Fox Reporter Crashes GE Shareholder’s Meeting

According to Gateway Pundit, all hell broke loose at GE’s (parent company of MSNBC) shareholder’s meeting yesterday.  They claim investors, enraged over MSNBO’s “leftward shift” raised all kinds of hell about it and “attacked CEO Jeff Immelt over the embarrassing and offensive programs on MSNBC.”  Quoting Reuters, they say (their bold):

“The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt,” one attendee said. “Some former employees said they were embarrassed by it.”

One specific complaint about MSNBC concerned Keith Olbermann’s interview of actress Janeane Garofalo, who likened conservatives to racists and spoke of “the limbic brain inside a right-winger.”

“They were upset that Olbermann didn’t bother to challenge her,” one GE shareholder said.

The Reuters report (also carried in the Hollywood Reporter) headline, “Drama At GE Shareholder’s Meeting” was a little different from GP’s “Angry Crowd Slams Olbermann and MSNBC at Shareholder’s Meeting.”  The opening lines were a little different, too; GP’s “GE shareholders are sick and tired of the Leftists and they’re not going to take it anymore!” vs. Reuters/HWP:

The hostility between Fox News Channel and MSNBC reached a fever pitch Wednesday when a Fox producer infiltrated the GE shareholders meeting.

Just before GE re-elected board members, company brass were hit with questions from shareholders critical of an alleged leftward political slant at MSNBC.

But one of those questions came from Jesse Waters, a producer on “The O’Reilly Factor” whose criticisms were cut short when his microphone was cut off, according to several attendees. Waters apparently did not publicly identify himself as a Fox employee.

Waters has built a reputation as an ambush interviewer, specializing in on-the-street confrontations. But this is arguably the boldest move by a Fox newsie to utilize the tactic inside their chief rival’s tent, as it were.

Nuance for you ass, baby, huh?  Make no mistake, it really does seem that there were some unhappy shareholders at the meeting, determined to hold the big wigs’ feet to the fire about the maniacal rants the Axelrovian AstroTurf tool of a network has grown so inordinately fond of here lately, but, the part about the drive-by Foxrovian gatecrasher is pretty significant too, though the two reporting entities ( I refuse to call them news sources) characterize it very differently.  Gateway Pundit claims that having a snitch inside means good dish on an upcoming O’Reilly (King of the Irrational Rant) episode (I refuse to call it a “program,” and “show” is redundant) while the Reporter seems to think it was a ballsy, yet, kinda nifty, ambush.

O’Reilly and MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann have been involved in a running feud for several years, but the pissing match between the two has of late started to envelope other parts of the News Corp. and GE empires.

GE pointed out that Waters had Fox News cameras waiting outside the Orlando meeting.

Anyway, some chick got the ball rolling with a question about last week’s carpet call of Jim Cramer by GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt and NBC’s Jeff Zucker, which was reported in the New York Post (and by me, after I read the Post) where Thing One and Thing Two spanked Cramer’s heiney for beating up on the Great and Blameless “O” without a permission slip.  Seems the Jeffsters were pissed off about the Rick Santelli rant about the Spokesmodel-in-Chief’s mortgage plan, that lead to the Ratfucking AstroTurf Tea Party movement (I’m not going to get into that again, except I just did, so there) and didn’t have the heuvos (or, more likely, the juice) to smack him around about it, so they took it out on Cramer for cocking up the Daily Show gig.

THE top suits and some of the on-air talent at CNBC were recently ordered to a top-secret meeting with General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker to discuss whether they’ve turned into the President Obama-bashing network, Page Six has learned.

“It was an intensive, three-hour dinner at 30 Rock which Zucker himself was behind,” a source familiar with the powwow told us. “There was a long discussion about whether CNBC has become too conservative and is beating up on Obama too much. There’s great concern that CNBC is now the anti-Obama network. The whole meeting was really kind of creepy.”

One topic under the microscope, our insider said, was on-air CNBC editor Rick Santelli’s rant two months ago about staging a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest the president’s bailout programs — an idea that spawned tax protest tea parties in other big cities, infuriating the White House. Oddly, Santelli was not at the meeting, while Jim Cramer was, noted our source, who added that no edict was ultimately handed down by the network chieftains.

So, this anonymous lady at the shareholder’s meeting grabs the mike and goes, “what’s up with that shit, huh?” or, words to that effect.  Then, Immelt tries to shine her on with some happy crappy about, “yeah, it was just lunch,” like they didn’t freaking eat Cramers’.  Well, homegirl wasn’t having any of that, apparently, and tried to call bullshit.  So, they cut her mike off.  Wait, it gets better.  From what I can gather, the crowd started in with the rrrruuuummmmbbbbbllle crowd noises that crowds that are being screwed like to make, and then O’Reilly’s errand boy got to get a question in edgewise before they cut him off, too.  He wanted to know what was up with Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo’s Tea Party (oy vey, those again!) “Republicans just don’t wanna suck a black man” rant, and why Ol’blowitoutyourass didn’t cut off her mike.  Duh-uh.

“He (Waters) was complaining that Olbermann didn’t bother to challenge her,” another GE shareholder said.

Immelt told the assembled he takes a hands-off approach to what is reported on the company’s news networks, which prompted a shareholder to criticize him for not managing NBC Uni more effectively.

“My biggest surprise was the open hostility to MSNBC,” said Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Action Fund and a four-year critic of Immelt. “It was noticeable and loud. I don’t remember any of this going on last year.”

“Any time MSNBC was mentioned, there was a rumbling in the crowd of 400 people,” he added. Borelli also asked a question pertaining to GE’s stock performance since Immelt took the helm.

They say it’s not likely that there will be an official GE You Tube clip of the lovefest, so I swiped the video Gateway Pundit had.  While I was looking for a clean You Tube clip, though, a funny thing happened.  I didn’t find one, but that’s not what’s funny (not funny “ha ha,” or funny, “gee, whodathunkit?).  Anyway, what was funny, is I found a leeeeettllle, itty bitty clip of FreedomWorks, the Dick Armey Astrofucking machine that sponsored the Tea Party movement, picketing GE’s shareholder’s meeting two years ago for the company’s embrace of big government, “cap and trade” programs.  That’s funny, “hmmmmmmm….,” ya think?  You just can’t make this stuff up, so, it’s good to have some evidence to back you up, in case the blog police come sniffing around asking questions.