Gordon,
I know we totally disagree here. And if you want to call Beck a nut case or a fruitcake, that's entirely your right.
In my opinion, he's a very smart cookie and an outstanding marketer.
Why?
Certainly not because he rants or cries ... which he does, on occasion. But more for 2 reasons:
1. He has targeted conservative Americans as his market, and that is a very large, very underserved (by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, Washington Post, etc., etc., etc.) market.
2. What makes him effective is that he lets the real crazies in our society do their own talking. And luckily for him, they LOVE to talk. They don't say so much wild stuff when Brian Williams is interviewing them. But when they're at a gathering of their own kind, they let their hair down, and they tell you what their real plans and goals are.
And then, this being the internet age, someone posts that video on youtube or someplace else online. And Beck's genius is that he has an army or researchers looking for those videos. Over the past few months, he has played very, very revealing videos by people like:
- Cass Sunstein, Regulatory Czar
- Van Jones, former "green jobs" czar
- Valerie Jarrett, Obama senior advisor
- Barack Obama, President
- Joe Biden, VP
- John Holdren, Science Czar
- Richard Trumpka, Pres AFL-CIO
- Andy Stern, Pres Emeritus, SEIU
- George Soros, billionaire funder of left-wing causes
- Jesse Jackson, left-wing preacher
- Al Sharpton, left-wing preacher
- Anthony Weiner, left-wing NY congressman
- Janet Napolitano, Dir Homeland Security
- Rahm Emmanuel, Mayor of Chicago
- Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader
- Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader
- Barney Frank, left-wing MA congressman
- Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman of GE
- Ron Bloom, Obama "car czar in charge of GM"
- Brian Williams, NBC anchor
- Katie Couric, CBS anchor
- Whoopi Goldberg, actress
- Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State
- Hilda Solis, Labor Secretary
- Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary
- Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary
- Todd Stern, Climate Czar
- Carol Browner, Energy Czar
- Wade Rathke, Executive Director of Acorn
- Bertha Lewis, NY ED of Acorn
- and many, many more
They say things that would get them in deep, deep trouble with the public if their comments ever appeared in the mainstream media. But, of course, they can count on their media brethren to cover for them.
But Beck just runs the video on his show, and these guys are hoist by their own petard. For a lot of them, Beck doesn't need to say a word. The craziness of these folks is self-explanatory.
And maybe more than that ... the more of these videos we see on Beck, the more we understand how biased and in-the-bag-to-the-left the mainstream networks and print media are. And that inspires a lot of people to support Beck even more, because we see zero truth coming from ABC, CBS, etc.
So Beck's marketing genius is NOT his own words. It's that he continually locates and leverages video of the crazies. It can't be too hard, becaue there's nothing they love to do more than talk about how smart they are. And THEIR rants have elevated Beck in record time to unhead-of heights for a 5 pm TV commentary.
Pretty good marketing.
Richard Dennis