Shearing the Conservative Sheeple
Too_Many_Tools
gives conservatives everywhere the Goldfinger treatment
I wonder if he washed it first.
Laugh...laugh...laugh...
TMT
Beck mocks gold controversy
By: Kenneth P. Vogel
December 17, 2009 04:13 PM EST
Glenn Beck has no apologies for promoting gold – and no time for the
criticism he’s gotten for it.
Liberal media watchdogs, commentators and satirists have had a field
day with the increasingly overt – and profitable – synergy between
gold retailers and their endorsers in the conservative media,
including Beck, Bill O’Reilly and fellow Fox News personalities Brian
Kilmeade and Andrew Napolitano, among others. And Fox says it has
taken steps that will ensure that its policy of prohibiting product
endorsements from anyone on-air is followed.
But Beck recently took to his website to mock critics who questioned
whether it was proper for him to tout gold investments as a hedge
against an economic collapse he often predicts on the air, while a
handful of gold coin retailers pay to advertise on his shows on Fox
News and AM radio.
“I have a statement to make about the recent allegations by the
liberal blogs that – quote – Glenn Beck promotes gold to audience,
while profiting from gold investment firms,” Beck said in 4-minute
clip posted on his website Friday evening.
“Yes. Yes, it’s true,” he said, pretending to choke up and explaining
that “like Tiger Woods, I’m not a perfect person, starting with my
chins. I’ve got – I don’t know – seven of them. My hairline is
thinning. I’m a little overweight.”
Scrunching his face into a mask of mock puzzlement, he said “the
accusations that I actually purchase one of the products I endorse may
be shocking to some.” He said he’s turned down or terminated
endorsement deals “because I didn’t believe in them” and proclaimed,
tongue-firmly-planted-in-check that he’d been trying to keep his
arrangement with Goldline a “secret.”
“But I guess it was only a matter of time before people started to
catch on, what with the daily advertisements and my firm belief that
the dollar is in rough shape and people should protect themselves, and
me being on the Internet and the radio and television all the time
saying this.”
Beck facetiously said he “didn't know that by me suggesting to you to
buy gold through a fine establishment like Goldline.com – 866-Goldline
– that the global price of this trillion-dollar industry – global
industry – would actually start to wildly fluctuate, because of me.”
Beck endorses Goldline International, but last week, Fox requested
that he clarify his relationship with the firm, prompting it to tweak
its trumpeting of Beck’s endorsement. Goldline removed an
identification of Beck as a “paid spokesman” from its website, but
left the rest of the site – which prominently features his
endorsement, photo and a radio interview he did with the company’s
president Mark Albarian – intact.
Removal of the “paid spokesman” language from Goldline’s site brought
his arrangement with the company in line with a network policy
prohibiting “on-air talent from endorsing products or serving as a
product spokesperson,” according to Joel Cheatwood, a Fox News
executive.
“We asked for clarification. We got it. We’re satisfied. It’s a dead
issue,” he told POLITICO.
On Thursday, the network also indicated it would ask Rosland Capital,
another gold retailer, to remove from its website the logo for Bill
O’Reilly’s Fox show, the O’Reilly Factor, which Rosland features along
with an audio clip of O’Reilly urging listeners to buy gold because
“The U.S. Dollar is under attack!”
Fox’s concern was that O’Reilly’s endorsement of Rosland was specific
to the radio show he no longer does, and Rosland is not a sponsor of
his television show.
Rosland spokesman Steve Getzug said the company had not heard from Fox
but was already “in the process of pulling the reference down as part
of an overall update of Rosland’s website.” He called the O’Reilly
endorsement “dated” and said “it’s been a while since the company has
updated its website.”
Beck’s critics have not suggested that he was actually influencing the
price of gold, which had been rising steadily until this month, by
encouraging his fans to buy coins from Goldline.
But some financial analysts and precious metals experts did tell
POLITICO that potential gold investors would be wise to look into
bullion or exchange traded funds intended to track the price of gold,
rather than the coins sold by Goldline and a handful of other firms
that advertise on Beck’s shows and those of other conservative
talkers. That’s because those firms focus on collectible or antique
coins, which they sell for many times the value of the intrinsic gold
and promote as being exempt from a potential government seizure of
gold like that which occurred under Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Beck
has suggested that gold coins are a good buy now because President
Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are steering the economy
towards disaster.
And that feedback loop – Beck stoking fear of economic collapse,
hyping gold as a hedge against collapse, and endorsing a company
selling gold – prompted liberals from the watchdog group Media Matters
to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to Comedy Central’s faux-news hosts
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to allege a glaring conflict of
interest.
“Glenn Beck is paid by Goldline to drum up interest in gold, which
increases in value during times of fear, an emotion reinforced nightly
on Fox by Glenn Beck,” Stewart said on The Daily Show last week.
Fox policy barring hosts from serving as paid spokespeople is industry
standard, said Columbia University journalism professor Todd Gitlin
because it guards networks’ credibility against “the taint of self
interest.” But he said, no matter what Goldline calls Beck, “the
situation clearly crosses the line. If Beck is not serving as a paid
spokesperson, then he must be the tooth fairy.”
There’s a larger issue in play, as well, according to Nancy Marsden of
FITMedia, a non-profit group pushing the FCC to amend its regulations
to set a higher standard for disclosure of paid endorsements on
broadcast and cable television.
“Beck is a poster child for the proposed amendments,” she blogged on
Huffington Post.
Beck’s representatives declined to comment for this story, but
Albarian, the Goldline president, said that disclosure of the
company’s financial relationship with Beck’s productions eliminates
any potential conflicts.
“We don’t influence the content of either his radio show or this
television show,” Albarian told POLITICO. “Fox’s point – and I think I
have to agree with it – is that we are not paying Glenn Beck outside
of his radio show to do endorsements for Goldline.”
Albarian said that Goldline has also sponsored Beck’s comedy tours,
which – like his radio and Fox News show – are either produced or co-
produced by Beck’s production company Mercury Radio Arts, according to
the company’s website. “This doesn’t change anything in our
relationship. We’re currently an endorser and we look forward to doing
so in the future.”
Albarian said that Goldline has never had an issue like the one with
Beck with any of its other endorsers, a group that includes
conservative talkers Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larson, Michael
Smerconish, Dennis Miller and former Sen. Fred Thompson.
Goldline doesn’t “pick people because they’re conservative,” Albarian
asserted, adding that it would consider paying an MSNBC host to
endorse it and pointing out that the company had paid former U.S. Mint
director and Democratic Congressman Jay Johnson for his endorsement
until his death in October. “We pick people because they have a
passion for gold.”
Goldline is not the only company to pay for endorsements from
conservative talkers predicting dire consequences from the Obama
administration’s economic policies.
Swiss America Trading Corp., a Goldline rival, pays firebrand radio
talker Michael Savage, who – in a CD offered through Swiss America’s
website – (linked from Savage’s own) talks to a company executive
about such topics as whether “the U.S. dollar will decline further
under Obamanomics.”
Rosland Capital boasts endorsements from O’Reilly, who also
occasionally touts gold investments on his show, Kilmeade and
Napolitano, among other endorsers not affiliated with Fox.
In addition to the O’Reilly Factor’s logo, Rosland’s website includes
an audio clip of O’Reilly declaring “The U.S. Dollar is under attack!
Under attack at home, from a Fed that’s printing paper money like it
has no value, and from China, whose actions are tipping the balance of
the global currency system away from the U.S. Dollar.”
And last month, when Beck appeared on O’Reilly’s show, O’Reilly asked
him whether he thought “there's a global currency going to come and
the dollar is just going to go some place away, but you're hoarding
gold in your basement? That's what you're doing?”
“Not in my basement,” Beck said. “Definitely, not in my basement.
Don't say it in my basement.”
O’Reilly apologized, and said he, too, had purchased “a bunch of” gold
“because I think the Obama administration is mishandling the economy
at this point.”
Fox hasn’t re-examined its other hosts endorsement deals, Cheatwood
said, and he pushed back against critics, saying “thankfully, we don’t
answer to them or have to worry too much about what the Daily Show is
putting out there.”
He added that “critics will always get mileage out of whatever they
chose to interpret as something that they can make hay with
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
Observer
<too_man...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Meanwhile Goldbug Glenn is laughing all the way to the bank as he
>gives conservatives everywhere the Goldfinger treatment
>
>I wonder if he washed it first.
>
>Laugh...laugh...laugh...
Hey, Laughinhg Boi... Gold did great during the BushCo years. Are
you suggesting that even greater debasement of our currency will make
gold less attractive to investors?
__
The last official act of any government is the looting of the nation.
cop welfare
> On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:14:12 -0800 (PST), Too_Many_Tools
>
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
"Hey, Laughinhg Boi... Gold did great during the BushCo years. Are
you suggesting that even greater debasement of our currency will make
gold less attractive to investors? "
that makes no sense.
i don't know for sure, but maybe he's suggesting that ingraham,
larson, beck, levin, o'reilly and savage (among others, i suppose) are
doing a pump and dump on the country.
Observer
Please correct my thinking.
>i don't know for sure, but maybe he's suggesting that ingraham,
>larson, beck, levin, o'reilly and savage (among others, i suppose) are
>doing a pump and dump on the country.
So you'd rather have your savings in paper?
Gold was less than $300 ten years ago. Recently over $1200.
How did paper do?
Strabo
> On Dec 17, 10:03 pm, Observer <noone@nowhere> wrote:
>> On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:14:12 -0800 (PST), Too_Many_Tools
>>
>> <too_many_to...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Meanwhile Goldbug Glenn is laughing all the way to the bank as he
>>> gives conservatives everywhere the Goldfinger treatment
>>> I wonder if he washed it first.
>>> Laugh...laugh...laugh...
>> Hey, Laughinhg Boi... Gold did great during the BushCo years. Are
>> you suggesting that even greater debasement of our currency will make
>> gold less attractive to investors?
>>
>>
>
> "Hey, Laughinhg Boi... Gold did great during the BushCo years. Are
> you suggesting that even greater debasement of our currency will make
> gold less attractive to investors? "
>
> that makes no sense.
>
> i don't know for sure, but maybe he's suggesting that ingraham,
> larson, beck, levin, o'reilly and savage (among others, i suppose) are
> doing a pump and dump on the country.
>
Pump and dump gold? More magical thinking. The Commies are desperately
in need of a scapegoat.
cop welfare
nice of you to click on the read more which "magically" appears from
time to time for some reason to mask whatever i've said NOT that i'm
paranoid or anything...
(who the hell am i, eh...)
\nevertheless in it's full glory...
"i don't know for sure, but maybe he's suggesting that ingraham,
larson, beck, levin, o'reilly and savage (among others, i suppose)
are
doing a pump and dump on the country."
the thing is, have these goldbugs been selling their own as the price
has been going up while at the same time advising the less fortunate
to buy buy buy.
isn't that a pump and dump?
what's so far-fetched about that?
hal
wrote:
Commies? <snicker> Are you still fearing "Commies"? You're too
pathetic for words.
HH&C
> On Dec 17, 10:03 pm, Observer <noone@nowhere> wrote:
> "Hey, Laughinhg Boi... Gold did great during the BushCo years. Are
> you suggesting that even greater debasement of our currency will make
> gold less attractive to investors? "
>
> that makes no sense.
>
> i don't know for sure, but maybe he's suggesting that ingraham,
> larson, beck, levin, o'reilly and savage (among others, i suppose) are
> doing a pump and dump on the country.
He could always say that if that's what he wanted to say.
And it would have taken up much less space.