…And twice on Sunday:

Specialized’s legal team went after a small shop owner in Canada for naming his shop Cafe Roubaix.

Specialized was inundated by cyclists expressions of outrage over the lawsuit.  Consider that you can only buy a new Specialized bike from a shop like the one they were suing… Cyclists rallied to protect the shop owner and Specialized was between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Once the outrage hit the boss’s desk, the head of Specialized braved temps worse than 40 BELOW ZERO (F) to personally meet, to “break bread” with the guy and to apologize. Case closed (Please be sure to read the linked article that provides much-needed perspective to Specialized’s decision to sue – it wasn’t entirely about the use of the word “Roubaix”).  Here’s another story about the resolution.

Now, go to a happy Zen place in your head, do your chants and what not, and imagine what it would be like if the [Insert your Country here] government operated that way.  Wouldn’t that be awesome?  It would look like this:  The US President, for example, promises something and then when he realizes what a shit-storm he created by not keeping that promise, he apologizes without condition and makes things right.  Nope!  More like;  I’m sorry you misunderstood the words “keep” and “period” but I’m not changing anything just because you believed the words that came out of my mouth.  But hey, the bright side is his approval rating is way down.

Yippee.  Take that low approval rating in one hand and shit in the other…  Which one fills first?

Corporations live and die by public opinion.  Specialized dropped the suit because even if it won, the Corporation would lose.  Government just changes hands for a minute and nothing really changes.  Just a thought.