Jack Welch’s thin skin

For a guy tough enough to shut plants down and ruin many of America’s small cities (I’m thinking of you, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, with your GE power transformer plant that once employed 13,000 people), it only took a little Twitter reaction and some fact checking to get under Jack “Neutron Jack” Welch’s skin.

Welch, the former GE boss (who got his start in Pittsfield, by the way. It was GE’s birthplace) has decided to quit contributing to Fortune magazine, only a few days after his infamous Tweet that the Obama administration was cooking the monthly jobs report.

Fortune’s crime was apparently picking apart the validity of Welch’s tweet. Today, Fortune picked apart Welch’s track record as a jobs creator. Welch quit a few hours later.

The more Welch talked about the conspiracy, the sillier he looked…

Nonetheless, Minnesotans are buying the theory, according to the polling released today by Public Policy Polling.

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Given that the numbers released last week actually weren’t very good, the poll seems to confirm that quite a few people only believe what people like Jack Welch tell them to believe.