Samuel

There’s some interesting reporting at The Daily Dish over some hay that’s being made of late around right wing nut-job Glenn Beck and his racist roadshow. The short version of this is that Beck said some pretty racist things about the President (suggesting that the President is a racist and that he hates white people and white culture – whatever that means). It was a stupid thing to say, which is to say, it’s completely unsurprising for Glenn “Frank Burns” Beck.

So, the obvious consequence of this was that several companies, not wanting to be associated with an idiot like Beck, pulled their advertising from his show. Among these companies are some big ones, Wal Mart and Geiko. Still, no surprises.

But here’s the thing that I find shocking. There’s an organized movement among conservatives to boycott the companies that pulled their advertising from the Beck show. So, there’s actually an organization out there – red state dot org and no I will not do them the service of a link – that’s calling for this boycott. They call the companies that pulled their advertising pawns of the left, and act as though there’s some left wing conspiracy to silence Beck. But what the Daily Dish points out – and rightly – is that this amounts to a defense of Beck’s statements, since it was the statements that led to the advertisers pulling their ads.

And frankly, I’m kind of glad to see things aligning this way. The American Right Wing has a long history of using racism to move its agenda, and conservatism has been associated with racism in America from way back. It’s refreshing to see it out in the open where the chicken hawks can’t hide from their own prejudices.