Photograph by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Esquire.com

Glenn Beck's commie-hunt continues! Last month he was waving the bloody pelt of Van Jones. "We need to at least in this country start having the necessary discussion of, Do we want communists in the United States government?" he ranted. "This guy is still a radical, just like Cass Sunstein and John Holdren and Carol Browner and Mark Lloyd and the list goes on and on and on. Now some in the White House may be uncomfortable calling these individuals radicals or revolutionaries or communists, but I'm not — America, when did we stop caring about communism?"

A few days ago, Beck posted a picture on his Web site of the Empire State Building in the colors of the Chinese flag. Apparently this was a courtesy gesture from New York City in recognition of our largest bondholder and second-largest trading partner's birthday. Beck's headline: Communist State Building?

This got me thinking, even though I prefer not to think about Glenn Beck: His administration suspects are actually a pretty tame bunch. (Cass Sunstein is a vaguely libertarian professor at Harvard and author of at least thirteen books. John Holdren is a distinguished professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, the director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Carol Browner is a former Senate staffer and senior state government official. Mark Lloyd is a professor at Georgetown University's public policy school and a former lecturer at MIT.) Not exactly bomb-throwing revolutionaries.

However, there is still one powerful American who has extensive connections with communists — not just some communists, but some of the most powerful communists in the world. According to an extensive report in the New York Times, this man has "flattered Communist Party leaders and done business with their children," met repeatedly with senior members of the communist Politburo, "cooperates closely" with communist censors and propaganda networks, and "cultivates political ties" with communists in the hope that they will "insulate his business ventures." Not only that, but he "often supports the policies" of communist leaders and "attacks their critics."

It gets worse. This powerful American has control of a large number of media holdings, and he attempted to curry favor with said communists by ordering one of his book publishing units to release glorifying Deng Xiaoping, the heir to Chairman Mao.

Another time, he killed a book deal with the last British governor of Hong Kong because of rumors that it would be critical of his communist business partners. When the story broke, the businessman denied it. Then Business Week uncovered internal memos that spoke of "corporate worries" that the book would threaten his business interests in China.

And it gets worse still. This powerful American businessman also owns a Chinese television network called Star TV. Once it carried news programming from the BBC. But after the famous incident when communists attacked unarmed civilians in Tiananmen Square, Star TV's BBC affiliate repeatedly showed the spectacular video clip of a man facing down a tank alone. The communists complained. And the powerful American businessman — who makes a great deal of noise on these shores about being a champion of freedom and free speech and the free market — asked the BBC to stop showing it so often. But the BBC kept airing the clip and the communists kept complaining and finally the businessman ordered his Chinese network to drop the BBC news channel altogether. He insisted this was a business decision and that politics had absolutely nothing to do with it, of course — and, also, the BBC reporters really wanted to spend more time with their families. But subsequently, the supreme leader of the communists praised him for his "objective" approach to Chinese political news.

As I said, this American businessman is a vocal champion of freedom in this country. He owns the Weekly Standard, which supports Bill Kristol and many other influential neoconservatives who are passionately committed to spreading democracy to all oil-producing countries. He put all of his media power behind the Iraq War. He cheered George W. Bush as "a man of great character and deep humility." And he's famously touchy about any criticism of his politics — when The Simpsons ran a parody of Fox News that included headlines like "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?" he threatened to sue the creators of the most successful show in the history of his network.

But his friendly relations with overseas communists have proved lucrative. After killing Star TV's BBC affiliate in order to ingratiate himself with China's communist propaganda ministers, he established a contract to help design a Web site for CCTV, the giant official Chinese TV network that Time magazine called "the key propaganda arm of the Communist Party." He also helped launch the Web site of the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, The People's Daily. He helped the communists develop a television encryption system, which will doubtless prove useful in suppressing dissent in the future. His Chinese version of MySpace obeys all communist censorship laws, even including a built-in link for reporting "inappropriate information" to the authorities. And to smooth the skids on his new ventures, he signed employment contracts with the son of the national propaganda chief and the leadership committee of the Communist Youth League.

Oh, and he also does business with the communist nation of Cuba, which harbors one of the many tax havens where he has hidden cash to avoid American tax laws.

This powerful American friend of communists is, of course, Rupert Murdoch — the man who signs Glenn Beck's paychecks. Don't hold your breath waiting for a Beck exposé.

But let us not simply curse the darkness. Since this column has criticized Republican leaders for standing by silently while Beck and Co. have poisoned the nation with lies and hate, let us give credit where credit is due:

To Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who spoke out on Beck last week, saying that the bloviator was "not aligned with any party as far as I can tell. He's aligned with cynicism."

Also, to the sixty major companies that have stopped buying ads on Beck's show after a campaign by a group called Color of Change prompted more than 275,000 people to write protest letters.

But there remain a few prominent corporate Beck-lovers who still need help finding the decency to spurn this irresponsible nutcase demagogue who fakes his phony tears with Vicks VapoRub. They are: Target, Orbitz, Warner Bros., JoS. A. Bank, and Roche.

I should warn you, however, that boycotting Warner Bros. means refusing to see The Informant! and Where the Wild Things Are — two interesting movies that both happen to have been made by good Hollywood liberals. Funny how that is. You'll also have to boycott The Box, the new Cameron Diaz movie about a married couple that receives a magic box offering a special deal: open it, and you become incredibly rich — but you also let Chinese communists kill some random person you don't know.

Remember, folks: it's only a movie.

Thoughts on modern communism? Beef with Glenn Beck? Click here to e-mail John H. Richardson about his weekly political column at Esquire.com.

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