BARD OF THE LESSER BOULEVARDS
Musings and Meanderings By John Allen Small


To Heck With Beck
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Mood:
Diagonally parked in a parallel universe

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Even though I work in the business and I know how the process works with regards to space limitations and the like, I still have to admit that I was a little disappointed to find that Time magazine was unable to print a letter to the editor I wrote in response to one of their recent editions.

The issue in question was that of Sept. 28, which featured a cover story on Glenn Beck - or, as a friend of mine once referred to him, "the man who is to Rush Limbaugh what cocaine is to marijuana."

In retrospect I wasn't really surprised that my letter about that issue was not among those published in Time's Oct. 12 edition; a note from the publishers in that issue noted that the issue featuring Beck drew more letters than any previous issue in Time's long history of publication.

Still, it would have been nice to see it in print - especially as I went to great pains to keep it extremely short and to the point, so as to make things easier for those Time employees whose job it is to edit long letters down to a more manageable length.

The text of my letter, in total, was as follows: "Dear Time: Thank you for this week's cover photo of Glenn Beck. I was in need of a new dartboard and this should do nicely."

It was signed, of course. Longtime readers of my newspaper column know my feelings about anonymous letters (for the record, I'm agin' 'em)...

Speaking of Glenn Beck (and for the most part I'd rather not), it turns out that American businesses aren't the only ones lining up to request that their ads be pulled from his Faux News program.

A report in a recent issue of the British newspaper The Guardian stated that Britain's most upmarket supermarket chain - Waitrose Foods - has pulled its ads from Beck's show and all other Fox programming, which is carried in that country by Sky Broadcasting.

The story reported that the ads were pulled after Waitrose officials received an e-mail from a customer who expressed anger over some particularly nasty comments about President Obama made by Beck on his program. It was one of a number of such comments the company is said to have received, although Waitrose officials reportedly declined to give an accounting of just how many complaints were actually received.

In any event, company officials gave the original complainant an apology and issued a press release stating that the company has withdrawn its advertising from Fox "with immediate effect and for all future TV advertising campaigns."

Yeah, I know, at the end of the day Waitrose's decision won't have much effect on Beck's legion of lemmings - er, fans - here in America. But it is somewhat comforting to know that people in other parts of the world recognize a hatemongering blowhard when they hear one...


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