Not Quite Right

At our company Christmas party last night - and a very good night out it was - I found out something that is by turns amusing and enraging.
In this post on usenet, I'm fairly blunt about my opinion of the operations staff at CallPlus. This contempt springs from my distaste for the Operations Manager, who's a very angry little man with a bad case of "angry little man" syndrome, and also my general antipathy towards a company that couldn't find its arse with both hands and a flashlight.
What I found out last night is that that post triggered a reaction from said Operations Manager. He e-mailed the MD of my current employer and asked them to reign in my "defamatory" comments. Sorry, what? The post was made in my own time, from my home computer, through a personal 'net connection. How is that possibly relevant to my employment? And what's defamatory about calling them monkeys who don't read usenet?
I never even heard about the complaint at the time, as it was rightly considered completely groundless by both the MD and by the Technical Director to whom I directly report. It does make me wonder what that Operations Manager will do if I make a similar comment when I'm at university, though. Will he e-mail the faculty and ask them to reign me in?

It's amusing because it bothered him so much. Bravo to me. It's also amusing because he obviously thinks that employers should have jurisdiction over the things their employees say privately, with nary a reference to their employer, on their own time, and using their own resources.
It's enraging because he had the temerity to try use my employer to do his bully work.

Oh, and Simon, if you're reading this, you really are a little toerag. If you have a problem with me, and I know you do, have the spine to take it up with me. Don't go grovelling to third parties, hoping that they'll do things for which you lack the guts.
My e-mail address is all over the web, and if you were half as smart as you think you are you could get my home phone number and my address in under a minute.