UPDATE: Sargento says Colors of Change did not influence company's decision (at bottom)

What constitutes "hateful speech?" It depends on the views of the individual, or in this case the advocacy group propagating the claim.

Earlier this week, Plymouth, Wisc.-based Sargento Food, Inc., along with several other companies, pulled their advertising from the Fox News Channel's "Glenn Beck" program, some at the behest of a campaign by Color of Change, an advocacy group.

Barbara Gannon, vice president of Corporate Communications & Government Relations for Sargento Foods Inc., told the Business & Media Institute why her company decided to stop advertising during the Fox News Channel program.

Shortly before Election Day 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that the far-left-leaning activist group ACORN gave crack cocaine to one of its Ohio workers in 2004 "in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey."

Years later, when a conservative analyst mentioned it on television, H-I-L-A-R-I-T-Y ensued in the liberal media echo chamber at the conservative's expense.

The butt of the jokes this time was my colleague and NewsBusters contributor Matthew Vadum who during his appearance on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" last Thursday had the audacity to say (video available here):

Matthew Vadum (Right) Speaking Truth to Flower Power

As Bill Cosby said via Fat Albert and the Gang, it's like school on Saturday: No class.

NewsBusters.org Contributor, the estimable Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center, made an October 30th appearance on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, during which he discussed the many illegal activities of the community organizing group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and their long relationship with the media's all-time favorite candidate: Illinois Democratic Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama.  Soon thereafter, Mr. Vadum changed his Facebook Profile photograph to one of him hamming it up with his Daily Show interlocutor John Oliver. 

This was all too much for New York Times reporter Dan Mitchell.  Mitchell sent Mr. Vadum a poison Halloween Facebook email, which is hostile from start to finish and in which he calls Mr. Vadum the aforementioned body part.

The Mitchell email in its entirety, with the one word redacted so as to maintain our G-rating: