Paranoia is back in style and one of its main proponents is a weeping, heavy set, short haired, recovering alcoholic who is a phenomenon of television and radio. His name is Glenn Beck. In its September 2009 issue Time magazine called Glenn Beck, "the hottest thing in the political rant racket, left or right."
Beck is a talented storyteller who caters to fear. He has an audience of almost 3,000,000 rabid viewers and more than 8,000,000 radio listeners who hang onto his every word. His radio show can be heard on almost 400 stations across the country and he has one of the five largest radio audiences in the United States.
This advocate of angst has said time and again, "I'm afraid" and, "You should be afraid too."
But what is he afraid of? It seems like he's afraid of just about anything and everything. Or maybe it's anything that could earn him a buck.
Beck focuses on the "Them versus Us" frame of reference and he's really good at it. He's so good that it's been estimated that his fear mongering earns him in excess of twenty-three million dollars a year.
If you close your eyes and listen to his rants and raves it could be easy to imagine that you're in a Munich beer hall in the 1930s. Among other things, Beck is afraid that Barrack Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people." Beck is afraid of widespread political corruption. He's afraid that the government is killing capitalism and eliminating liberty.
Most recently he's fearful that the Christian concept of "social justice" is just another name for Nazism and communism. On his radio and tv shows he has said, "I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site." He advises that, "If you find it, run as fast as you can."
All of this begs the question: why would anyone in their right mind advertise on his shows?
One of the advertisers, Sokolove Law, was asked this very question.
Here's their response:
"Thank you to those who have reached out to Sokolove Law in regard to the advertisements that we run on The Glenn Beck Program. Some of you have questioned our choice of venue. We would like to explain how we place our ads and why certain shows may be selected in comparison to others.
"As a law firm specializing in personal injury law, Sokolove Law runs its messaging across all sorts of mediums and programs through which we might be able to reach individuals with personal injury claims and concerns. On network radio, our core audience listens to a lot of talk radio, so that is where we focus as well.
"We neither support nor condemn the ideologies or the agendas of those broadcasters. Personal injury doesn't discriminate, and similarly we respect that the constituency that we are trying to serve has diverse viewpoints and disparate tastes in entertainment. We try to be as effective and efficient as possible in getting a message of hope in personal injury compensation to our audience.
"At Sokolove Law, we focus on personal injury law to live our mission: to make sure everyone has access to justice."
In his first inaugural address Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
So in a world where, according to Beck, fear runs rampant, where there is no social justice, a world in which the President hates many of the people who live in the country that elected him, a world where corruption is king, companies such as this choose to advertise so that people who may have become immobilized by Beck's paranoia can fight back and find that they are not alone.
They advertise so people will realize that all is not lost and that action - not rhetoric - will help them to enjoy the justice that people like Beck are so "afraid" are long gone.
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And if you feel that you might need the help of a company that specializes in personal injury law, go to http://www.sokolovelaw.com/ to find out how you can get free consultation that will help you to right your wrongs.
