You'd hope that cooler heads would prevail, but in ensuing weeks, radical left-wing splinter groups like GMAC Financial Services, ConAgra Foods, Geico Insurance, P&G, Progressive Insurance, Roche, Sanofi Aventis, RadioShack, Men's Wearhouse, Lawyers.com and Sargento Cheese have pulled their ad spots from Beck's show, no doubt cribbing from some Guerrilla Corporate Sponsorship checklist in Mao's Little Red Book. Beck is embattled, or so it would seem.For instance, Gawker reported this only yesterday:
TVNewser reported today, citing "several sources inside" Fox News, that Glenn Beck was pulled off the air and sent on a forced, unscheduled vacation this week after executives became increasingly alarmed over the advertiser exodus from his show and wanted to "let some of the heat surrounding him die down."If true, this would have been a rare incidence of FOX News backing away from an appalling and appallingly baseless story about one of their political enemies. But, of course, it wasn't:
Not long after the TVNewser posted the item, Beck's personal publicist Matthew Hiltzik provided evidence to Politico that Beck's vacation was long-planned: An e-mail from an employee of his production company, dated July 14, saying, "All: Glenn will be off of radio & TV the week of August 17th, returning to air August 24th."As the Gawker article goes on to note, this is the perfect solution for FOX and Beck. The network gets to appear contrite, placate advertisers and get some sweet caaaaaash back without ever having to offer a formal apology or formal censure. Beck, meanwhile, gets to look like he's cooling down and thinking about what he did while taking the vacation he was planning on anyway. And at no point does the network have to try to have a reasoned conversation with someone who would break down weeping in the middle of the meeting, saying, "I... I just love this network so much... but I fear for it."
There's only one problem: this isn't going to work.
First of all, there's the obvious matter that whatever FOX leaked bore no resemblance to the truth: Beck isn't on some sort of disciplinary leave, so the effort to seem earnest about cleaning up the discourse is just a bunch of smoke. The advertisers are going to get wind of the duplicitous gesture and, if anything, will probably be angrier that their token gesture of silencing customer complaints and heading off potential boycotts has been thrown under the bus. Meanwhile, anyone with a blog is probably writing about this, this week, which means it will have percolated up to the Beltway Wisdom crowd by next week, whereupon they can claim all these observations they've seen written on their RSS readers are things they just thought of right now and have to say about Beck. The story won't go away for at least that long.
But, secondly, and most importantly: nobody puts Becky in a corner.
We've seen how Glenn reacts in the past to little things like Republicans not being in power: he gets some guy to come on and advance the idea that the best thing for American would be another massive World Trade Center-level terror attack. He calls the president a communist and then a fascist and then gets some goober from Ayn Rand's hermetically sealed abbatoir to explain how communists and fascists are actually just the same people anyway — which is to say, liberals — which is to say, Obama, that self-loathing blackaryan. And that's just sweating the minority stuff.
But now... now someone has dared to say that Glenn Beck cannot go on TV and act like a eye-drooling retard who makes funny voices and looks like he spends his nights playing human pinball in a white fluffy cube cell designed by the finest minds at Serta. Now someone has fucked with his bread and butter. His livelihood. The crazy that puts crazy food on the crazy table for his kids, who so far are just mormons.Would we tolerate this in any other profession? Would we take the tears from a clown and thus his pathos? Would we say to Jim Thome, "You can be a designated hitter, but I'm sorry, you must leave the bat in the dugout"? Would someone so lack human mercy as to rob Carrot Top of his material by inserting jokes in it? Would we put a mime in a real glass box and divest him of the magic—of imagination?
We wouldn't, and neither will Beck. Because now the ropy ape-length arm of the president's goons has put their greasy hands on his livelihood and tried to redistribute his crazy from out of satellite dishes and back to the level of electrical conductivity this sort of talk usually enjoys: bouncing off a shopping cart filled with cans. They might be trying to jam his transmissions, but one clarion call is coming through clearly to Beck: they think that was crazy? They don't even know what crazy is. They don't know my 11th Amendment rights. They are gonna get two smokin barrels of freedom unloaded right now.
The question isn't whether Beck will be contrite when he comes back on the air: he has nothing to be contrite about. The questions are: how badly was his liberty wounded by a bunch of communist business conglomerates using the strength of free enterprise to silence him; and, you know what wounded animals are like, don't you? Well, just wait and see. You want to wrong Glenn Beck with a charge of crazy? Will he not revenge with insane?
EARLY PREDICTIONS FOR GLENN BECK'S RETURN
• Spends an entire episode calling for the assassination of "a certain someone," using the phrase 76 times because he believes 76 to be a magic number that, when repeated, can summon a small creature made of clay and imbued with the life-force of liberty.
• Does "Man on the Street" interviews with White Nationalist survivalists in Northern Idaho. Upon returning, edits together a sympathetic documentary-style piece and calls it "Guerillas In Our Midst."
• Drops his pants to reveal that he got a scrotal American flag tattoo by doing "The Batwing."
• Invites Jesse Jackson on the show and they spend the entire time giving each other pedicures and discussing all the people they would like to "cut the nuts off."
• Straps a guest to a bomb and threatens to blow her up unless Obama "hands over America."
• Does a reading of Dr. Seuss classics while emphasizing keywords seemingly at random.
• Constantly interrupts the broadcast to store his urine in Erlenmeyer flasks that slowly consume the entire studio.
• Drops his pants to reveal that he's written the word KENYA across his ass in sharpie. Proceeds to push out a massive turd while saying, "Look, I'm birthing an Obama!" then preemptively defends his comment as non-racist because "all people have to go to the bathroom."
• Waterboards a muppet, screaming, "TELL THE TRUTH FOR ME, ELMO."
• Lies motionless on a bed of nails for a week with "HIGHER TAXES LESS DOG FOOD" painted on his stomach. Never mentions it again.
• Announces, "THIS IS WHAT WE SHOULD DO TO IRAN," and proceeds to melt a child's sandbox with a homemade flamethrower utilizing jellied gasoline.
• Brings out giant novelty chicken enchilada to set, cuts off a big old slice, sticks it in his mouth and looks at the camera and says, "Sotomayor, huh???" Repeats entire process until he's eaten the whole thing.
• Interviews Naruto, becoming increasingly frustrated with his unresponsiveness, until it is finally revealed that he is just watching an episode he Tivo'ed while drunk.
• Interrupts a guest and says, "I think we should do the show outside today." Up on the roof, he ignores the guest for 30 minutes as he uses a magnifying glass and the sun to burn the crotches off a handful of Captain Planet figurines.
• Pushes a 1993 Chevy Blazer off a pier and then turns around, wiping his hands, and says, "Agricultural subsidies!" without any further explanation.
• Plays Operation Wolf for 25 minutes while making a halting and badly confused homily about why America can just prevail if we accept that he had no choice but to keep shooting the nurses.
• Spends five minutes explaining his fantasy football league before revealing it's actually just a Picasa slidehow of photoshopped pictures of him hugging Tim Tebow.
• Broadcasts whole show from a bathroom stall, noisily defecating the entire time.
• Has multiple guests on to complete Kazoo Korus production of "The Immigrant Song." Upon learning one of the kazooers is actually an immigrant, has to be restrained from beating the man with his own instrument.
• Right before fadeout, throws pie at a gargoyle and just goes, "See? SEE???"
• Announces at the beginning of the show that the "secret word of the day is 'Public Option'" and then when a guest says it, crewhands douse them with a trough of blood.
Thanks to e-crony Rigamarock, who wrote about half the listed gags and who you can read more from in this article, this Twitter update or at his Twitter page.
