Survivor’s Pack

By Lynn Ashby                                                15 Nov. 2010

THE BUNKER – Flashlight? Check. Books I never got around to reading? Roger. Taser? Right. Case of Skyy? Here. MasterCard? It’s in my wallet in case I run out of my case. You may be wondering why I am hiding in my backyard bunker, door locked despite the wailing of anguished neighbors desperate to join me in my underground hideaway. “Leave, or I’ll spray you with my repellent.” It’s good to have a Mace in the hole.

I am here because I have been watching the Glenn Beck Show, my Bible. Never miss him. He’s my Beck ‘n’ Call, so to speak. When he is not telling us why we should buy gold (without noting he is also sponsored by gold companies), or pushing his own brand of pixie dust, or crying, he’s selling survivors’ packs containing food, ropes, saw, flame-thrower. Every family should have one.

The same pitch is made on Sean Hannity’s radio show: “You can never tell when a disaster might hit your home. Tornado, another 9-11, a visit by Nancy Pelosi. You must be ready for any eventuality, especially a bad one. Don’t think you need protection? You say you’ll get plenty of warning before the next tsunami, and have time to rush out and load up on supplies? Tell that to those Chilean miners. Bet they wished they’d gone down to that mine with a 69-day supply of toilet paper and deodorant.”

We can tell a lot about a program and its audience – radio or TV — by its commercials. Networks and their sponsors go to great lengths to determine who is watching, or listening, to what and when. As we have discussed before, the networks’ 5:30 p.m. news programs are sponsored mostly by medicines and vitamins, apparently consumed by a romantic couple soaking in his-and-her bathtubs, which makes no sense.  Networks and Big Pharma know the only people who have time to watch the 5:30 TV news are unemployed, usually elderly who need their meds.

Talk shows such as Beck’s and Hannity’s run commercials from companies that could thrive in a period of total Armageddon collapse, such as makers of emergency power generators or “survival seeds” so you can grow your own food. There are also lots of ads by financial problem solvers. “Can’t pay your bills? Bad credit? Bank gonna confiscate your machete? Bail bondsman trying to find you? Two years behind in child support? We’ll handle your problems.”

I hear many ads dealing with house-foreclosures for the homeless who bought a McMansion with servants quarters, split-level media room and swim-up bar. Then there is this one: “If the IRS is coming to get you. If you owe more than $10,000 to Uncle Sam. If you haven’t paid your federal income taxes since 1998. We here at SlyService can help.” Oh, and the one about fixing your soiled reputation. “Want to erase that pedophile charge?” These are ads aimed at deadbeats who belong to Losers Anonymous. The commercials speak volumes about the audience, even with the volume turned down.

True, not everyone is a Glenn Beck disciple. According to a recent profile in The New York Times: “As of Sept. 21, 296 advertisers have asked that their commercials not be shown on Beck’s show (up from 26 in August 2009). Fox also has a difficult time selling ads on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ and ‘Fox and Friends’ when Beck appears on those shows as a guest. Beck’s show is known in the TV sales world as ‘empty calories,’ meaning he draws great ratings but is toxic for ad sales.” His show in Britain now has no ads at all.

But there is hope for the Beckster (whose income, Forbes calculates, is $23 million a year): the aforementioned commercials aimed at the survivalists. Those are the knuckle-draggers who spend weekends in the boonies practicing commando warfare against the takeover of our nation by (pick one or more), communists, socialists, Eskimos, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, IRS agents, death panelists, the liberal media. In previous cataclysmic times, these people had backyard bomb shelters packed with food, water and John Birch bumper stickers.

Yes, the only path to safety is through Glenn Beck, who wears a bulletproof vest in public, is followed by bodyguards, and lives on an estate in New Canaan, Conn., which he tried to surround with a 6-foot-high wall until the neighborhood taste police said no. Here he is between sobs: “I told you about ‘The Coming Insurrection.’ This is a little book written by the Invisible Committee.” You think I made up that last line? It’s from his Nov. 5 show. Do you happen to know what, exactly, is the coming insurrection and who is the Invisible Committee? Doesn’t matter. Just so long as it scares us enough to buy a survival backpack.

I’m not paranoid, but we have a Keyan-born Muslim president who wants to build a mosque in Arlington Cemetery (the mainstream media won’t tell you this). Meantime,  Harry Reid is up to who-knows-what traitorous plots. Then there are those black helicopters and the radio beams – don’t you hear them? I must be prepared. There was some speaker at the last Tea Party lynching who said everyone should have a two years’ supply of food, ammo and Prozac. If Karl Rove can’t protect us, we need Plan B to survive.

You may be wondering, “How can I and my family live through the upcoming apocalypse?” Build a bunker as I did, or, if you don’t have a bunker mentality, just put four inches of hardened steel over your drained backyard swimming pool. If your kids complain, ask if they’d rather be wet, radioactive or kidnapped by pirates. Glenn Beck said these are all distinct possibilities. A moat helps. How about a panic room? You do have a panic room, don’t you? I mean, the zombies, the Jehovah’s Witnesses kicking down your door, and did I mention the Eskimos? So just hunker in the bunker. Tomorrow the world.

Ashby is surviving at ashby2@comcast.net