Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

For a moment this weekend, those who follow Microsoft's Twitter account seemed to think that the company had embraced liberalism and kissed it on both European cheeks.

There appeared, you see, a tweet that read as follows: "@RBReich your granddaughter's level of discourse and policy > those of Ann Coulter." The tweet, with its succinct use of the greater-than sign, was captured for posterity by Adam Khan.

The RBReich in question is somewhat Democratic economist and Berkeley professor, Robert Reich. He had tweeted on Saturday that he was going "To NY to visit my 4-yr-old granddaughter. Also on ABC's 'This Week' panel w/ Ann Coulter, among others. I'd rather be w/ my granddaughter."

The Ann Coulter in question is a highly erudite conservative commentator, perhaps best known for her seminal tomes such as "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter."

But why was the sturdily apolitical Microsoft suddenly revealing partisan underclothes?

Well, as Politico tells the tale, it seems that whoever was in charge of Microsoft's Twitter account last weekend was somewhat charged with political fervor.

However, he mistakenly used the corporate account -- rather than his own personal one -- to tweet that Coulter had the intellectual level of a 3-year-old.

Microsoft issued a statement to Politico: "One of the people who manages our corporate Twitter account thought he was tweeting from their personal twitter account on Saturday morning but tweeted from our corporate account by mistake."

The company says it has taken steps to ensure that such a painfully personal event doesn't recur. I am not sure whether those steps included gingerly approaching a guillotine.

This isn't quite the first time that an operative has expressed personal passions through a corporate channel.

It was only last year that someone at the controls of Chrysler's Twitter account managed to offer this highly corporate musing: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive."

I wonder if Ann Coulter will be invited to Redmond as a gesture of apology. Perhaps she will be asked to speak on the conservative implications of Microsoft's Surface tablet hopeful.