Some people are the best at what they do but are total jerks as people.

Fugu, or pufferfish, is not kosher. That’s good news for me. As it is not relevant for my consumption, I don’t have to rely on an expert chef to remove the poisonous venom in order to enjoy a famous Japanese delicacy. There are some things that can be separated; there are other things in life that apparently cannot.

If I could expand my list of fly-on-the-wall encounters, I would add a 1948 meeting between General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower and General Leslie Groves, builder of the Pentagon and leader of the successful Manhattan Project. The latter wanted to be appointed as Chief of Engineers of the Army. It would have been the pinnacle of his career and the logical final stop after such meteoric success. Ike said nothing doing. He reviewed Groves’ evaluations from those who worked under him on the creation of the bomb. They universally described him as being successful in pushing forward a difficult and complex project. They also described him as a bully, one who was short with people and often addressed them in a belittling manner. One fellow who worked on the bomb later said in an interview that the general was rude, overbearing, and mean — but there was no one else under whom he would have wished to work on the bomb project. And this is a conundrum: can one perform a Fugu and remove the bad character traits from people who are professionally successful at the absolute highest levels?

Names that come to mind from the past century include Groves, Admiral Hyman Rickover, General George Patton, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. These are by no means the only candidates for this class of humans, but they all share two features: they were the best at what they did, and as people they were often rude, difficult, mean, selfish, and petty. Someone might wish to add Donald Trump to this list, but we are aware of........

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