In early 2009, The Cable Gamer made the point, over and over again, that General Electric, a big bailout recipient, was covered by the salary caps that the Obama administration was theoretically imposing on those bailout recipients. And, of course, GE was the parent company of NBC-U, which means that it's the parent company of NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, et al.
TCG's outrage did not, alas, get much pickup. But it's nice to see that others, too, remember. Here's Jonah Goldberg, at National Review Online, echoing that point:
A reader asks a good question about O'Brien's deal:
So a joker working for a company bailed out (indirectly) by the government gets $45 million — for failing. Where's the outrage, Captain Populist?
I don't have any problem with O'Brien's deal, though I wish he wasn't getting the shaft (he hasn't been great on The Tonight Show, but he's funnier than Leno).
But if O'Brien was a Wall Street guy getting $45 million for failing, Obama would be all over it.
We know the answer: of course. Obama is the faux-est of faux populists. He's no threat to fatcats, as long as they donate to his re-election campaign.
