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The world will be a poorer place

By Owen Paine on Friday April 15, 2011 04:17 PM

What made Fox push Beck out the tower window -- bad ratings dynamics or a growing corporate sponsor boycott?

It could have required both, of course, but that's no fun to juggle around. More fun to say pure ratings is always sufficient, or pure advertising in this case was sufficient. Maybe both are true...would that be a instance of over-determination?

Whatever the causal pattern, for us speculating outsiders, ever vigilant to avoid the Smiff hammer of scorn -- let's call this a Roar Shark test.

My first cut? I'd like to think it's all about ratings. The show's on a toboggan slide. Roger, to his flunksters: "Get the fuckin' hook, boys!"

That appeals to my baser sense of corporate decision-making: it's all about shameless commerce, and we gotta win here to earn.

But then there's this delicous Tartuffian boycott wave, and that becomes a tale within a tale. Did the corporates decide not to alienate melanin-enhanced folks from their proffered products? Or recalling the hump that is investor relations, might they, on a wild low-percentage shot, fear an NPO hygienic portfolio backlash scourge agin' 'em?

The executive suite scenarios get to multiplying here quick as hell, don't they? Fibonacci speculating! I'd love to see a TV movie on one of these episodes in virtual ethnic cleansing, wouldn't you?

"Yes, Ms Bracewell-Bagshot, we are as outraged as you by Jimmy Crack Corn's racist tirades! Why, even if you had never approached us, the decision was already made to stop advertising on The Angry White Guy Hour!"

[Hangs up phone, turns to flunky]

"Janie, get Frackle in here NOW! Why? Why? Because I say so, you idiot!"

[Exit flunky, enter Frackle]

"Look, Frack, we gotta 86 those ads on Freckle-Faces show. I want you personally to call whoever you call over there... no, better, go over there yourself, TODAY -- and read whoever you read to at that Godforsaken hen coop the fuckin rubber bullet riot act! They better dump that motherfucker, like yesterday. We can't afford to miss all those bloodshot fucking fools' eyeballs that batshit gimp's got turning on him every night. Tell em to axe that pencil-necked rooster or we'll pull off the whole network!"

Oh hell, this is just daydreaming. I do a lot of that. It's a part of the dialectical process.

All things considered, I agree with Alex: better they axe Robert Spoegelman at NPR. In fact, better axe NPR itself than end the joyous mixed-nuts run of Glenn at Fox Hollow.

We marginal left-outs were never left out with you, Mr Beck!

Comments (15)

mjosef:

Two posts in a row echoing libertarian militiaman Alex and his ex-rad sympathy for the poor put-upon far-rightists kookoisie - what's with this creeping WF Buckleyism?
NPR is to be avoided at all costs, but Beck's family travails and druggery are of no concern either - Goebbels probably had a sob story in his family past.
Cockburn's nuttery always swings far-right these days - Imhofe anti-AGW, Birchite Mr. Wizard abiotic oil pseudo-science, extremely well-heeled Ron Unz good-friendism. Once established, these late-in-life tendencies are a form of irreversible senescence, but they also sweep acolytes down the subservient path.

Fox News is always the propaganda wing of the fascists, the "isolationist right" is always one fife short of a drum corps - what's with these bending-over, tear-stained, empathy cards for nutjobs?

MJS:

QED

Beck will be missed purely for his entertainment value from this end.

op:

"Beck's family travails and druggery.."
mjoe

why drag that in ??

or alex the rouge for that matter ???

Fox News is always the propaganda wing of the fascists"


fascists ?? the fox team ??

why you sound like sam webb

frankly i wish we had a wave of fascism here
it would mean the class struggle had sharpened considerably

it hasn't
and a fan up
of that eternal flame
only produvces an absurd bi foprcation effect
it builds the crow fire fly tendency
even as it also builds
a circle the wagons effect

ie throw bombs now
or
huddle inside the jack ass circle

yup
jack ass or jack crow
of nannycrats

Karl:

I think you mean you wish we had a more overt fascism.

We have fascism right now. It's just not styled the way Benito styled his. But it's no less a marriage of corporate business and fed govt today than in Benito's day in Italy. The arguments suggesting distinction are hair-splitting hollow formalist arguments, nothing more.

mjosef:

1. Well said, Karl. Bertram Gross coined the term "Friendly Fascism" to describe the US variety more than 30 years ago, and there was a flurry of anti-George W. fascism works (Naomi Wolf), but for some reason the term offends OP and other "hair-slitting formalist others."
2. Glenn Beck's family travails was the lead sob story of the AC puff piece. The puff piece is linked in the post above, which is why I referenced it.
3. In a personal note, it is always helpful for me to, every week or so, check with others to ascertain that I have not lost my mind entirely. I don't quite get why no. 2 was not readily apparent, but then I understand that I am, or at least my intellectual self is, just about always, out of phase. There must be a term for that: "aphasic"? Gracias.

op:

"The arguments suggesting distinction are hair-splitting hollow formalist arguments, nothing more"

and the hair so carefully split
i presume
is plucked
from
the ass of a purply baboon

calling our fascists deadly
simply misses the main enemy

the corporate liberals
and their sanctimonious side kicks

the humanists
the sivilizers

the up lifters
and
enlighteners

the meliorists
the cosmos

the meddlers without borders

shall we go on ??

none have rough fun
none wear over stuffed scouting uniforms
none rove the streets on day's off
in quest
of picket lines
wet backs
and sub human shop keepers

none juggke fire arms
with blood in their eye
and booze on their breath
preparing themselves for
the next " final conflict"

fascism is a serious word
only when a powerful enough nation
in a fractured enough planetary "order "
finds itself caught in fascism's
fruity grip

a nation powerful enough
that if it went postal
many eggs might get broken

other then that
fascism is for losers

if the color revolutions show us anyhting
they show us
for now
pluralism is bitchin
.......for the global empire
totalizers are a bummer

could this change ??

why of course
but not here and not anywhere right now

not even russia or brazil or india

mjosef:

The "main enemy"? What is, what are, what is not, the "main enemy"?
The enemy is the supersystem, man, and it comes in all flavors and varieties, all working in cacophonous concert, but to choose one wing over another as the "main" is specious.
Fascism is the melding of various kinds of power into a dominant order, which can be enforced through the daily murder of hundreds of trade unionists, or through breads and circuses that keep the body count in the streets of the more tolerable kind, such as in blighted neighborhoods, jobless "recoveries," and hungry homeless children. That's my version of fascism, but if I am too cavalier with the word's precision and history, then I'll confess I am on zero leftie or rightie "mailing lists."
The "color revolutions" have nothing to do with conditions in the US. They were a flavor of the month, and are now replaced by the child-Royal Wedding. Let's see Gene sharp and his CIA handlers infiltrate that one, boyee.

Karl:

If the purply baboon is Historicity, yes.

It's just hair-splitting Beautician's Work to argue that since the USA is not really fascist because it is not in every facet identical to Mussolini's Italy.

In essence you divert people's attention to comparing Italy and the USA, and away from what it is that is the essence of fascism.

Which suggests your point is not to inform or mobilize or assist, but instead is to thwart, to redirect into nothingness.

Or, in a less serious case, to entertain through absurdity.

IOZ:

At least we still have the Savage Nation.

op:

"The enemy is the supersystem"

--------------------
cuttin enemies up into
main versus not so main is "specious"
--------------------
define as you may

"That's my version of fascism"
--------------------
i think get where you're at
mate

i just hope you don't settle in there
for too long

------------

savage nation???

savage is trying to
work you off
not work you up

he's a clear product
of a fart contest winner
that is a fart contest
greater new york style

in that sweltering 6th floor walk up
league
i prefer those that in later life turned
to porno shops
no to
candy store politics

give me al goldstein
and one of those wadmeisters to go

IOZ:

Oh, Owen. MJS would understand, as a boater.

MJS:

As a boater, I'd just like to say... pass the salt.

juan:

- We have fascism right now. It's just not styled the way Benito styled his. But it's no less a marriage of corporate business and fed govt today than in Benito's day in Italy."

Fascism also *requires* a social base,,,in the U.S. that would seem to be the failing 'middle class' [perhaps 'tparty folk'? as most evident but also other working class who firmly believe - have been told all their lives - they are 'middle']

Fascism can be understood as a form of corporatism, understanding this last as a vertical grouping of State manipulated/controlled Groups. Yes, even during an era of transnnaties and 'communities.'

As political, economic and cultural, Corporatism is much more than generally portrayed, much more than corporate domination - Howard Wiarda has, over the last 40 years, built a nice theoretic/empirical set of argumentents; from a different angle, Philippe Schmicter.

Then as well the populist aspect which seems to be part of 20/21st c corporatism - if I recall, Ernesto Laclau had a bitb to say about right, center, left populist ideology.

juan:

what the hell kind of comment did i just make

lets shorten to:

austerity

regime of internal
enemies

new version neo-imperialism
fit for declining hegemon

fascism? working on it - if only we had a comintern to help.

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