Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’m pissed off right now. MG Siegler, currently a writer over at well-known Web2.0 news site TechCrunch, has decided to use people who rely on food assistance as ammunition for a poorly researched and certainly misguided attack on Microsoft. And as someone who has had to rely on the services of food banks in the past just to have enough to eat, I am personally insulted by the gall and brazenness of MG’s attack.

Now, I don’t like that Microsoft’s campaign to donate to Feeding America for each IE8 download is capped at only $1,000,000. That’s pretty lame, especially for a company that has donated almost half a billion dollars in 2008 alone. But to see the misinformation being passed off by MG over at TechCrunch, like the laughable claim that the donation per download is supposed to cover 8 meals (actually, Feeding America reports each $1 donated gets them 10lbs of food for the hungry), what’s really happening in this article are that the people who will eventually receive the food are being used just to gain page hits and knock a few blows at Microsoft.

I strongly believe that MG Siegler owes an apology to the beneficiaries of Feeding America, and in fact, to every person who relies or has relied on charitable support just to keep from starving in the developed world. This was an absurdly low blow that insults the people who need this help every bit as much as it insults Microsoft.

MG, I’m waiting for that apology.