I see where you're coming from, but there's a point where it gets to you, you know? Take, for instance, people who repeat (in front of other people) the same excuses for denying the theory of evolution (I'm not even specifying evolution by natural selection; just the idea that life changes over time and gives rise to new types of life). It might be fine to let these people spread their poor understanding of modern science (biology, geology, medicine, you name it), but then what happens when these people want to change what's taught in your child's school? What happens when they want to contact their congresscritter (or become one themselves) and base their opinion on the precept that Earth is 6,000 years old, evolution can't occur, and therefore medical advances that are based on evolutionary theory are bunk and so NIH and NSF shouldn't get funding any more?
I'm using the slippery slope argument, obviously, but the idea that we have people like Don McLeroy (of the Texas Board of Education) claiming that "someone has to stand up to these experts" and choosing to believe whatever makes them the happiest rather than what is based on factual evidence making decisions that will impact a heck of a lot of people's lives just bugs me.
Now, to complete the parallelism, what happens when you have people doing the same things with historical facts? Doesn't this warrant some sort of pause, that there are people who listen/watch to people with agenda and take what is said as the gospel truth? Clearly, it would be bad precedent (and stupid, and counter to everything I believe) for any person to be censored (including the "entertainers" with whom I disagree), but I don't think this group is doing that to Beck in any wrongful way--as long as there are people who will watch his show, he'll be in the air, advertisers or not.
The most interesting outcome of this would be for a group of people who enjoy Beck's program (or dislike a host who is the opposite, I suppose) to start a similar campaign--either in favor of Beck ("I like Glenn Beck and I drive a Mercedes") or against someone else ("Dear Coolwhip, Jon Stewart was an ass last night on The Daily Show and you should pull your advertisements"). From a historical standpoint, the alignment of businesses with the shows with which they are associated could be quite interesting.
Jokes on them though... by getting sponsors to "drop" beck, they're actually giving them huge amounts of advertising. People who watch or watched beck will get the ads, and now the people who DON'T watch are going to support these companies.
I'm not sure what you mean here. I think the point is to get the companies to stop running ads during Beck's shows, not to punish the companies for ever having run an ad.
This is all besides the point that I don't think anybody is seeing an ad (on TV at least) and saying "holy crap ima use that coz it was on during beck!"
I think they're worried about the brand image itself; even if the connection is subliminal it still exists. This is what advertisers have been doing forever--selling you their product not because you like their product but because you like their advertising, or the shape of the bottle, or your perception of how all the cool kids use product X. That being said, I'm surprised the StopBeck.com group's plan works at all--if I wanted to buy a BMW, but I learned that Glenn Beck drove one, I don't think it would stop me since I'm sure a lot of people I wouldn't like drive BMWs.
Dave, your responses always make me post long posts without making a lot of sense. What's up with that?