Should Keith Olbermann Return His $3.5 Million Pay Raise?
With today’s news that Citi is asking the Obama administration’s permission to pay its employees bonuses comes news that some people are asking Keith Olbermann, perhaps the Obama administration’s most red-faced cheerleader, to give back the pay raise NBC gave him. Because NBC’s parent company GE got a big, fat bailout from the federal government.
And since Olbermann has demanded that executives of other bailed out companies return their bonuses, shouldn’t he quit being a hypocrite and return his raise? You can sign a petition asking Olbermann to do just that here.
Here’s the text:
Dear Mr. Olbermann,
While General Electric, the parent-company of your MSNBC network, was negotiating a $126 billion taxpayer-funded bailout, you signed a new contract raising your salary from $4 million to $7.5 million annually. You have used your show as a platform to call for the resignation of corporate executives accepting excessive bonuses on the backs of taxpayers who are picking up the tab for these atrocious bailouts, yet you yourself have no problem engaging in the same “class economic rape” that you accuse them of.
Please heed your own advice and stop accepting taxpayer money to subsidize your nightly diatribes. Resign or return the balance of your excessive raise to the U.S. Treasury.
Personally, I think Olbermann should be able to make as much as MSNBC is foolish enough to pay him. I’m kind of pro-freedom like that. I also don’t think companies like GE should be getting bailouts.
ut if Olbermann were applying his own standards to himself he’d give the money back.
