When I saw this post at the Seattle PI this morning I was all ready to get up and watch the show as the pack of wolves materialized baying for Steve Ballmer's head. On the heels of a similarly negative article in the New York Times last week, I was sure that two made for a trend.

Then I saw the author of the original story was Daniel Lyons, who is somewhat better known in Internet circles as "The Fake Steve Jobs" from his hilarious weblog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, and all the wolves evaporated. The PI, or perhaps Newsweek, had got gamed; the article (perhaps by "The Fake Daniel Lyons") is basically a rehash of this post on TSDoSJ. Funny? Yeah. A little bit true? No argument from me! The media eating its own tail? Looks like it.

Now it happens that I am basically in agreement with Lyons/Jobs (who frequently refers to Ballmer as Fester, perhaps diminishing his journalistic objectivity somewhat) but it strikes me that, no matter how accurate the article or astute the observations, your credibility is diminished just a whit when you plop something repurposed from a humor blog out into a moderately serious publication like Newsweek. Which is unfortunate, because I was looking forward to the pack of wolves.