Blowback (blow-back): an unforeseen and unwanted effect, result, or set of repercussions (from Merriam-Webster Online).
I think that General Electric now understands the concept of blowback. And it's earned them a WotW.
Attendees who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter said shareholders asked about 10 politically charged questions concerning MSNBC as well as one about CNBC.Wait...you mean that MSNBC is.......biased?!?!? No way! [/sarcasm]
First up was a woman asking about a reported meeting in which CEO Jeff Immelt and NBC Uni CEO Jeff Zucker supposedly told top CNBC executives and talent to be less critical of President Obama and his policies.
Immelt acknowledged a meeting took place but said no one at CNBC was told what to say or not to say about politics.
During the woman's follow-up question, her microphone was apparently cut off. A short time later, Watters asked a question and his mic was cut, too.
"The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt," one attendee said. "Some former employees said they were embarrassed by it."
When he got the floor, Watters focused his question about MSNBC on Olbermann's interview of actress Janeane Garofalo, who likened conservatives to racists and spoke of "the limbic brain inside a right-winger."
"He (Watters) was complaining that Olbermann didn't bother to challenge her," another GE shareholder said.
Here is the thing. MSNBC reinvented itself as the counterweight to Fox News Network not too terribly long ago. It was intended to lean as far to the Left as Fox leans to the Right. But the reality is that Fox is Neo-Conservative, which is a Center-Right political viewpoint. So...the fact that MSNBC is somewhere to the Left of Frederick Engels but is viewed by its corporate overlords as a counterweight to a Center-Right news channel just goes to show you how out of touch Big Media (the BM for short) really is.
I thought it was a nice touch that questions that made the corporate overlords squirm were met by a dead microphone. Their news network has been practicing that very same technique with stories that don't toe the "official narrative" for quite some time.
General Electric and its official organ of Communist propaganda, MSNBC: you're the Wiener of the Week!
