Slamming the boss; Pittsburgh Pirogies and McChrystal

By Dave Anderson:

Slamming the boss in public is not often a good idea for multiple reasons.  

The Pittsburgh Pirates are not a good baseball team.  There is a slight possibility that they may be good in a couple of years if the early talent evaluation process is good and the investment in young players pays off, but that is a significant gamble.  Instead of a good competitive team, the Pirates rely on gimmicks to amuse their fans at PNC Park.  One of those gimmicks is a nightly pirogies race.  One of the racing pirogies recently got fired.  I'll let the Post-Gazette explain the situation:

Andrew Kurtz, 24, of New Brighton, one of the 18 men who take turns posing as pierogies in a crowd-pleasing race after the fifth inning of every game at PNC Park, was dismissed by the team Thursday because he posted disparaging remarks about the Pirates on his Facebook page...

Thursday, at 4:30 p.m., he posted a message aimed at team president Frank Coonelly, general manager Neal Huntington and manager John Russell. It read: "Coonelly extended the contracts of Russell and Huntington through the 2011 season. That means a 19-straight losing streak. Way to go Pirates."

Within four hours, he received a call from Dan Millar, the Pirates' mascot coordinator.

"He called as the game was going on," Mr. Kurtz said. "He wanted to know what was up with my Facebook message. I told him I didn't mean anything by it, and he was like, 'Well, why'd you put it up?' I said, it was just an opinion. But he took it negative and talked to his boss. And then they wanted me to turn my uniform in."

Fast, decisive, and absolutely not surprising. I've held my tongue when asked about previous employers in informal settings. Anyone who has held a job for more than a few months should realize that bad-mouthing their bosses or their organizations is not a good idea. The Pirates acted to protect their brand identity (however weak that may be) and canned the kid for making negative comments in public about the Pirates, even though that public was merely Facebook and it was not likely to be seen or remembered by all that many people who were could be persuaded that the Pirates will truly be a great team in 2011 or 2012.  

Now Gen. McChrystal in a Rolling Stone profile basically calls his entire collection of superiors and most of the US Senate idiots.  Washington Monthly has a good summary:

McChrystal and his team, who the general allowed to speak to Rolling Stone on background, took derisive potshots at nearly everyone -- NSA James Jones was called a "clown" and senior envoy Richard Holbrooke was described as "a wounded animal." Vice President Biden is mocked and even lawmakers like John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are singled out. Of particular note, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, a retired three-star general, is apparently the target of the most intense criticism from McChrystal and his aides.

If the Pierogie had to go, McChrystal has to go.

The big question is whether or not the resignation or firing of McChrystal would be used as a pretext for an extension of the Afghan surge and a continuation of the COIN strategy that does not seem to be working.