The Cable Gamer won't pretend to be a great fan of labor unions, but Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz certainly are supporters of unions, right? And Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC, is a traditional Harvard-NYC-type liberal.
So then, why is NBC fighting with its unions? Fighting so hard that the labor movement brought its giant inflatable rat--used to symbolize, and protest against, a bad employer--to NBC headquarters at 30 Rock this afternoon? Read all about it, thanks to Kevin Allocca of TV Newser.
So what are the MSNBC liberals going to do in response to their parent company's poor treatment of workers? Will all those media millionaires deign to step out of their limousines long enough to show solidarity with the working man? In particular, what about Chris Matthews, who always claims great affection for the working stiff? Will he say anything on his show? I missed "Hardball" today, but will be checking. And let's all stay tuned for any peeps of protest from the folks at "MSDNC."
And oh, btw, Barack Obama says that he is a supporter of unions. So why has the federal government ladled out so much bailout money to the parent of NBC, the conglomerate GE, and its GE Capital subsidiary? One might think that GE would have to pay its workers more in return for all that help from Uncle Sam. You know, that the feds would insist on better treatment of workers in return for all that bailing out. After all, it was blue collar votes that swung swing states such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and even Indiana into the Obama electoral column last year.
But I guess not. I guess Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and nobody else at the Labor Department in Washington DC cares enough about labor to put the arm on GE to be nicer to the workers. I guess that's why, in most recent elections, blue collars have tended toward the Republicans--Republicans don't like unions, but at least the GOP will keep their taxes down.
Indeed, from this episode, one could almost get the impression that the Obamans and Big Government are in bed with Big Business, at the expense of Big Labor. Come to think of it, maybe more than "almost"!
And in the meantime, GE is certainly getting its money's worth out of its lobbying "investment" in the Obama Crew.
