That was quick. Less than a day after coffee maker Keurig announced that it was pulling its ads from Fox News’s “Hannity” in reaction to his interview with Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, the company’s CEO blinked.
According to The Daily Wire:
Bob Gamgort issued a memorandum to employees denouncing his own company’s Twitter announcement … in the wake of an astroturfed campaign from Media Matters based on false allegations that Hannity expressed support for child molestation and had attacked sexual assault accusers.
It wasn’t Gamgort’s sense of fair play alone that prompted his quick action. It was also a massive boycott by Keurig users, many of whom went so far as to destroy their units. YouTube lit up with a slew of videos recalling the scene in the movie “Office Space” where Ron Livingston et. al. go medieval on an office printer.
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In a memo to his company’s employees, Gamgort wrote:
The decision to publicly communicate our programming decision via our Twitter account was highly unusual. This gave the appearance of ‘taking sides’ in an emotionally charged debate that escalated on Twitter and beyond over the weekend, which was not our intention.
Gamgort didn’t say for certain whether Keurig would resume advertising on “Hannity,” but the company can likely expect more grief from conservatives if it doesn’t.