In recent weeks most of the talk about the operatic ins and outs of the Yahoo and Microsoft relationship have centered around what proxy battler Carl Icahn and Microsoft head Steve Ballmer have been up to, and the different ways Yahoo is finding to escape their evil clutches. But the August 1 shareholder deadline is fast approaching and that led us to wonder: wherefore Jerry Yang?

Well (via Radar) we found our answer. He's writing a book! Kidding, he's merely penning long memos detailing why Icahn is a carpet-bagging, n'er do well "corporate agitator!" who has involved himself in a marriage of convenience with Microsoft.

The recently-formed Carl Icahn-Microsoft alliance continues to make misleading statements about their plans for Yahoo. Your Board of Directors believes strongly that the Icahn-Microsoft agenda...will destroy stockholder value at Yahoo, serving only their very narrow special interests, clearly not your interests.

That said, Yang is willing to deal, at $33 a share as long as it provides "real value to our stockholders." Also, and we imagine he's going to be stressing this point in the coming weeks since it was the basis for Icahn's involvement in the first place, he want shareholders to know "your Board takes seriously its obligation to examine all value-creating steps it could take and continues to actively examine many of these now." Read the whole shebang here.