First, they came for Glenn Beck . . .

. . . and, if these vile monsters are permitted to succeed with their attacks on Beck's advertising revenue, the monsters will grow stronger and bolder, moving on to silence other conservative voices, not just at Fox TV, but everywhere, in every medium.

Erick Erickson is absolutely right about this. It doesn't matter if you love Glenn Beck, hate Glenn Beck, or if you never heard of Glenn Beck. Defending Glenn Beck in this situation is absolutely essential to the preservation of conservative media as a viable commercial enterprise. But . . . what's this?

A noble impulse, but is that really true? My hunch is that companies have limited patience for this sort of thing; they’ll throw a bone to an angry constituency if it’s sufficiently large and focused on one show, but the more targets the boycotters add, the greater the headaches for corporate advertisers who are looking for airtime and sensitive about not alienating other constituencies by getting too political.

That line of reasoning is completely 180-degrees wrong. Beck attracts an audience; the size and demographics of that audience are a commodity sold to advertisers. Media Matters and other left-wing operations intrude their politics into that market nexus in order to undermine the market value not merely of Glenn Beck, but of any other broadcaster (or publisher, or blogger) who might wish to emulate Beck.

The Left doesn't have to add more targets to their boycott list in order to damage conservative media. Put the hit on Beck -- impose what might be called a political discount on the value of his advertising -- and the boycotters have thereby demonstrated their ability to do the same to anyone whom they should decide to target next.

To abandon Glenn Beck and throw him under the bus -- to sacrifice him to the Left -- would be an act of appeasement akin to Neville Chamberlain giving Hitler the Sudetenland.