Holman Jenkins On The End Of Backdating

WSJ columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr was a voice of sanity on the issue of backdating options when it first broke, and today he has written a column that looks back over the whole sordid history of prosecutorial excess in the matter: “The Backdating Embarrassment; How did a meaningless violation of accounting rules become the crime the of century?”

Unfortunately, as a matter of professional courtesy, he cannot mention that it was his WSJ colleagues who were the guiltiest parties in promoting this particular witch hunt. As I am under no such contraint, however, I will point out that the very worst of these Journal reporters was Mark Maremont, who helped to launch the whole idiocy back in November 2005 and who won the Pulitzer Prize for doing so in 2007.

I would also note that Maremont, like Professor Stefan Padfield (whom I recently criticized), shares with me the intellectual misfortune of having received an A.B. from hyper-PC Brown University.