Microsoft's Tarnish
More about what one dispassionately hopes is a growing scandal for the Evil Giant (Microsoft):
Microsoft Corp. is paying social conservative Ralph Reed $20,000 a month as a consultant, triggering complaints that the well-connected Republican with close ties to the White House and to evangelist Pat Robertson may have persuaded the company to oppose gay rights legislation.
["Microsoft defends ties to Ralph Reed: Critics want conservative consultant fired", by Charles Pope, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 27 April 2005.]
It's easy to see that this piddling amount (piddling, that is, to Microsoft) is just to make sure that they don't get snubbed by Congressional leadership (thanks to warnings from — you guessed it! — Tom DeLay), but it's really impressive that they would choose the leading slimeball of the Faith-Based Hate Groups. If ever one needed a reason beyond crappy software to dislike MS, just finding out that they gave money to a creature like Reed would provide ample reason.
It's slightly entertaining as they explain that Reed never advised on "social issues", but only on "trade and competition issues". (How would that go… "So, your competitiveness is really going to suffer if people find out that you are homo lovers.")
I'm thinking that even I could provide a great deal of interesting "trade and competition" advice for $20k/month.
By this point, it's become mostly irrelevant whether Reed really had any influence in Microsoft's decision to back away from supporting anti-discrimination legislation in Washington, since it's all about perception and appearances, and their formerly glowing support of workplace diversity has now started to tarnish very quickly. Once lost, it's a hard thing to get back.