Tim Cook: Cynical marketing
or a stand for equality?
'iGay': Apple Does it Better than Church
of Rome (de Volkskrant, The Netherlands)
"Tim Cook
is the pope of the digital church, the vicar of Steve Jobs on earth. He sells
his products on all continents and with his outspoken statement he now includes
a small message of tolerance with every iPad and iPhone. According to Cook, his decision to go public was
partly inspired by Martin Luther King and his question: 'What are you doing for
others?' That was followed by the beautiful words: 'We pave the sunlit path
toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick.' … I am curious to
know what the tens of thousands of Chinese who assemble iPhones
for twelve hours a day think of those words."
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, is gay. We knew that already, but
this week Bloomberg Business Week
published an
open letter by Cook, in which he officially steps out of the closet. "I'm
proud to be gay," he said, "and I see my homosexuality as the
greatest gift that God has given me." The letter is world news.
Does God have an iPhone? Does he,
too, get hyped up about buying the latest Apple model?
In the most Christian country in the world, God gets bandied
about a lot, but the fact that the Almighty is now even giving homosexuality as
a gift did surprise many Americans. More precisely, in the most Christian
country in the world, Cook’s comment about God was both beautiful and a
powerful provocation.
Last month, American Cardinal Raymond
Burke, the highest legal authority in the church after the pope himself,
was one of the attendees at a Vatican
Synod on the Family - where attitudes toward homosexuality also came up. It
seemed that the pope would lead Rome in a new direction and make the mother
church a lot more gay-friendly. Eventually, though, conservative forces
prevailed, including Burke and of course our own prelate WimEijk.
Homosexuality is permitted - as long as it isn't practiced -
remains the credo of the Church of Rome. Despite the undoubtedly high
percentage of gay men on the board of the church, open letters to the L'Obsservatore Romano are not yet in the cards.
Perhaps that's why Apple does things better than the church.
Cook’s letter was seen in some quarters as a form of handy
response to changing market conditions and social attitudes. That seems overly
cynical. But even if Cook is using his sexual orientation for marketing purposes,
his coming out is important.
Tim Cook is the pope of the digital church, the vicar of Steve
Jobs on earth. He sells his products on all continents and with his outspoken
statement he now includes a small message of tolerance with every iPad and iPhone.
Among CEOs of the thousand largest U.S. companies, none were
gay until last week. Now, as first among equals, the boss of the largest
company in the world measured by market capitalization has come out of the
closet. You could say: so what? - But sad to say, qualifying remarks like that will
have to wait until more enlightened times have come and sexual orientation becomes
completely irrelevant.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
According to Cook, his decision to go public was partly inspired
by Martin Luther King and his question: "What are you doing for others?"
That was followed by the beautiful words: "We pave the sunlit path toward
justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick."
I am curious to know what the tens of thousands of Chinese
who assemble iPhones for twelve hours a day think of
those words. Cook's star within Apple rose after he helped set up the degrading
Asian production lines that transformed the company into a raging money machine.
Back then, the righteousness of the sunlit path was obviously not his first
concern.
But a man can change, and maybe Tim Cook will soon declare that
apart from being gay - he is also Chinese.
