I am sure he has written and said many things to AOL at this point. He is grumpy, rich and thinks AOL crossed major boundary lines that were part of their original agreement. At this point, he knows that he can either:

a) Get AOL to bow down to his rants (Charlie Sheen anyone?) and "reimplement" those boundaries. Basically he wants to stick it to the man that gave him 30 million to prove hes bigger than the man.

b) buy TC back from AOL, probably for half as much as they paid.

Inside I am sure he is thinkin this is awesome cuz either way dude walks away with 8 bajillion dollars, synonymous popularity in tech world and every chance in the world to start another uber blog/mediacompany/empire.

Plus, he can pull a Steve Jobs even if he does quit, and resurrect the company at any time he wants to after AOL buries it and Ariana becomes Co-Editor..

Page views. This is TechCrunch we're talking about. Nobody actually wants to read it, so they have to resort to tactics like this in order to get anyone to look at their site.

To have an open discussion? To influence people? To have some fun? To be brutally honest?

This was already being played out in public. It's a PR battle, and Arrington thrives in massive public fights, while AOL has always been the big clumsy giant that can't find its ass with both hands.

I think a better question is why wouldn't he want it to escalate?