Updated: Even more advertisers pull support for Glenn Beck

An online campaign against Fox News editorialist Glenn Beck is working.

Web site ColorofChange.org, reacting to a long line of racial comments about President Barack Obama, has managed thus far to knock loose from Beck's fold Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Progressive, S.C. Johnson, GEICO, Men's Wearhouse and, just Wednesday morning, Sargento.

**UPDATE: On Thursday, ConAgra, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis and RadioShack all backed out of sponsoring Glenn Beck's programs, according to a media advisory.

"We applaud GEICO and all of the other companies who have stepped forward to pull their ads from Glenn Beck," said James Rucker, executive director of Color of Change, in a Tuesday media advisoryrelease. "Beck’s rhetoric is dangerous to the fabric of our democracy, and we are heartened that so many big companies feel the same way. We won’t stop here — we’re going to continue our fight to see that as many of Beck’s advertisers pull their support as possible."

And video clips like this may have something to do with it ...

Watchdog group Media Matters, which has emphatically joined in the crusade to knock Beck from cable television, notes that many of the advertisers who refused in 2006 to support progressive-tilted Air America radio are still backing Beck.

According to the group, those companies are: General Electric, Farmers Insurance, Office Depot, Nestlé (Gerber), Red Lobster, State Farm, Travelocity, the U.S. Postal Service, Walmart and Wyeth.

Media Matters includes ">a long list of controversial, provocative (some would say shocking) segments on Beck's television program that, for the sake of brevity, is excerpted below:

Beck talks about "put[ting] poison" in Speaker Pelosi's wine. On his Fox News show, Beck gave a glass of wine to a person wearing a Pelosi mask, encouraged her to drink it, and then said: "By the way, I put poison in your -- no, I -- I look forward to all the policy discussions that we're supposed to have." [Glenn Beck, 8/6/09]

Beck: Obama is a "racist" and "has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture." Beck said: "This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy -- over and over and over again -- who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture -- I don't know what it is. But you can't sit in a pew with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years and not hear some of that stuff and not have it wash over." He later added, "I'm not saying that he doesn't like white people. I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist. Look at the way -- look at the things he has been surrounded by." [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 7/28/09]

Beck: "Everything that is getting pushed through Congress, including this health care bill" is "driven by President Obama's thinking on ... reparations" and his desire to "settle old racial scores." According to Beck, "Everything that is getting pushed through Congress, including this health care bill, are transforming America. And they are all driven by President Obama's thinking on one idea: reparations." Beck later added that Obama's "goal is creating a new America, a new model, a model that will settle old racial scores through new social justice." [Glenn Beck, 7/23/09]

ColorofChange.org has created a simple form for media activists: just enter your name and off an objection goes, directly to Beck's remaining advertisers.

Whether the campaign will be successful remains to be seen. And while the conservative Fox News channel still appears resolute in keeping Beck, at this point there's bound to be some discussion of how to stem the tide of advertisers pulling their support.

-- Stephen C. Webster