So a hospital takes the extremely unusual step of publicly announcing that a certain patient got a transplant, and that this patient got the transplant because he had the highest MELD score on their list, which means that everything was legit and above-board and totally fair. Now this kind of statement is something that hospitals hardly ever do, and never should have to do, but when a national newspaper starts questioning your ethics and suggesting maybe you’re not a bunch of well-trained medical experts with a huge amount of integrity, but instead maybe are a bunch of sleazy hillbilly organ schleppers who’ll violate every oath you’ve ever taken and even break the law in order to sell a liver to some rich guy, even though it means that some poor broke bastard is going to die — well, when that happens, you put out the statement. Katie swears this will satisfy the inquisitive minds at the New York Times, and basically get them to stop slandering me based on unfounded rumor and speculation. I wish it were so, but my bet is it won’t work at all, and now the hacks will just move on to the next complaint, which goes like this: If Jobso had such a high MELD score, well then he must have been a lot sicker than Apple let on, which means Apple was misleading investors, which means all of Apple’s board members should be fired and sent to prison and/or have their eyes held open and be forced to watch Al Gore’s global warming movie over and over again for the rest of their lives. I’m sure that’s where this is going. I just know it. The vultures will never leave me alone.

Meanwhile we’re still trying to figure out which member of the board leaked the story to the Journal, and then got payback yesterday with the story about Tim Cook being the smartest guy in the world. Maybe you didn’t notice, but both articles were written by the same two people at the Journal. They also co-bylined this article from June 5 which cited someone “familiar with the matter” of what we tell our board members (translation: one of our board members) saying the return of Jobso was imminent. Now here’s the thing. One of these reporters is a regular tech beat reporter, but the other, Joann Lublin, has never covered us. So who is this Joann Lublin, and why does she suddenly show up covering Apple? What does she bring to the party? Turns out she’s kind of a heavy hitter. She’s an editor, and she’s been at the Journal since 1971, which makes her, I don’t know, about 60 years old? According to her bio, her area of expertise is management and business ethics, and she “frequently appears at conferences about corporate governance.” If you’re guessing that at these conferences she probably rubs elbows with lots of corporate directors, and that maybe in the course of her travels she connected with someone on our board, and that the reason she gets a byline is that she’s the person to whom our rogue board member is leaking, well, we’re on the same track here.

The question then becomes, who is Joann Lublin’s source? Who on our board knows Joann Lublin? Who would leak my transplant and then, as payback, get a story placed about how great Tim Cook is and how he’s probably going to get a seat on our board soon? Who on the board is in Tim’s corner? Who wants to make Tim Cook our new CEO? Who would be so pissed off about having to cover up for me and keep quiet about my illness, and so worried about their own personal liability, that they would go to the Journal and trust Joann Lublin with a leaked story? Because you’d have to really, really, really trust someone to take this kind of risk.

Thing is, we keep looking at our list of directors, and we can’t figure out who it could be. Then again, it may be that we set this all up ourselves, because we wanted to let the world know about my transplant, but I didn’t want to just announce it myself because, I don’t know, that would make too much sense or something. I don’t know. I don’t remember ever meeting Joann Lublin. Katie says she’s never met her, either. So who knows? Anyway, Moshe is on the case, and he’s got his dental tools. We’ll figure it out.