His actions at PyCon were not shameful, and his employer had to let him go to avoid being drawn into the witch hunt any more than they already had been. Perhaps I can blame his employer for not standing a little stronger, but mainly I'm going to blame the person who instigated the witch hunt in the first place. And Adria Richards, who as a developer evangelist is necessarily social media-savvy, knew exactly what she was doing when she took the incident onto Twitter.