Before too much time passes away, I wanted to catch up on an interesting discussion that happened last Thursday on Fox News Channel’s The O'Reilly Factor between the eponymous host and media impresario Glenn Beck. During the discussion, the former FNC host confirmed reports that he had attempted to purchase the failed cable television channel Current, which was started by former vice president Al Gore.
Beck and his company, Mercury Arts, got in touch with Current staff but were almost immediately rebuffed by Gore on account of the fact that he was one of those evil, nasty conservatives. “We never got to the table. We weren’t allowed to the table,” Beck said.
We called them up and we said, ‘So we want to make an offer, blah-blah blah.’ They said ‘Great, and who is this Mercury company who is...’ And we said (coughing and covering mouth) ‘Uh, Glenn Beck.’
And they said, ‘Well that would have to actually go to the vice president, I don’t, uh, yeah we’re going to call you back.’
Within fifteen minutes, they called us back and they said ‘the vice president has a reputation and under no circumstance will he ever entertain an offer from Glenn Beck.’
Beck confirmed that he and his colleagues never even got to submit a dollar amount:
“We never got to the table. We weren’t allowed to the table because his reputation,” Beck said. “His ‘legacy’ of his network was too important so he sold it to Al Jazeera.”
This was not the first time that a liberal media owner has rebuffed a right-leaning company trying to purchase an floundering asset. In 2010, the Washington Post Company, the former owners of Newsweek explicitly rejected two bids to purchase the failed magazine from the conservative Newsmax.com as well as libertarian-leaning investor Thane Ritchie.
The Newsmax offer was particularly absurd given that Nexmax was (and still is) operating a profitable national print news magazine and website. According to the New York Times, these two potential suitors were explicitly rejected because they were not establishment lefties.
The eventual primary owner of Newsweek, Sidney Harman, subsequently died and his family decided to leave the magazine, causing it to shutter its print edition, something that likely would not have happened under Newsmax or Ritchie ownership.
The fact that financially strapped liberal elites have now repeatedly rejected overturues of conservative cash ought to signal very strongly to conservative philanthropists that media ownership is a much greater thing of value than they have understood. Beck seems to have gotten this message since he has doubled down on his admirable efforts to take his libertarian views to a wider audience by expanding his TheBlaze web video offering into a full-fledged cable news channel.
Full transcript of the exchange between Beck and O’Reilly is below. Hat tip to Johnny Dollar for the video:
GLENN BECK: We called them up and we said, ‘So we want to make an offer, blah-blah blah.’ They said ‘Great, and who is this Mercury company who is...’ And we said (coughing and covering mouth) ‘Uh, Glenn Beck.’
And they said, ‘Well that would have to actually go to the vice president, I don’t, uh, yeah we’re going to call you back.’
Within fifteen minutes, they called us back and they said ‘the vice president has a reputation and under no circumstance will he ever entertain an offer from Glenn Beck.’
BILL O’REILLY: Even if it was $500 or $700 million?
BECK: We never got to the table. We weren’t allowed to the table because his reputation—
O’REILLY: So Gore hated you--
BECK: His ‘legacy’ of his network was too important so he sold it to Al Jazeera.
O’REILLY: Well that’s what I want to say. How do you process it personally when you’re more loathsome to Al Gore than guys who glorify Osama bin Laden?
BECK (laughing): As a badge of honor. I want that on my resume. I want it on my resume. It’s a badge of honor that I am more loathsome that I am not anywhere close to his agenda, close to his values but Al Jazeera is closer.
O’REILLY: But he’s the guy who’s taking money from Gulf oil sheiks when he’s blasting ‘Big Oil.’
BECK: Oh no, no, no. It’s so much more than that, it’s so much more than that. It’s not just that he has claimed all this global warming bullcrap and that he really cares and then sells—takes all the Gulf oil money, it’s more than that. His values, he said, that his network and Al Jazeera were launched on the same values. The network that was hiding information about Osama bin Laden and beyond that, the people who started it and launched it, stone women and homosexuals in their streets. Wow. I am proud to not have the same cornerstone or values as Al Gore.
O’REILLY: Do you really believe, though, I mean it’s hard for me to believe that Gore would just dismiss you, Mercury Arts is your company, and if they came up with a legitimate offer, because he thinks you’re a fascist or whatever.
BECK: Oh I believe that 110 percent.
O’REILLY: So you believe that Al Gore in his mind thinks you’re more of a threat to this world—
BECK: Oh, yes I do.
O’REILLY: –than Al Jazeera?
BECK: I do believe, I really do believe. First of all, Al Gore, I think he’s a fraud. I think he’s a total fraud. But I do absolutely believe that he is more in line with Al Jazeera than with anything that I would preach: American exceptionalism, American commonsense, responsibility, hard work, hey I live in Texas, drill? You bet. I think he thinks I’m much more dangerous than Al Jazeera. He’s that insane.
O’REILLY: Now does it trouble you at all that he was almost the president of the United States, that it was just by the Supreme Court one vote that kept him out?
BECK: On many levels, yes. On many levels, yes. But what is disturbing in this particular case is that here’s a guy who used to wear a flag lapel pin and then gets in bed again with an organization that CNN said in March of 2002 ‘they are hiding information about Osama bin Laden that would be good for the United States,’ and organization that on the weekend has a regular Jesus show except it’s all about [Islam’s founder] Mohammed where they’re talking about, ‘Oh please, Allah, give me the courage to stone the Jews to death.’
I mean he used to wear a flag lapel pin.
