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]