Pundit’s Mailbag —
Sticking Up For The Pundit
Jim Prevor’s Perishable Pundit, November 9, 2006
A former member of the Board of Directors of one of the national produce organizations and a member of one of the most prominent families in the produce industry passed along this letter:
Count on it. As Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols: Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stä rker which translates as Whatever does not destroy me makes me stronger.
We’ve started a terrific dialog here on important industry issues and we hope that everyone, including Tom, will be a part of that constructive dialogue.
Yes, we didn’t like those words that struck us as irrelevant to the substantive analysis of the quality of ideas presented. But Tom is a smart, successful and well liked guy, he has a lot to contribute. Our assumption is that he was just having a bad day. Everyone, even the Pundit, is entitled to one now and then.
The important thing is that if the industry is going to advance, then people of many different opinions will have to be heard and instead of ad hominem attack we have to focus on the quality of the argument being presented.
One of the things we have tried to do at the Pundit is to take issues and explore ways of thinking about them, as we did here, with lessons that can be applied to other issues.
There are plenty of smart people in this industry. We want to get them all contributing toward a solution to industry dilemmas.
This being our focus, we still have to say thank you both to this letter writer and the many calls and notes we received from others on the same point. We try hard, so we appreciate the kind words. We’ll work diligently to earn them.