Boycott Update September 6, 2009

The Turncoat List: These companies have confirmed pulling their ads from Glenn…
	WalMart  479-273-4000
	Best Buy  888-237-8289
	WM and BB broke agreement and put ads on Olbermann and Ed Show
	NutriSystem
	Sprint
	CVS-Caremark
	Sargento Cheese
	GEICO
	Ally Bank
	Broadview Security
	972-871-3500
	Progressive Insurance
	Men’s Wearhouse
	Lawyers.com
	Radio Shack
	Healthy Choice (ConAgra)
	Plavix (Sanofi-Aventis)
	Travelocity

Here is the updated boycott list. Best Buy and Walmart are the newest additions. They had been on the “watch list” because they had both stated that they just weren’t going to advertise on an political shows, but they’ve been caught advertising on Olbermann (surprise, surprise), which I find particularly funny because the people who watch him are the ones trying to put companies like theirs out of business. Wow, that’s some management you’ve got going on there, Walmart.

I wrote both Best Buy and Walmart to express my extreme displeasure with their advertising choices. Walmart will, by far, be the most difficult of all the companies to boycott (I thought General Mills was tough!). I do all of my grocery shopping at Walmart because they are generally so much cheaper than all the other grocery stores, but this is where I draw the line. I’ve always defended Walmart, but not any longer. I will be shopping at Fry’s unless/until Walmart reverses its decision.

Of course, I urge everyone to follow my lead. I’m not sure if I’ve blogged about my reasoning before, but it’s so NOT about whether or not you agree with Glenn Beck or even like him. It’s about freedom of speech. There are all kinds of political news personalities out there who say all kinds of things that offend all kinds of people. Why is Beck being targeted? One advertiser said it was because Beck said Nancy Pelosi should be poisoned. Considering I watch every television show and listen to every radio show, this revelation surprised me. Then, I watched the purported video “proof”: http://www.defendglenn.com/sargento-worst-company-in-the-world.html (scroll down a little bit). Really? Beck said Pelosi should be poisoned? Pretty sure it was a joke and he didn’t even come close to saying she should be poisoned. Meanwhile, the group that’s pushing this whole Beck boycott thing is Color of Change, which you may recall is the radical group that Van Jones, the recently resigned “special advisor” to the president, helped create. If the advertisers decide not to advertise on ANY political shows, that is fine, but this pick-and-choose-based-on-ideology thing doesn’t cut it.

This is America. If you truly believe in free speech, you defend the right of those who offend you the most. 

That’s all.

Boycott Additions & Subtractions August 31, 2009

 

Additions to my boycott: Sprint, NutriSystem, and General Mills

One subtraction: Roche (drug company that makes Accu-Check)

I’ve got to say, the General Mills one is gonna hurt. I LOVE cereal – especially General Mills brand cereals. I buy about 5 boxes of cereal per trip. I wrote them and told them as much and that I would be telling all my friends and family to join me. This is going to kill me, but I HAVE to stick to my principles!

That’s all.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. ~Noam Chomsky August 24, 2009

The TurncoatList: These companies have confirmed pulling their ads from Glenn…
	CVS-Caremark
	Sargento Cheese
	GEICO
	Ally Bank
	Broadview Security
	Progressive Insurance
	Men’s Wearhouse
	Lawyers.com
	Radio Shack
	Healthy Choice (ConAgra)
	Plavix (Sanofi-Aventis)
	Travelocity

 

I really need to get to bed, but I need to share this first. There are some far-left nutcases out there (aka The Huffington Post, etc.) trying to shut down Glenn Beck by swarming his advertisers, trying to get them to pull their ads from his show. The Huffington Post claims they’ve gotten more companies to agree to it than will admit it, so who really knows who is telling the truth here. There’s a website (not associated with Glenn Beck himself) trying to defend him and trying to get these advertisers to change their minds (www.defendglenn.com). They list companies who have confirmed that they’ve pulled their ads from Becks show and those who are under “suspicion”, but deny the change. I am personally boycotting all companies who have confirmed the change in advertising and I’ve begun to write each of them. (I already switched my prescriptions over to Safeway from CVS.) I urge you to do the same. Of course, it’s your decision.

Why are these people going after Beck? I’m not really sure. Personally, I think they don’t like that he’s on to their game. Think about it, if someone’s just an idiot whose opinion doesn’t matter, don’t you just brush them off and ignore them? But, if someone is on to you and threatens you’re livelihood, isn’t that when you take a stand? You can brush Beck off if you like, but I think he’s sniffing them out and they don’t like it. It’s very easy to take little snippets here and there of what someone says, pull them out of context, etc. and make them look like a complete bafoon. I personally watch every show and listen to every broadcast. I liken his shows to a soap opera rather than a 30-minute sitcom, in that you can’t just watch or listen to one show and fully understand what’s going on. Everything is not wrapped up in a neat little package by the end. You really need to watch/listen to it on a regular basis to “get” the method behind the madness. I completely understand if someone just flat out disagrees with Beck’s view on the world. That is completely legitimate. But to take bits and pieces of what he says/does and think that you know where he’s coming from or what he is trying to say, is ludicrous. He just doesn’t work that way.

This isn’t even about Beck. This is about free speech. You can hate Beck all you want, but if you truly believe in free speech, you must defend his right to say whatever he wishes. There are plenty of  so-called “liberal talkers” out there whom I cannot stand! (Actually, I don’t even like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity gets on my nerves, too.) I mean, they literally make me nauseous (Randi Rhodes, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, etc., for instance). However, I would never, nor have I ever, even thought about boycotting their advertisers or trying to get their advertisers to pull from their shows. All I do is turn the dial. I may disagree with most of what they say – I might even say they are liars - but I absolutely defend their right to say it!

Finally, it’s actually rather silly for these companies to “boycott” Glenn Beck, as his ratings are insane. His radio show is #3 in the nation, behind only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. His television show, which is in the worst time slot ever (5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific) has crazy ratings:

Total Viewers: (L +SD) in thousands

Total day: FNC: 1443 | CNN: 520 | MSNBC: 415 | HLN: 251

Prime: FNC: 2291 | CNN: 731 | MSNBC: 798 | HLN: 371

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:
FNC	Beck:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:
	2502	2002	1602	2809	2278	1778	1506
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Dobbs:	Brown:	King:	Cooper:	Cooper:
	610	574	600	461	1059	674	518
MSNBC	Matthews:	EdShow:	Matthews:	Olbermann:	Maddow:	Olbermann:	Maddow:
	487	414	502	887	853	653	446
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	Issues:	Grace:	Issues:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	146	199	284	520	350	260	264

Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.

That’s all.