On a July 28, 2009 broadcast on FOX & Friends, responding to President Barack Obama’s involvement in the Henry Louis Gates, Jr/Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, Glenn Beck called President Barack Obama a racist. ThenColor of Change, a black political advocacy group, launched a campaign urging advertisers on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show to pull their ads. Color of Change noted that Beck “called President Obama a racist who has a ‘deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.'” Beck concluded his statement on FOX & Friends, proclaiming, “I’m not saying he [Obama] doesn’t like white people. I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.” According to media reports some advertisers did pull their ads, although Fox said the advertisers were merely shifting ads to other shows on the network.
Today Glenn Beck, on his own program, questioned the inclusion of radical czars involved with the White House. Van Jones’ is on that list of czars. Van Jones co-founded Color of Change in 2005,and Beck claims he is a radical — twice arrested for political protests and self-described as a “rowdy black nationalist.” Jones now serves as a special adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
In 1994 Van Jones was associated with a group of activists known as Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a collective which “dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia.”
After his arrest as a political monitor during a peaceful protest in San Francisco following the Rodney King trial, Jones became further politicized. While in jail he claimed he was a communist.
“I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’ I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary. I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist.”
— Van Jones (1992)
What Advertisers Have Boycotted Glenn Beck?
As of August 24th, 2009, a total of 33 advertisers including Walmart, CVS, Best Buy, GMAC-owned Ally Bank, Travelocity, LexisNexis-owned Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Verizon Wireless, Progressive Insurance and GEICO have requested their ads be removed from his programming due to pressure from advocacy groups such as Color of Change. However, some claims are appearing that Color of Change fabricated or exaggerated the boycott of the advertisers.
Glenn Beck has record ratings on his cable television program (August averaging 2.25 million, with ratings up from July’s 2.05 million viewers), and his book Common Sense
See also …
Color of Change — colorofchange.org
Glenn Beck — glennbeck.com
defendglenn.com
Huffington Post: 15 Years Ago: Rodney King Uprising Left LA in Flames — And Me in Jail! by Van Jones
What is the title of Glenn Beck’s best-selling book?
Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine
The book has been #1 and #2 on Amazon’s best-sellers list since it was released June 16, 2009.
KINDLE EDITION BELOW …