As expected, the staff of Current TV is none too thrilled with their formerly revered leader's decision to basically throw them all under the bus for a $100 million payday. It was easy as hell to predict, so I'm not going to break my arm patting myself on the back for figuring this was coming, but apparently yesterday was the first "transition" meeting between the Current team and the new overseers at Al Jazeera, who sealed a deal for the network for around $500 million last week, and word has it it was -- tense.
According to the New York Post, Al Gore himself wasn't there -- although Current co-founder Joel Hyatt was -- which gave the largely outgoing staff plenty of room to complain about their treatment.
Here's one of the best quotes, from an unnamed staffer:
"Of course Al didn’t show up -- he has no credibility. He’s supposed to be the face of clean energy and just sold (the channel) to very big oil, the emir of Qatar! Current never even took big oil advertising -- and Al Gore, that bullshitter sells to the emir?"
But that's not the very best quote. No, that comes to us courtesy of Hyatt himself, who you'll remember released an insufferably self-congratulatory memo to the staff and the public following last week's sale. The Post claims that Current host Jennifer Granholm tried to play defense for her people by asking about potential severance packages for them. His response was reportedly to bark at her, "This isn't the place to discuss this!"
I have no doubt that while nobody spoke out of turn after that, everyone thought to themselves, "Easy for you to say, asshole, since you just made millions and we just got fucked."
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