He was actually almost painfully careful about how he expressed that opinion, specifically because he knew that some people would try to misrepresent him. To th

He was actually almost painfully careful about how he expressed that opinion, specifically because he knew that some people would try to misrepresent him. To the extent of continually citing research papers to back up what he said, to constantly caveat everything and so on. In the event, progressives lied about what he said anyway despite his care, knowing full well that their sort of people wouldn't read the actual memo so they could claim anything they liked about it. He certainly didn't alienate half of all people, that's a wild overestimate, but Google tolerates extremely disruptive behavior from certain types of employees to the extent that it will give in to nearly any demand no matter how unreasonable. He definitely didn't say anything untrue or even unkind. And he was responding to an explicit request for feedback, so it wasn't unnecessary or unhelpful either. So the Meltzer criteria seems pretty useless there.