Yesterday (my God, was it only yesterday) Michael Arrington of TechCrunch posted an entry admonishing Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo for attacking his site.  Mr Obasanjo had, the day before, made a post on how negative he felt TechCrunch had become and how he felt Mr. Arrington should be showing more leadership in the current VC/Financial Crisis. 

I didn't really think much of the whole situation to be honest.  I didn't agree with Mr. Obasanjo (TechCrunch covers startups, that means good times and bad) but it seemed like a small issue to me.  If anything I thought it was funny that everyone was getting so upset about it (by everyone I mean that Twitter just about exploded with the story). 

Anyway, Scoble has now chosen to jump into the fray by posting this in regards to why he won't be attending Microsoft's PDC Conference...

But the stone that made the scale tip is that you have employees out there who are attacking bloggers without consequences. That makes me feel unwelcome, which I really don’t need given all my other concerns about attending. So, I’ll let someone else go in my place. Good luck with the PDC, I’ll read about it in my Google Reader.

Now, I don't agree with him on this (In regards to blaming the conference) but I can see where he's coming from.  Mr. Obasanjo's post was a pretty dumb move and there were going to be some consequences to it. 

But a quote I remembered from a while back kept tickling the back of my brain.  That quote, from an interview with Scoble while he was at Microsoft, was this...

Is there a marketing guy who tells you what to blog about?

Robert – “No. Part of the thing about Microsoft is hire smart people and let them do their job. We don’t have a blogging policy. We have a policy that says be smart”

So here's the problem: How do you discipline someone for having done something wrong when the only guidance you gave them was "be smart."  Dare is smart, I don't think anyone would deny that (even Michael Arrington said so).  The post he made against TechCrunch wasn't dumb it was just rude (and possibly inaccurate). 

Now I've said in the past that I admire Scoble in many ways and was actually a big fan of his book on blogging.  But from the start I thought a lot of the ideals therein were unrealistic and as time has gone by I seem to get more and more confirmation of that. 

Corporate Blogging takes people who are relatively low level employees and allows them to interact at the very highest levels.  Mr. Obasanjo, for example, is a Program Manager last I checked and he's taunting the largest online media source around.  That's a recipe for disaster. 

Intelligence (which Mr. Obasanjo surely has in abundance) does not equate to wisdom (which is something that is acquired over time, with age and added responsibility).  Knowing how to deal with people is a function of wisdom and no amount of "being smart" is going to prepare you for that which is what I believe led to this situation.

For The Record...I'm around Mr. Obasanjo's age and no where near as wise as I need to be.  But that doesn't mean I can't recognize the value in wisdom and see when someone's actions show a lack of it.