Quick, why is Apple's stock price in the toilet right now? Earnings warning? Sales slump? Cubes too pricey? Bzzzzzzzzzt, sorry, thanks for playing. No, for the real reason that AAPL is currently still struggling to stay above the $20 level (when is was in the 50s mere weeks ago) is because Alan Deutschman had to open his big fat yap-- er, lift his big fat pen-- and write that unauthorized biography of everyone's favorite mercurial iCEO. At least, that's what John Dvorak thinks.

Granted, this is also the die-hard Wintel champion who thought that iMacs would never sell and then also predicted the dismal flop of the iBook because it was "too girly." Sure, he's been making a few positive Apple rumblings of late, but by most Mac fans' standards, Dvorak is still strictly a beige thinker. In a way, though, his present assertion that Apple's troubles on Wall Street are due more to The Second Coming of Steve Jobs than to any serious problem with Apple itself might actually be seen as a compliment to the company-- if not to said company's fearless leader.

Make no mistake; whereas Steve himself called the book a "hatchet job," Dvorak calls it "devastating" and chock full of just the sort of "creepy material" that would "spook the most hardcore investor." Check it out; in Dvorak's estimation, the book portrays Apple's iCEO as a "cussing, abusive lout" who's prone to "erratic, antisocial behavior." (Yeah, but he's soooo cute!) Worse yet, he isn't even an honest monster; according to Deutschman, Steve actually faked a product demo during his days at NeXT by playing a movie off a laserdisc and claiming it was video being played from a computer instead. Indeed, Dvorak claims that Deutschman's work "rips a hole in Jobs that can only be compared to the fatal tear in the Hindenburg." (Hang on-- is Dvorak deliberately comparing Uncle Steve to a big, flaming gasbag? If so, he's not exactly one to talk.)

So, those of you who took a bath on AAPL when its price got cut in half overnight-- don't take out your frustrations on Steve, or the boneheaded Apple managers who led the company into a sales slump, or even the media at large. Instead, you should be focusing your ire like a laser on Alan Deutschman, at least as far as John Dvorak is concerned. Heck, we know we can always use another scapegoat to pad the ol' enemies list. Boil him in oil!