That's not fair. The 'mouse on your paycheck' (actually, there isn't a mouse anywhere on the paycheck, particularly at ABC, where there's an ABC on your paycheck, but that's neither here nor there) means a lot. But even the mouse (nor Iger the slug) can stop some things from happening. When the housing market goes bust and the automakers flip upside-down, and a large amount of TV ad revenues come from real estate and auto companies, it's not like ABC can just turn around and say, "OK ... let's get those millions in ad dollars from ... travel companies!" Um ... no. How about mass market retailers! Hmm ... they're down too. Microsoft! Nope ... laying off.
This exact same thing -- recession, layoffs, financial crisis, etc -- happened in the late 80s and no one was slamming the BOD for laying people off. Of course ... the internet didn't really exist then and so no one really knew. There were no blogs of people reporting how all their friends were let go. After 9/11 when all sorts of jobs were cut, no one suggested that the BOD was to blame and that they should all lose their bonuses so that the line workers could stay on. And no one now is even suggesting that perhaps the union workers -- who are guaranteed hours and jobs and benefits by their contracts -- could maybe take a concession or two to help keep non-union managers at work. Nope. It's all Iger's fault. What a cop-out. Blame the guy on top and don't even consider that maybe there are a lot of other reasons why this is happening and that maybe a lot of those "utter transgressions" happened in administrations he wasn't even responsible for and is trying to fix. It's like the Republicans who are currently blaming Pres. Obama for the financial crisis while conveniently forgetting that it was 8 years of Republican admin that helped cause it.
