Time Warner takes over AOL

AOL Time Warner COO Robert Pittman got the push yesterday, making room at the top for a virtual management takeover by Time Warner veterans, among whom Chairman Steve Case will essentially be a token AOLer.

Since the $165 billion merger was consummated in early 2001, the media behemoth's stock has plumeted steadily from $50 a share to a humiliating low of twelve dollars and change today. The preposterously overvalued AOL shares for which Time Warner sold its soul during the bad old days of the dotcom hustle have, predictably, kicked the conglomerate to the curb.

Indeed, AOL had been deteriorating badly before the merger according to recent reports, but some magic Enronesque bookkeeping by Pittman and company assisted AOL in faking ad revenues and pulling off one of the most monumental cons in the rich history of dotcom fraud.

Had Time Warner waited six months they might have bought AOL rather than be bought. Now they're going to take over the remains of a grossly deflated and dessicated faux media empire in hopes of reviving it, or at least stopping its continuous implosion. And they may succeed, so long as the cultural differences don't undermine them, and so long as Dubya's new corporate-fraud "swat team" cuts them some slack over the accounting irregularities.

Let's hope for the sake of their shareholders and employees that they contributed lavishly to Junior's political campaign. ®

What these lunkheads just can't bring themselves to face is that propaganda is boring!. Truth is interesting.

They are interested in trying to manipulate public opinion and the public and not in reporting the truth.

How many people looked forward to reading Pravda under the Soviets?

How many want to read about how compassionate Hillary is and how much she cares about the children?

Who wants to see John-john on the cover Time after Time presented as though he were some great hero or something?

People got their propaganda message some time back and didn't buy it.

It may be that these fools have come to believe their own propaganda. That always leads to a fall.

I told Time magazine not to send that propaganda rag to my home one more time. That was years ago.

Maybe they should call on Connie Chung to see if she can save the whole empire instead of just CNN.

and so long as Dubya's new corporate-fraud "swat team" cuts them some slack over the accounting irregularities.

I don't know that it is a swipe at Bush. For me, I have more confidence in knowing that perpetrators of corporate fraud are threatened by such action. Bush is a DOer, not a talker and obviously it's making more than a few frauds out there (perhaps even Clinton himself) wake up at night in cold sweats.

Of course what I want to see is these b*st*rd pirates posing as Capitalists get hauled off and thrown into a cell with a sex offender.

Then maybe some measure of justice in the form of what they did to thousands of Americans can be served properly.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.