(Sorry I lost the reply I just posted and am posting again now).
You could be right. My interpretation was that Microsoft, and Ballmer personally, periodically targets companies or individuals to destroy in some fashion, and that it is definitely personal this time. Coming from a convicted monopoly that is grotesque and I hope it hurts them and Ballmer personally. I expect he was getting a bit emotional about a company hiring away talented individuals. But the lengthy comment indicates a very nasty person as well as a company philosophy that does not fit with what I want on my desktop. (So I use linux instead of Windows as my main machine).
Anyway, if you wanted to pick a bad news day for someone to ask the Monastery why shouldn't he use C# instead of perl, this was it. I tried to stay objective though! ;)