As VP of Business Development for Spend Matters, I received a phone call this morning shortly after Jason's post went live from a not-so-gentlemanly fellow who claimed to be calling from the general counsel's office of an organization. He claimed that the post was libelous, anti-Semitic and if it wasn't taken down within twenty minutes, he would initiate a lawsuit against us. We decided to comply, given the entire thing was in jest and we weren't proposing, defending or arguing a point of view -- in fact, as we said numerous times, it was April First.
Beauty and offense is clearly in the eye of the beholder. A few may have been offended (for those that were, we are sorry). Many weren't. But more important, we're deadly serious 99% of the time here -- as far too many of us are in our profession. And when a community can't poke at the status quo without being commanded to cease and desist under the threat of litigation, something is terribly wrong. As for us, Jason assured the team we'll go back to being our same boring selves on Monday, covering a subject that is often so dry as to put our significant others to sleep. Excel best practices for procurement anyone? Sign me up. Ought to be a safe topic to explore ...
- William Busch
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