I have not met Ted Murphy, but he is co-hosting a blog dinner for Jeremiah and me in Boston on July 12. This morning he sent me an email pointing with pride to this BusinessWeek article accusing him of Polluting the Blogosphere, which I think is pretty accurate of Ted's new service PayperPost. Jeremiah, my co-guest at this event posts that Ted is actually a very nice guy, which he apparently also told to Marshall Kirkpatrick of at TechCrunch.
I don't care if Ted comes across as a bloody saint. I hope this nasty, cynical, ugly idea crashes and burns swiftly. Jeremiah may recall that last night over dinner we talked about the meanest people, the ones who have committed the nastiest, least honorable actions. They always come across as being really nice. They are accomplished at getting other people to like them,despite their slight tendency to be sociopathic in business.
I'm not saying that Ted is one of these. But I'm feeling a mite suspicious that he is. His email to me said he just was curious to know what I thought of the idea. He had to know I wasn't going to like it. He just figures that among my many wonderful readers are a few slimeballs who might take him up on his call to prostitution. So maybe he's enjoying any fuel I'm putting on the fire because it could be helping him.
That is not my intention.
When I was a kid, back when the wheel was being developed, there was a school play that nearly every school produced, called "The Devil and Daniel Webster." In it, Webster has a solo in which he says something to the effect of, "The devil won't show you horns and pitchfork when he comes down. He will be a well-dressed and well-mannered man. He will smile and shake your hand and call you friend."
I didn't much care for the play and I am sure I am badly misquoting it. But the pith of it has resonance for me today.
