It’s a simple if great thing. An automatic coffee machine.
Coffee drinkers put the cup in one place and then slide in a small packet of their favorite. Italian Roast? Donut Shop? Dark Magic? Decaf? Whatever. Press the button and within seconds – presto! A streaming cup of your favorite hot java.
The jewel enabling this perfect mystery that fuels millions is called after its maker: The Keurig.
Innocent enough. Until the bullies of Media Matters showed up.
Keurig naturally enough advertises on cable TV – on CNN, on MSNBC and, yes, on Fox. In the latter case that includes Sean Hannity’s eponymous Fox show of political conversation – Hannity. And in their renewed – and utterly failing – attempt to remove Hannity from the air MM went after Keurig. Keurig is a company that is in the coffee business, not politics. And naively trying to calm down a complaint from a group they did not understand, a Keurig social media guru indicated to Media Matters that the company was indeed reconsidering advertising on Hannity.
It is a decided mark of just how attuned are millions of Americans to the bullying game played by the fascist Media Matters that when many saw this news from Keurig all hell broke loose.
It was a weekend and Hannity was in blackout mode, spending time with his hospitalized brother-in-law, known to the Hannity audience as “Sweet Baby James”. Eventually he gets reconnected and discovers the amazing news. Keurig coffee drinkers all over America, Hannity and Fox News fans, were posting videos of themselves smashing their once-beloved Keurig coffee machines. They were literally hammered to smithereens, golf clubbed to death, dropped from a balcony and (it appeared) weed whacked. All without Hannity saying a word.
Suddenly aware of what his company had inadvertently done, the CEO of Keurig put out a statement apologizing. Hannity accepted and America, on the eve of Thanksgiving, can brew again.
But what’s the lesson? The real lesson is that Media Matters played their game of what Hannity called “liberal fascism” – and got called out by average Americans. With no prompting whatsoever.
As mentioned, Thanksgiving nears. And it is refreshing to know that the original reason for the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 – their search for freedom, religious freedom in that case – is something that is still at the core of beliefs of millions of Americans.
The Media Matters drive to shut down all dissent in America – to remove every last conservative from television or radio – has reached a tipping point. The American people are on to them and more to the point they are fighting back unprompted and on their own.
Advertisers beware.