How It's Used

“Mr. Malone's exuberance reaches its climax toward the end of 'Bill & Dave.' First he describes the rise and fall of Ms. Fiorina, the CEO hired in 1999 to give a push to the company's lagging stock price. Mr. Malone portrays her as a self-promoting harridan who is heedless of the H-P Way and drags the company into calamitous business deals, notably, he claims, the Compaq acquisition. Her successor, Mark Hurd, by contrast, is the founders' second coming, bringing profits and tranquility back to their kingdom.

"But this is a cartoon version of events. If H-P is now back in the game, a certain amount of the credit goes to the dirty work done on Ms. Fiorina's watch, like the big staff cuts. And Mr. Hurd has himself continued the dismantling of some of the relics of the Bill-and-Dave years, including their generous pension plan.”

“There are many apt aphorisms, as in an essay called 'The Rapture: Lighten Up,' where Blount takes on the public passion for the Second Coming and also the contempt for such revelations among self-satisfied secularists. 'Nothing confirms the beliefs of the credulous more than for disbelievers to tell them their beliefs are unbelievable,' Blount warns. 'Why should the wild-eyed be insecure these days? They appeal to far bigger multitudes than the keen-eyed do.’”

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