The only complaints I've ever gotten from people in my company are when I don't write about them. For example, I give pseudonyms to everybody, and I had lunch with the guy I call Morgenstern awhile back and he said to me, "You don't love me anymore. You haven't made fun of me once this whole year." And people will come up to me and they'll say, "I read this column. That was me, wasn't it?" And invariably, I'll say, "Yes, that was you." Why not?

In your recent book, I noticed very few examples of warlike executives who are female, which, I guess, may be a good thing. But you did seem to have a soft spot for Martha Stewart.
I do right now. In my previous books I was a little harsh on her. She does display that horrible quality of executive neurosis where a person can't say, "Hey, I was wrong. Let me start this over again." But she couldn't do it. People who told her she should apologize, she fired them and brought in people who would tell her what she wanted to hear. Which executives do all the time, unfortunately. I do have a soft spot for her now, because she suffered out of proportion to what she did in terms of financial implications. It's almost minuscule to some of the other criminals we've seen. I think she suffered to some extent from her own arrogance and because she's a woman.

What would the 1980's Bing say about the 2005 Schwartz?
I guess I'm the person I warned myself against. I now see the reason for sensible head-count cuts at budget time. I surprise myself. I don't think I've lost my outrage at people who are cruel to other people, and people who misunderstand and bemoan my books and say the world is this way and can't people be nicer. But what I'm saying is, look at the world as it exists. Don't accept other people saying that it's wrong for you to be as nasty and selfish as they are. Do I like it? No. So the work I do today is still true to that same spirit. But I think I'd give myself a royal pain in the neck. I think the younger me would go, "Hey, lighten up, bud."