I hope you're happy, you greedy, son of a bitch-carpetbagger, Mario Lemieux. You swooped into town twenty-two years ago from the forbidding frozen north to make your fortune in Pittsburgh, and then, after wringing your bread from the sweat of other men's faces, you abandon us at the first opportunity to make even more money.
Worst of all, you sold out to one of your compadres, if you will, another refugee from the tundra looking to make a killing in the land of opportunity.
You sold out to another Canadian.
Jim Balsillie is chairman of an Ontario company called Research in Motion that has also made a killing in the U.S. by selling a device inaptly called a "BlackBerry." Mr. Balsillie and his company have a little dark secret they probably don't want Penguins fans to know.
You see, they were just involved in contentious, drawn-out litigation that overtaxed the precious resources of our American judicial system, at a cost borne solely by you and me, Mr. and Ms. U.S. Taxpayer. The company with whom these foreigners tangled was a legitimate American company called NTP, Inc., and in this lawsuit, Balsillie/Research in Motion tried to invalidate NTP's wireless email patents.
The case eventually settled out of court, but before the interloper from Ontario, Mr. Balsillie, could slink back to the arctic he made sure to take a parting jab at our legal system. Balsillie proceeded to chronicle several putative "flaws" with the U.S. patent system. There are, sniffed legal expert Balsillie, too many "bogus" patents issued in the U.S.
Come again? Too many "bogus patents"? What exactly does this foreigner know about the most advanced legal system ever devised?
Do you, Mr. Balsillie, even have the first idea how to string cite a cluster of redundant and unnecessary precedents in a Supreme Court brief?
I thought not.
So this is the man to whom Mario Lemieux entrusts the Pittsburgh Penguins. A man who lives and works on foreign soil yet gets rich off of Americans; a man who sues legitimate American companies and forces us to pay for his battle; a man who challenges our legitimate laws.
Take your money, you damn carpetbagger Lemieux. We'll fend off this awful, awful man by ourselves After twenty-two years you've finally shown us your true colors, and they aren't pretty.
You son of a bitch.
