Eisner Congratulates the New Old CEO, Bob Iger

Bob Iger has tweeted a handful of times a month since his exit from the company 11 months ago with only smattering of entries. They are mostly the kind of low effort congratulatory posts that you would expect from an executive of Iger’s generation.

Michael Eisner’s presence is even lower, with his bio stringing together an amoebic mass of text patting himself on the back, but the events of last night appear to have inspired him to open up the app and hit send.

Michael Eisner was ousted from his position as CEO under less than graceful circumstances and it would be easy to theorize that Eisner bears bad blood to Iger, with Eisner spearheading the Capital Cities / ABC merger that brought Iger into the company. Iger’s early successes in the acquisition of Pixar, the talent acquisition of John Lasseter and repairing of Disney’s relationship with Apple are generally seen as an embarrassment to Eisner’s legacy.

Books like Disney War and A Mouse Divided paint a picture of Eisner’s last days at Disney being chaotic, full of tragedy and betrayal, with Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg leaving the Disney and creating a major competitor in Dreamworks Animation.

The rift might have been healed a bit by Iger’s very positive portrayal of Eisner in his memoir The Ride of a Lifetime. Instead of adding to anti-Eisner sentiment, Bob Iger spoke very well of his predecessor and painted the Iger era as a continuation of Eisner’s accomplishments. Iger also made the rare gamble of publicly speaking against Roy Disney, intimating that Roy Disney’s alcoholism and lack of competence might be clouding his business acumen.

Whether or not he was sincere, Iger is a master communicator. This is a trait that is not shared by Bob Chapek.