Peter Lewis, Progressive Insurance, Air America, Rachel Maddow

BITING THE HAND

Did AAR Host Realize She Was Attacking Network Backer?







For today's radio libtalkers, attacking evil corporations is most certainly second nature. Often, their anti- business approach seems driven by emotion more than anything else.

That said, what caused one of Air America's hosts to bash a key network founding supporter on the air Thursday? Was something more personal involved?

During Thursday's Rachel Maddow Show, the talker herself proceeded to attack Progressive Insurance, based on a story that originally appeared in the Atlanta Journal- Constitution. Here's a transcript of Maddow's rant:

MADDOW: In August, 2005, a couple, a male-female couple joined the Southside Christian Fellowship Church in Atlanta. They joined the church and they joined a support group that was hosted at the church minister’s home. I think it was like a family and couple’s marriage support group or something.

And the minister said at the beginning of every meeting of the group, this is private, this is confidential, what’s said in this room stays in this room. Turns out the new couple that joined that month was secretly taping the support group sessions in an effort to try to get dirt on tape on two other people who were participating in that group.

The new couple were private eyes, hired by Progressive Insurance to try to get something embarrassing and personal on tape about a couple that was involved in a lawsuit with Progressive over an auto accident in 2004. They wanted something to discredit them. The couple who was spied on filed another lawsuit against Progressive last week, charging invasion of privacy, breach of confidentiality, and emotional distress, yeah!

But it wasn’t until the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote an article about their case and about what Progressive did that the insurance company, the country’s third largest, finally issued an apology today.

So now when you hear those incredibly annoying ads for Progressive Auto Insurance (Maddow airs brief Progressive Auto ad excerpt), you can not only think, Wow, gremlins, could there be a more obscure hook for an insurance ad, ever? You can now also associate them with spying on people they are suing in church groups. Awesome.

Hey Rachel, aren't you aware that one of Air America Radio's first financial backers was Peter Lewis, Chairman of Progressive Insurance? He remained a Piquant unitholder until the bankruptcy reorganization was complete.

In fact, he's also associated with Democracy Alliance, the group that very nearly bailed Air America out before bankruptcy was finally declared. Lewis is associated with far- left causes and has a longtime political connection to George Soros.

That begs the question: did Rachel realize she was attacking one of her own? Does this have something to do with past conflicts over Air America's funding, or was Maddow really foolish enough to bash a key supporter, one who supplied start- up funding to pay her own salary?


FOR Boston- area talk radio updates, see our other site.


Your Amazon orders that begin with clicks here, regardless of what you ultimately purchase, help to further this site's efforts.

Or, if you would prefer, please contribute at the Honor System box in the upper right corner. Thanks again!


Technorati tags: talk radio peter lewis progressive insurance rachel maddow air america radio piquant llc george soros democracy alliance