Michael Arrington's Munich "bother"
When he wanted to compare the importance of local news versus universal news, the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh took the microcosm of the parish and then created his Epic from a dash of tribalism, a hint of violence and fistful of territoriality. "That was the year of the Munich bother," Kavanagh noted, putting Neville Chamberlain's 1938 dream of "peace for our time" in perspective.
Alpha blogger Michael Arrington had his moment of "Munich bother" on Monday. But the spat was, actually, a spit: "Yesterday as I was leaving the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany someone walked up to me and quite deliberately spat in my face." Whoa! Arrington had taken part in the innocently titled "New Media Models" discussion with Jeff Jarvis (Buzzmachine), Carolyn McCall (The Guardian), Tyler Brulé (Monocle) and Jochen Wegner (FOCUS), when, suddenly, Splat! But why?
Well, Arrington is powerful, which angers some people, and TechCrunch has never been afraid to call a clone a clone, which angers others. Arrington is also argumentative, abrasive and, some would say, aggressive. Reasons enough for (deranged) people to smear him. And if you've got time to watch this video of the discussion, you'll see that he does not exactly endear himself to others.
One of Carolyn McCall's guardianistas ground out a juvenile piece about the DLD discussion and the conference blog has an account of the panel exchanges in rather cryptic English, but there's nothing in either piece to suggest that Arrington said anything specific that upset some well-connected participant, who then spitefully spat at him. (Note: DLD is an invitation-only conference.) Still, the TechCrunch founder seems to be aware that he's been burning the candle at both ends because he concluded his Tuesday post as follows:
"I've decided the right thing to do is take some time off and get a better perspective on what I'm spending my life doing. I'll be taking most of February off from writing, and decide what the best future for me is while sitting on a beach somewhere far away from my iPhone and laptop."
Here's hoping he comes back tanned, relaxed and ready to rumble. By then, some modern Kavanagh will have put the latest "Munich bother" into context in an Iliad or an Epic for our time.
