Friday, April 04, 2014

TODAY IN CONSERVATIVE VICTIMHOOD.

Back when Paula Deen got fired or whatever it was, I thought it necessary to remind the world (blind and uncaring as ever, alas!) that Deen was not fired-or-whatever by black people and liberals; she was fired by corporations, sociopathic entities that (or is that who?) care only about increasing shareholder value. By doing what they did, these corporations were not being bien pensant nor trying to make themselves more comfortable at cocktail parties with Ellen Degeneres. They were trying to defuse what they perceived as a blow to their public image and a risk to profits.

The same thing is true of the firing-or-whatever of Brendan Eich. Every wingnut in America will tell you he was fired-or-whatever, not by his company, but by gay people and liberals in a homosexualist conspiracy against godly millionaires. They probably think it's easier to put that bullshit over in this case than in the Deen case because the world of Silicon Valley douchebags is more rareified than that of the Food Network. But it isn't, really; as the Pando coverage of the Computer Gods' power-politics games shows, Silicon Valley is as much of a snake pit as any other corporate district,  black turtlenecks notwithstanding. If Mozilla thought Eich was worth the hit, profits-wise, they'd have kept him. So what if they caught some shade from some gay waiter -- or gay relative? Millions of dollars cuts an awful lot of family ties.

As I thought was amply demonstrated yesterday when every conservative in America raced to kiss Charles Koch's ass, it is not the rich who do our bidding.

UPDATE. I see the top pants-pissers are still talking about this as if The Left, and not Mozilla, fired Eich. It's at times like this that I particularly miss Norbizness' The Left Is Attacking The City series.

172 comments:

  1. Halloween_Jack10:00 AM

    It's not a conspiracy if it's out in the open. Religious groups openly discuss boycotts of companies that support marriage equality and LGBT rights all the time, as well as trying to drive business to places like Chik-Fil-A that have policies or administrators that don't. As usual with these assholes, IOKIYAR (or fundamentalist); they're bellyaching because they're starting to grasp that they're on the losing side of history--the "religious freedom" argument for institutionalizing homophobia doesn't seem to have anywhere near the traction that the gay marriage ban drive had 10 years ago. (Andrew Sullivan, who doesn't seem to shed a tear for the homophobes' boycotts but is in high dudgeon over this, insisting that it's just "some gay activists" that are driving it, is just being his usual quintessentially dickish self.)

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  2. Daniel Björkman10:30 AM

    Couldn't we have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regards to political opinions in the workplace? I mean, the wingnuts figured that that was good enough for gays in the military, right? :P

    And frankly, I would like it just fine if some of my coworkers could just not tell me about their right-wing opinions when I most definitely have not asked...

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  3. At heart, it's a cultural problem for these guys. No one was complaining in the 80's or the 90's, when the Religious Right was in full force and they were smacking down corporations left and right. But that only worked because - to some extent at least - the culture was on their side. Unfortunately for them, it's started to drift away, and suddenly all of these secular groups have more sway that they do. I don't even think it's a matter of the culture moving to the left - it's been here for a long time. The problem is that a lot of the old evangelical vanguard (mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings, but older ones too) just don't want to fight the gay menace. That's more than the higher-ups want to acknowledge, so they blame the queers, just like they blame everything else. That's the one advantage of that worldview, I suppose - you always know who's at fault for your woes, and it's never you.

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  4. XeckyGilchrist10:54 AM

    I'm extremely fortunate, given that I live in Utah, that my workplace only has one outspoken wingnut. Unfortunately, his cubicle is right next to mine, and I can hear him hold forth about Chappaquiddick and Algore and try to "talk ebonics" and all that happy horseshit.

    Or I could, if I didn't bring the headphones. I'm probably violating his first amendment rights by listening to that hippity-hop instead of him.

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  5. Roy, are you trying to tell me liberals aren't marching billionaires off to FEMA death camps???

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8ATo3vNmu0
    ~

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  6. PulletSurprise10:58 AM

    The upside to the Rapture / going Galt / whatever magical thing that removes these people from our midst is that, well, it would remove these people from our midst. The downside is that it's all magical thinking (including my secret hope that they're somehow correct in their respective end-times beliefs) and I'm still forced to endure their "wisdom" during coffee breaks.

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  7. sharculese11:02 AM

    and seen wasn't fired for being racist. She was fired because food network told her to sit back and ride this one out and she chose to be a pr disaster anyway.

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  8. whetstone11:02 AM

    I have a slightly different take. Mozilla (where, full disclosure, some of my Internet friends work) is an open-web, open-source non-profit, and I'm actually not sure how they make their money. My sense of it from the people I "know" who work there is that it's super-idealistic; it's possible there are rapacious assholes who work there, like anywhere, but conceptually it's at least supposed to be different from the d-bag Computer Gods' nascent dynasties.

    Which opens up a different Pandora's Box. A lot of the people involved could probably be making fuck-you money elsewhere, but they believe in the model. Turns out that type of person is not crazy about Eich's donation. (Apparently one of their most important developers is gay and his SO is a Brit, so they've got visa problems. Dude confronted Eich for an apology, and didn't get it.) So the Mozilla community was pissed.

    Not all of them were you-should-be-fired pissed, from what I saw on Twitter, and I follow a lot of open-web people, including some actual Mozillians. They got put in a bind--on one hand, they were really upset about Eich's donation (and to put things in context, Eich's not just some swinging B-school dick; he invented JavaScript and is really highly regarded, so it was disillusioning). On the other, they do value open dialogue, as you'd expect from open-web folks. My brother-in-law is a programmer since childhood, is in the industry, is extremely pro-gay-marriage, and didn't think Eich should have been pressured out.

    IMO? Eich came out worse by not talking about his views. He'll put his money and job behind his opposition, but not his words? It looks small.

    I guess what I'm saying is this: it was a culture clash, but not a "Culture War" clash. Mozilla draws from the really idealistic part of the web, the open-source, show-your-work, share-and-share-alike part. Denying people their civil rights AND refusing to defend that cuts across the broader moral philosophy. Eich wanted to separate his personal politics from his job politics, and he was not at a very good place to do that. It's also a place that relies on a lot of goodwill (from employees and users) to function, so a "fuck off, gays" is going to hurt Mozilla, but in a much deeper way than profits.

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  9. The Open Source community has its own set of politics that I've never fully understood, but it's definitely socially liberal. You're probably right - any hint of anti-gay politics would definitely ripple through that community more than it would the business community at large. I'm not sure that he should have been fired, but he definitely owed an explanation to a whole lot of people.

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  10. dmsilev11:09 AM

    "and I'm actually not sure how they make their money"


    Most (something like 80 or 90 percent, if memory serves) of Mozilla's income comes from Google. There's a reason that Google is the out-of-the-box default search engine for Firefox.

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  11. They probably think it's easier to put that bullshit over in this case than in the Deen case because the world of Silicon Valley douchebags is more rareified than that of the Food Network.



    And a few years ago, that probably would have worked. I remember a lot of people who took everything companies like Apple and Google told them at face value, even when they otherwise assumed that corporations were always lying. Everyone bought into the image of the cuddly, fun-loving giant. But you know how it goes - invade the privacy of a few hundred million people, get caught employing slave labor, participate in a weird little cartel so that you don't have to pay your employees what they're worth, and suddenly no believes you anymore. Funny, that.


    I never believed the hype, and you know why? Nintendo. I read a book on the history of video games when I was a kid, and it turns out that the family-friendly facade they've been nurturing for decades also conceals the fact that they're a bunch of fucking serpents. Dig through the company's legal history, and you'll find price gouging, copyright infringement, attempts to corner the market, and some really questionable court decisions. If a company that makes fancy toys can get that nasty, then why should I trust anyone?

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  12. Susan of Texas11:13 AM

    Yet people still believe that rich people want to do what much, much, much poorer people want them to do. Presidents, CEOs, industrial tycoons etc. no longer deal with people, they deal with numbers. You have to threaten their profits to change the rich's behavior.

    The religious right offered votes to politicians to gain political power. The moral aspects of the association were irrelevant. Gay activist groups withheld donations to get what they wanted. But people think decisions are based on morality or the public good instead of greed because their leaders use moral authority to control them. The powerful know it is infinitely easier to convince people to control themselves and each other than it is to control each individual, which is why authoritarian leaders discourage individuality in favor of conformity and obedience.

    And convince people that their leaders want to do what the despised peasants want them to do.

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  13. I wonder where Eich's anti-gay animus, sufficient to inspire him to spend money to fight same-sex marriage, comes from. Is he religious? Is he a misanthrope? He's no dummy, why this dumb stance?

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  14. BigHank5311:30 AM

    As media diversity, deregulation, and the 24-hour news cycle has demanded eternally fresh raw material, the fundamentalists narrowed their messaging. It's either homos or abortion. Everybody's seen it a million times, and there's no story left there anymore.

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  15. BigHank5311:37 AM

    Man, government contracting is way behind the times. Everyone else is using mache and claytonia for their hipster salads now.

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  16. LittlePig11:38 AM

    I'd guess a conservative family default setting with the concordant need for hard-and-fast-rules. Many programmer types don't have loads of social wiring (raises hoof - I are one) and so don't examine a lot of fundamental beliefs; they are just accepted as assumptions.

    I see that a lot in the (g)libertarian programmer subset - they don't see the *system* of society. That is where a lot of this self-sufficency crap comes from. They made it on their own (in a very odd technological niche, probably with some slack from the boss they don't realize). And if they can, why then anyone can.

    Lack of self-examination. That's probably the least damning of the lot.

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  17. Modulo_Myself11:58 AM

    What they don't seem to realize is that you can't spend twenty or so years drumming up gay horror stories and passing laws aimed to combat the threat of gay marriage, and then stick around in a place like San Francisco after your laws were voided without people suspecting you to be a total asshole. I mean, if gay marriage is so threatening that it needed to be illegal, why stay?

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  18. Mooser12:05 PM

    So, we can re-write the old song: "I wonder who's makin' love, to your old lady, while you was out, worshipping Christ!"

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  19. Mooser12:07 PM

    As far as I've seen, wingnut tropes, the white man as a victim of liberals and minorities, has become so general there is simply no countering it.

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  20. coozledad12:27 PM

    I don't know. You could always build a foamcore cross to lug around at work, and when they ask what it's for burst into tears and tell them. "I'm white, man. I just want to be ready."

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  21. coozledad12:35 PM

    I know when I left the church around age 12, I went straight into the arms of Satan.


    He told me puberty is one of the aces up his sleeve.

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  22. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps12:38 PM

    Meanwhile, the Anchoress is in full incoherent ragegasm mode, demanding a "gay CEO with balls" immediately appoint Eich to an executive position, calling the people who demanded his resignation "philosophobes" and the Stasi and witch-hunters and ruthless scalp-taking idolaters, and crying out for some "official gay folk" to defend her from ending up poor (?).

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  23. mortimer20001:05 PM

    I can see why the right-wing is so upset. It's not like Mr. Eich was caught on camera calling the tea party racist, or seen wearing a checkered scarf in public. You know, the kind of thing that really deserves being fired for.

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  24. Jay B.1:15 PM

    So...Corporations shouldn't be allowed to hold beliefs when the CEO is in favor of discrimination, but Corporations demand their deeply-held religious belief (held since 2012!) to oppose birth control in the insurance package they provide. It's a fucking confusing new world, ever since corporations became people.

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  25. I would like to seize the time with this comment.

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  26. Derelict1:44 PM

    I'm back in Florida, the central office of wingnut these days. On I-75 in Punta Gorda this week, I saw yet another expressions of conservative victimhood:
    A beat-up white pickup truck with a wizened white guy at the wheel and festooned with NRA stickers and such also sported the following bumper sticker: "I'm Sorry I'm A Minority."

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  27. tigrismus1:45 PM

    Oh boo hoo. The Market has decided she's part a customer base worth alienating and gays aren't. When a powerful customer base says they won't buy, it counts for more than a weak one saying they won't think well of you.

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  28. Spaghetti Lee1:49 PM

    "Hey, people I hate! Do what I tell you, so I can feel better about myself!"

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  29. tigrismus1:50 PM

    Sorry people are not a minority.

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  30. Allen West's Grandmother1:52 PM

    "Allen West is leading the fight against the Radical Left. Join Today!"











    *paid for by Allen West Guardian Fund

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  31. Christopher Hazell2:07 PM

    I wonder if any of these right-wingers would defend Eich if he gave charitable support to, say, the American Nazi Party? Would Andrew Sullivan demand that the NAACP hire him, to prove that civil rights leaders are tolerant and broad-minded?

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  32. Howlin Wolfe2:30 PM

    Or calling the Republican party the party of assholes. Not even Van Jones' blacktitude saved him from that, regardless of the truth of his opinion.

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  33. Derelict2:42 PM

    They not only would, but in past similar cases, they have! It's a standard right-wing thing now: The fact that you deplore my bigotry demonstrates that YOU are the real racist.

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  34. Daniel Björkman2:52 PM

    I feel you. My cubicle used to be right behind the noisiest and most petulant libertarian in the office. Every day, it was one variation or another of, "the government is DOING stuff! Why don't other people realise that that's the first step towards COMMUNISM!? No one can see the danger but ME!!!!"

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  35. Spaghetti Lee2:55 PM

    Not only that, but Fox McCloud is a libertarian, Samus is a neocon, and Captain Falcon is an anti-gay activist despite, well, er-hem, y'know...

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  36. Pseudonym2:59 PM

    The open source community may lean socially liberal, but it is anything but welcoming to women, although Mozilla looks better than most projects on that front.

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  37. Pseudonym3:13 PM

    I'm sure this Eich man, whoever he is, would never sympathize with the Nazis or support a modern-day cryptofascist like Pat Buchanan.

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  38. Halloween_Jack3:50 PM

    The sickest, saddest part of that rant is when she gives herself props for writing a column once in which she timidly suggests that the Church might kinda sorta let up on all the institutionalized homophobia. The funniest, of course, is where she talks about the "official gay folk" without seeming to have the slightest fucking idea of what she's talking about (more so than usual); does she think that there's some sort of Secretary of Queer, or does her vast solicitude for the homos somehow not cover giving someone the "official" imprimatur?

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  39. XeckyGilchrist3:55 PM

    Another Universal Shorter. Golf clap!

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  40. montag23:56 PM

    Your co-worker definitely sounds like a candidate for being duct-taped to his chair and having his cubicle filled with packing peanuts.

    On a Friday evening.

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  41. XeckyGilchrist3:57 PM

    Fox McCloud struck me as more the military-Republican type, but I could believe Libertarian. Slippy Toad is the punching-bag liberal in that mythos.

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  42. Eich was no doubt going to be the boss of a number of people who were directly harmed by the cause he financially supported. He was going to be the boss of a number of people whom he apparently considers deviant filth, who would nevertheless be expected to keep giving their all to a cause which (as whetstone notes elsewhere in these comments) is at least partially an idealistic one. Ergo, this hiring decision was, to use a business school term of art, fucking stupid. The board was apparently divided about it to begin with, and the hue and outcry tipped the balance. So yeah, no CEO job for you, Brendan. The invisible hand is on the other foot now.



    (And as you also created JavaScript, firing's actually too good for you. So consider yourself lucky.)

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  43. Shakezula4:05 PM

    That's right conservatives, we have the power to tuk ur jebs whenever the mood strikes us. Right now we're focused on driving prominent true comrades out of their jebs. But don't fear, sooner or later we'll get to ur jeb, which we will be sure to give to a member of the gay welfare queen panthers.

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  44. montag24:06 PM

    And here I thought the conservatoids were just head-over-heels in love with at-will employment.

    Must be another one of those things for the little people only, eh?

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  45. redoubtagain4:07 PM

    Whereupon TBogg someone hacked it, posted the "Defeatocrat's Cheer" and caused it to crash.

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  46. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps4:08 PM

    I think she's so deeply in love with the Catholic hierarchy that she can't even comprehend the idea of a large group of people having the same opinion without a vast network of elders and officials directing it all and a big important figurehead at the top of it.

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  47. redoubtagain4:10 PM

    . . . that Deen was not fired-or-whatever by black people and liberals; she was fired by corporations, sociopathic entities that (or is that who?) care only about increasing shareholder value.

    Speaking of which. . .

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  48. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume4:35 PM

    Here's my theory: for about 30 years, starting around, oh, 1980 or thereabouts, conservatives were able to convince themselves that the '60s had never happened. Or it had faded from their memories. It had been a close call, but minorities/women/gays/young people had been safely put in their place. The war had been won.

    And then came 2008...

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  49. ADHDJ4:41 PM

    OH NO, how will the Mozilla Foundation ever survive without the coding chops of the Anchoress???

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  50. I think this is a great point, BH53. I see the "no homes" group as significantly less powerful in a number of ways and one of them is in being part of a big movement that can drive eyeballs to pages. What avails it to a modern business or creative outlet to please these unpleasable goons when the shtick is always the same: Cheerios? No Poofters! Football? No Poofters! Motherhood? No Poofters! Honeymaid cookies? No Poofters! These people are either going to buy whatever food/process/thing corporations are selling or they are not. A side issue is that to the extent that something riles up the 60 plus year olds their buying power is negligible. No one wants their business anyway but the gun sellers, the gold buggers, and the depends people. I'm not looking forward to the day that nursing homes and depends start advertising to the gays.

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  51. I've so been wanting to figure out a rapture ready scam--like selling shares in the property of people who get raptured. I just can't figure out who the buyers would be, or how to make a profit. Sometimes its hard not coming from underpants gnomes. I do feel its important to get that second step right.

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  52. I love your posts, PL butcan you try to add more paragraph breaks--or any paragraph breaks? They can be hard to read.

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  53. I will submit myself wholeheartedly to the moral authority of this comment and have no other comments before it.

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  54. I love it--they want a "gay CEO" to give them a little affirmative action love? Its like they have always wanted Obama to be nicer to white people, too, just to show that there's no hard feelings. Guess Douthat isn't the only one who sees the handwriting on the wall and is begging for one last mercy fuck.

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  55. You can't blame her. The Pope wears a dress and lace, and used to wear Prada.

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  56. I just have to uprate this comment for "the invisible hand is on the other foot now."

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  57. HKAnders4:58 PM

    Mozilla is a non-profit, but yeah... you're exactly right on the merits of the argument.

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  58. We'll deprive them of their precious Jeb in 2016.

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  59. Yeah, that was good.

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  60. Derelict5:15 PM

    That whole Rachel Wray scarf episode made me swear of Dunkin Donuts forever. Any corporation of that size that lets itself get Mau-Mau'ed by Malkin and her flying monkeys deserves to go out of business.

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  61. ohsopolite5:38 PM

    Yes, how fortunate for us that George Soros has purchased all that influence for us, and unfortunate for conservatives that there's no one on their side spending obscene amounts of cash to push their viewpoints. Just imagine what the world would be like if that were the case!

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  62. XeckyGilchrist5:44 PM

    I will never forget it because Sadly, No had the best title ever for their post about it: http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/9467.html

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  63. Derelict5:46 PM

    Ah! Back when Sadly was worth reading! I really miss Gavin.

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  64. TGuerrant5:56 PM

    We're looking at YOU, Tim Cook. It's not like Brendan could do Safari any harm, y'know.

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  65. M. Krebs5:57 PM

    They were just a tad upset in 1992 as well.

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  66. TGuerrant6:01 PM

    where is cookie?

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  67. M. Krebs6:12 PM

    You mean Link Wray's granddaughter Rachel?

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  68. Matt Jones6:12 PM

    For fun, try counting how many of the people condemning Eich's departure support astroturf AFA-sponsored hatemongery like "One Million Moms".

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  69. M. Krebs6:21 PM

    I'm very confident that I would enjoy knowing what the hell that means.

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  70. sharculese6:23 PM

    Ugh. My algorithms are so brittle.

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  71. M. Krebs6:27 PM

    Poor Paula. (To me, her ca.1950 attitude about black people is actually not her most distasteful attribute.)

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  72. randomworker6:29 PM

    I know. The audacity of it just makes my brain melt.

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  73. Smurch6:29 PM

    Definitely awesome. Adam Smith is cheering and chuckling, wherever he is.

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  74. tempo di marcia6:50 PM

    Ich sehe, was Sie dort taten

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  75. susanoftexas6:50 PM

    My ipad ate it.

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  76. smut clyde7:11 PM

    Ask for a retainer in return for cat-feeding promises.

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  77. smut clyde7:12 PM

    He misspelled "Minorite".

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  78. smut clyde7:21 PM

    Andrew "Decadent-left fifth column" sez
    If we cannot live and work alongside people with whom we deeply disagree, we are finished as a liberal society.

    Yes, I can see why a warmonging white supremacist wants tolerance from all those people who despise him.

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  79. Yes, clearly the important thing is to get the money upfront--even more important if they actually do get raptured. You figure the cannier christians will try to post date the check, of course.


    But, come to think of it, many of the scams are already out there--what are sales of "super seeds" for planting after civilization's collapse but some kind of rapture ready style scam? Either the person never plants them, or you aren't around when the seeds don't come up. Maybe preppers are a better bet for scamming. Of course they do tend to be armed. Needs more thought, I guess.

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  80. Oh, smuttie, I can always count on you to nutshell the nuts.

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  81. The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit. The Mozilla Corporation is a taxable wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation. Eich was appointed CEO of the Corporation, while also serving on the board of the Foundation. Hence, the current Seldon Crisis.

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  82. philadelphialawyer7:35 PM

    Thanks Aimai, and I love your posts too. Unfortunately, "Disquss" does not love me. For months, and I don't know why, it no longer lets me sign in with my user name. So, I have to sign in as guest every time I post. Which means I can't edit (grrrrrrrrr) and, for some reason, the paragraph breaks that I "enter" don't seem to stick, most of the time, either.
    The post above was actually entered as four separate paragraphs..."OK, but...." "No, the...."One wonders.." and "Amazing..." were each supposed to be the start of a paragraph, and actually appeared as such to me, when I posted.
    Don't really no what I can do about it. But thanks for trying to bear with me.

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  83. The only friar that guy knows about is the one he uses for turducken.

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  84. dmsilev7:47 PM

    There's got to be a way to sell Rapture insurance to people.

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  85. I feel ya. There were several months where my computer was borked and I couldn't even seen the Alicublog comments. This would happen periodically. It was like being exiled from the island of misfit toys. Someday maybe Disqus will relent. I'll definitely keep reading.

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  86. she's not here with us, how do you know who she's really worshipping?" In 2012.


    Man, that is some prime, grade A, paranoia. My first thought would have been that she was just sleeping in.

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  87. JennOfArk8:26 PM

    I don't endure it; I push back. Of course this doesn't change minds, but at least I don't end up being the only one pissed off.

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  88. XeckyGilchrist8:27 PM

    Well, the will they're thinking of is the CEO's.

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  89. JennOfArk8:28 PM

    Arugula is the modern-day equivalent of maggot-infested watery gruel.

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  90. XeckyGilchrist8:39 PM

    They only chose arugula because they know the conservatives hate it, even if they don't remember why they hate it.


    I just wish I'd been the guy to get the "Girls" DVD supply contract.

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  91. RHWombat8:40 PM

    I'm sure the Koch's charge extra for maggots.

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  92. mortimer20009:06 PM

    I always thought this was a good one. And for only $15 the first year. Now, you might wonder how a system "programmed and run by Christians, for Christians" could send out messages 6 days after the Rapture. Well, they've got that all worked out: If no one logs on for 3 days, then BAM! Must be the Rapture!

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  93. montag29:11 PM

    Yes, Allen West definitely needs a guardian.

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  94. M. Krebs9:20 PM

    The Oops No Rapture policy! For only $39 per month, you can be insured against the Rapture not happening!

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  95. XeckyGilchrist9:31 PM

    Teh Sadly was truly a wonder in 2008. I don't think I've ever been so giddy reading a political blog as I was reading that one around the time of the first Obama win.

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  96. smut clyde9:35 PM

    The important thing is to convince the marks customers that you are enough of a reprobate that you will surely be Left Behind, and can handle all the worldly loose ends that they won't be in a position to deal with in person.

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  97. M. Krebs9:36 PM

    I would just like to leave this here as a gift to everybody. Consider it a palate cleanser.

    http://youtu.be/PppJOrnVtkg

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  98. oedipus rex ryan10:33 PM

    Well, no, it is not. Bing is.

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  99. stepped_pyramids10:38 PM

    MoCo invests all of its profits into Mozilla projects, though. There's no investors or stock. It's a for-profit because it is painful to impossible to run a nonprofit on commercial revenue. US nonprofit law is really heavily tilted toward donation-funded orgs.

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  100. stepped_pyramids10:43 PM

    Being a programmer and a member of the (sizable and worldwide, by the way) community of programmers without shitty, glibertarian and/or retrograde opinions, the loudest voices I saw on this were queer and allied Mozilla employees and volunteers. I actually had no idea until just now that anyone outside the open source community was paying attention to it.


    Mozilla is an open source nonprofit (with a caveat, as explained above). There's a layer of about 10% slick Silicon Valley professionalism over 90% crunchy granola there. If it had just been some tech firm -- or, say, Google -- I don't think there would have been nearly as much of an uproar.

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  101. stepped_pyramids10:44 PM

    Eich's donations to Pat Buchanan are almost worse than his Prop 8 donations, frankly.

    ReplyDelete
  102. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:47 PM

    They'd fire the cook, because the maggots were supposed to be in the 3-meat pizza...

    ReplyDelete
  103. stepped_pyramids10:50 PM

    I have to admit: whenever someone links to an old S,N post, I always have to check to see if I made a post on it. That's one where I did!

    ReplyDelete
  104. Mozilla Vision10:50 PM

    While not surprising, the hypocrisy is staggering.


    Secular nonprofit Mozilla hires a CEO who's taken bigoted action against gays and lesbians. Mozilla's customers protest by threatening to switch to different products. Mozilla reconsiders the hire and lets the CEO go. Conservatives say: the customers were immoral to threaten to switch, and Mozilla are immoral for yielding to the pressure.


    Christian charity World Vision decides to hire openly gay and lesbian employees and treat them equally. Donors protest by dropping their sponsorship of hungry children. Facing funding shortfalls that will endanger the lives of the people they're trying to help, World Vision apologizes and reverses the decision. Conservatives say: a moral victory.

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  105. smut clyde10:56 PM

    Fix your link, Meanie; Disqust has munged it.

    ReplyDelete
  106. BigHank5310:58 PM

    I don't even think it's a matter of power any more. They're boring. They're wrong about the collapse of society, they're hung up on their two precious bible verses, and from the outset none of them have had the guts to stand up and say "I find gay marriage repugnant and I will therefore never gay-marry anyone!" Mostly because everyone else would think "OK, fine then, don't" and get right back to their lives. It's all just been a tantrum. And if you've seen two minutes of anyone's tantrum, you've seen enough for the rest of your life.

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  107. stepped_pyramids11:00 PM

    I don't understand what she thinks some "gay CEO" would hire Eich for. He's not really a businessman/exec type, and his involvement with Mozilla was all about Mozilla's investment in Javascript as a language and the browser as a platform. You can count the corporations where he could play a similar role on one hand: Google, Microsoft, Apple. In decreasing order of relevance.


    In a lot of ways, Eich's appointment as CEO was essentially a sinecure. That's why it's so baffling that Mozilla did it.

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  108. stepped_pyramids11:24 PM

    Mozilla has traditionally been much better on that front, as well as on LGBT issues. That's a huge reason why this blew up so violently. It was like appointing a vegetarian as Grand Marshal of a chili cookoff.

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  109. stepped_pyramids11:34 PM

    So one thing that I don't think is super well known: it's been well-known for some time that Eich donated to Prop 8. There were definitely people who chose not to attend talks he gave, etc. based on it, and there was some strain in the Mozilla community with gay Mozillians criticizing him for it, etc. but there was never any serious push for him to leave Mozilla or stop working on Javascript or for Mozilla or JS to be boycotted. So he was working at Mozilla and serving on the board even though people he worked with disagreed with him.


    When he was appointed CEO, two things changed. First, CEO of Mozilla is almost like a public relations position. It carries a lot of symbolic weight, which is why they appointed a programmer to the position and not a seasoned administrator. Second, it put a lot of gay Mozillians in a subordinate employment position to someone they knew had materially opposed their rights in the past. They were no longer working alongside him, they were working for him. The combination of those two details is what set things aflame.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Clio's Bitch12:02 AM

    As a Socialist/Marxist/Granola Librul Hippie I definitely sympathize with the argument --even if it is being made laterally and obtusely by assholes trying to profit from a leftist critique-- that work in the United States a fortiori has become so stultifying and latticed with speech codes and strictures that a certain freedom of conscience has been violated.

    But this is about power and visibility. As others have ably noted, Mr. Eich was the face of the company; a company that relies on an unusual level of user outreach and investment --personal investment. The betrayal of the company ethos was further compounded by the way Mr. Eich handled this. He did not have to recant anything he said per se, but he could have taken the opportunity to explicitly lay out which steps he would take to ensure that the culture of the company as regards gay rights continued to be crystal-clear and supportive. He did not. He stonewalled, and in that respect, he lost the ability to lead as he was totally out of touch with the company culture.

    On the other hand, should a bank teller be fired for say, attending an Occupy Rally calling for the breakup of JP Morgan Chase? Of course not; the laws should be clarified (and could be with a Court not incredibly beholden to oligarchic interests) to protect the least powerful employees from pernicious and arbitrary termination.

    But of course that's eliding the larger issue of how insane at-will employment for most entry-level and middle-level positions is, and just how little government in the United States does what it should do; which is to protect and succor the powerless and afflict the powerful and comfortable.

    Those who are more powerful have their own protection by dint of their status; any idiot --except rightwingers of course-- knows this.

    tl;dr Galtian overlords want to be the tallest blade of grass? Well okay. But be ready for the fact that the wind sometimes *blows*. A lot.

    P.S. I still don't get Andrew Sullivan's popularity. Not only is he a terrible writer, a histrionic drama queen --and I say this with all the understanding of queer studies and loaded terms and gay-bating, etc.--, a bloodthirsty authoritarian, a narcissistic self-promoter, and so forth --all of which are qualities that I suppose make him a natural pundit-- but he also tends to buddy up to the "Left" when it suits him.

    At least with Bill Kristol I can always safely assume that he'll be on the opposite side of me, and that maybe if I get lucky one of these days, I'll catch him on the Upper West Side or on Ventura Boulevard if he's there for Bill Maher and I'll run him over with my car. Sully provides no apodictic certainties even in his awfulness.

    Neither a metronome or a clock. Right twice a day for the wrong reasons. Assumes the mantle of a movement he simultaneously disavows.

    Please Brits. Stop sending us people like this. Or at least send someone comparatively good to compensate.

    ReplyDelete
  111. Pseudonym12:27 AM

    What's the deal with chili con carne with beans anyway? Once you take a way the carne and the beans, what's left? I think this is the real issue that's being ignored here.

    ReplyDelete
  112. RHWombat12:40 AM

    Blame Reagan. Thatcher's spawn gravitated towards the centre of selfishness. See: Rupert and the Delaware Corporation, a fairy tale for young Randroids, with an introduction by Roger Aisles.

    ReplyDelete
  113. stepped_pyramids12:50 AM

    Chili, of course! Something along these lines:

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  114. freq flag1:19 AM

    Don't be stupid
    Be a smarty
    Come and join
    The Nazi Party!



    The classics never go out of style!

    ReplyDelete
  115. freq flag1:28 AM

    Nice one, Krebs...an all-time favor-ite.
    (possibly their best,IMO)

    ReplyDelete
  116. freq flag1:32 AM

    Ditto with the phenomenon that is Sullivan.
    His only earthly value is to provide source material
    so that Brother Driftglass eviscerate him on a regular basis.

    http://driftglass.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  117. freq flag1:35 AM

    Blame Regan.
    Any time. Any where.
    (like the Monkees)

    ReplyDelete
  118. mommadillo6:59 AM

    Corporate personhood is the holy grail of conservatism - that "moral justification for selfishness" they've been seeking for centuries.

    ReplyDelete
  119. LittlePig11:41 AM

    Now that's duck sauce!

    ReplyDelete
  120. BigHank5312:14 PM

    Be fair; conservatives never imagined it was a tool that could be used against a wealthy white guy.

    ReplyDelete
  121. LittlePig12:17 PM

    It was like being exiled from the island of misfit toys.

    I'd like to take this comment and take it to the spa for the day.

    ReplyDelete
  122. Mooser12:18 PM

    At this point, if the rich could incorporate their personness, they'd have carte blanche.

    ReplyDelete
  123. Mooser12:23 PM

    Good, and I hope they shoved his dismissal right down his throat.
    Yup, I bet Eich never saw that one coming! I bet he never, ever thought in his life he would have to account for his Prop 8 work to anybody besides those who admired him for it.

    ReplyDelete
  124. Mooser12:27 PM

    and that foot is kicking his ass.

    ReplyDelete
  125. Mooser12:32 PM

    I am not able to get any Disqus function with Explorer.

    ReplyDelete
  126. LittlePig12:35 PM

    Thank you. I thought it was just me.

    Plus, Jeez Louise, JavaScript? We ain't talking Linus Torvald or Larry Wall here.

    ReplyDelete
  127. Mooser12:37 PM

    Notice, the fact that they were "living in sin" made absolutely no difference to them. All concubines welcome, if they're not Ethiopian, of course.

    I have often thought that the anti-gay stuff came along very conveniently to cover the fact that Christian churches have given up imposing (or even arguing for) any kind of heterosexual morality. Anything goes in that department.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Mooser12:38 PM

    And frankly, I bet we'll do a better job of it. "Be Healed" is not a substitute for a visit to a qualified vet.

    ReplyDelete
  129. Mooser12:40 PM

    "Maybe preppers are a better bet for scamming."


    Maybe we could sell them a book: "The Five Little Preppers, and How They Grew Some!"

    ReplyDelete
  130. MikeJ1:09 PM

    To be fair, the language he originally envisioned was a lot better than Netscape was willing to implement at the time. Modern javascript has moved in that direction and is much, much better than it used to be, but that's damning with faint praise.


    I'd prefer it if we could rip out javascript by the root and replace it with something fun, like Haskell, but I'm not holding my breath.

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  131. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:48 PM

    But they *do* incorporate their personnessesses. And they do it to escape responsibility for anything their personageness might do that harms someone else's personness. Then, of course, they seek to empersonificate their corporateness, so that they may enjoy all the rights and privileges the Founders totally meant for corporations to have, but they ran out of ink, or Article #s, or something, while writing the Constitution.

    ReplyDelete
  132. LittlePig2:05 PM

    Amen. What with all the hetero-evangelicals screwing around and getting knocked-up and divorcing at historic levels it takes a powerful mote to distract you from that damn beam that is driving you out of your mind. That's why all the gay terror crap. Gays have to be hideous monsters to make it easy for you to forget what a stealin' covetin' lyin' adulterin' idolizer you are.

    Funny thing, if you read what Mary and Joseph's little boy said, he was mostly pissed off at hypocrites. That's the total mind-blowing part of it of me. Evangelicals work actively and diligently to NOT implement what the good Rabbi specifically kvetched about in the book.

    ReplyDelete
  133. smut clyde4:10 PM

    Sorry people are not a minority.
    Alas, neither are idiots.

    ReplyDelete
  134. PersonaAuGratin4:39 PM

    Hera ya go!

    ReplyDelete
  135. Gromet7:10 PM

    Huh. Yeah. They hated Clinton from the outset. It was not fully justified by his policies, which were usually centrist. It seemed more based in the fact that he'd obviously had fun in the '60s, and was known to have cheated on his wife. And now here he was playing a sax and agreeing to answer an underwear question -- such radical '60s-era behavior, the end of the Republic! I suppose you could look at 1992 as evidence that the 1960s were still having more ongoing cultural impact than the 1950s and their 1980 restoration. And that would be terrifying, if you were emotionally triple-downed on the idea that it was Woodstock that tore us apart rather than, say, war hawks, segregationist dead-enders, and Nixon's paranoia.

    ReplyDelete
  136. Penniless Moocher7:33 PM

    The psychology behind this hypocrisy is fascinating. No one wants to be the bad guy, you know? So obviously it's teh gays that are the bad guys, because equal rights for them would threaten the sanctity of marriage, or religious freedoms, or something! This justifies any and all action taken against them, and automatically makes any and all action taken on their behalf an attack on freedom itself also Hitler (the inevitable invocations of Hitler and Nazis are especially hilarious in this context).

    To be honest, though, I'm getting a little bored with the wingnutz. It's the same fucking chorus every time, on every issue. It's just getting tedious, you know?

    ReplyDelete
  137. He could stop being so ostentatiously black.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Lancelot Link1:10 AM

    Bless her li'l heart.

    ReplyDelete
  139. Regarding Andrew Sullivan: He was his moments, but he can't credibly invoke Orwell and McCarthyism when he was such a McCarthyist asshole screaming thoughtcrime against people who merely questioned going to war (and many years later you issued a snotty pseudo-apology claiming Gore would have attacked Iraq, too, so suck it, libs). He can't credibly claim to be a champion against bigotry beyond his own benefit when he subscribes to notions of racial superiority (and whines about his critics stifling intellectual inquiry, never mind that he can't be bothered to discern shoddy pseudoscience). Apart from a few areas, Sullivan is a pretty standard issue Tory aristocrat who disdains the riffraff, and the causes he fights for that cross the party line tend to benefit him personally. In other words, he is a typical "reasonable" conservative, less noxious than some of his pals, possible to work with in narrow terms, but still awfully bad at his core.

    ReplyDelete
  140. Brian Schlosser4:06 AM

    Its more like "I find gay sex repugnant and will NEVER HAVE IT! (Probably... Not openly...) But I WILL think and talk about it more than actual gay people do! But only because I hate it so so much!"

    ReplyDelete
  141. Brian Schlosser4:09 AM

    You think the Oracle of Mountain View could hire an openly anti-gay CEO without an uproar?

    ReplyDelete
  142. Brian Schlosser4:17 AM

    Nothing against Cerb, she seems like a nice person, but she's sorta made it a single issue blog (which is fine, but... you know, not really what made S,N! great).

    And she goes on. And on. And on. And on...

    And on...

    And on...

    ReplyDelete
  143. Brian Schlosser4:28 AM

    Yep. Give me an enemy I can honestly despise over an ally I have to feign respect for any day.

    ReplyDelete
  144. Brian Schlosser4:33 AM

    I have a standing offer to The Anchoress to wall her up in the convent of her choice, on my dime, but for some reason she doesn't want to live up to her name.

    ReplyDelete
  145. Brian Schlosser4:34 AM

    Nah... the truth is that they're the leg-breakers. The plumber thing is a classic front.

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  146. Brian Schlosser4:38 AM

    Good Christ, will they never let Chappaquiddick go? The man's been as dead as MaryJo for half a decade now, and they still haul that one out like an elderly, brain damaged uncle does with his dick.

    I mean, we barely got a few years out of Cheney shooting an old man in the face!

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  147. chirisdex5:24 AM

    Being a developer and a participant of the (sizable and globally, by the way) group of developers without shitty, glibertarian and/or retrograde views, the loudest comments I saw on this were queer and allied Mozilla workers and volunteers. I actually had no concept until just now that anyone outside the free group was focusing on it.








    Spybubble gratuit

    ReplyDelete
  148. Derelict9:08 AM

    Yeah, that pretty well killed it for me. Not the single-issue part of it--just the "shorter" posts that were longer than the original.

    ReplyDelete
  149. Susan of Texas9:47 AM

    Yes, he as a little power to form public opinion and some liberals think he can be useful in advancing liberal goals. But as you note the main cause that Sullivan cares about is Andrew Sullivan. Like Ayn Rand he grew up thinking that being clever meant he was innately superior.

    It makes absolutely no sense for Sullivan to fight for equality yet insist that nobody should be forced by law to treat others equally until we remember that he does not believe all people are equal. He wants to treat others as lesser people while forcing them to acknowledge he is not a lesser person.

    So this pathetic little person would rest smugly knowing that everyone without his personal power would suffer if the laws did not enforce equality while he could just make a big noisy fuss to be treated as an equal. Just as Megan McArdle said that if an insurance company refused to cover a claim you could just call them up and yell at the. She could pull a "do you know who I am?" But nobody else could. They don't have her power as a media person.

    ReplyDelete
  150. Shakezula9:52 AM

    With the usual focus on gay men. These stereotypes seem to be built of equal parts gross jokes they heard in jr. high, wishful thinking, extreme porn they watched for research purposes (Honest honey. Honey?) and a desire to scare people into thinking they'll be gay sexed to death if they don't look out.

    I don't carefully track everything that falls out of these bozoids' mouths, but rarely do you hear people yelping about the perils of lesbian sex.

    I assume it is because they don't view women as being interested in sex unless forced to by a man, or women aren't seen as a physical threat.

    ReplyDelete
  151. XeckyGilchrist10:54 AM

    Heh. This guy is in his mid-fifties, so not quite old enough to be ranting with the personal hippie-aggrievement the older set can get going, but he's been around long enough to nurse some grudges for a long time.


    Even the other conservatives in the office, relative youngsters in their forties, chuckle nervously and edge away when he gets going about the classics.

    ReplyDelete
  152. JennOfArk4:58 PM

    "He came in here and he trashed the place, and it's not his place!" Can't remember if that was Broder or Quinn, but the whole DC press corpse was in on the fun 'n games.

    ReplyDelete
  153. JennOfArk5:13 PM

    This. I never brought it up over there because I like Cerb as a human being, and that's who Tintin handed the keys to, so it seemed a dick move to bitch about it in their wheelhouse. But part of what made classic Sadly so great was the comments section. The shorters left plenty of room for the comments to build on; Cerb just stomps things to death. After 30 paragraphs what could there possibly be to add?

    ReplyDelete
  154. Mooser5:20 PM

    Uh, thanks, I guess.

    ReplyDelete
  155. M. Krebs9:06 PM

    I love the fact that that the woman singing once had a hit song, Rescue Me. Your average music fan would guess that Rescue Me was done by Aretha Franklin, but no, 'twas Fontella Bass.


    I saw the film Les Stances a Sophie a couple of years ago (Netflix). It's not that good, but I'd always been curious about it and was surprised to find that Netflix had it.

    ReplyDelete
  156. Jon Hendry10:00 PM

    More like "I find gay sex repugnant and will NEVER HAVE IT! And I've had enough of you people. I'm leaving! Come along, Antonio!"

    ReplyDelete
  157. Like Ayn Rand he grew up thinking that being clever meant he was innately superior.


    I'd venture to say that he grew up thinking that being superior meant that he was innately clever.

    ReplyDelete
  158. Jon Hendry10:09 PM

    It's kinda fitting, in a way. There are some parts of JavaScript that are widely considered WTF-worthy. There's even a book, "JavaScript: The Good Parts", which sets the bad parts aside.


    So it seems fitting that the language's creator has WTF-worthy aspects.

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  159. Jon Hendry10:12 PM

    "I'd guess a conservative family default setting with the concordant need for hard-and-fast-rules."


    Ironic, that Eich created a language which is pretty loosey-goosey with types and such.

    ReplyDelete
  160. Jon Hendry10:14 PM

    Given that browsers are given away free, the switching costs are close to zero. So Mozilla can't really afford to turn users away over politics.

    ReplyDelete
  161. Jon Hendry10:16 PM

    The Official Robes of Office are to die for.

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  162. Jon Hendry10:22 PM

    Or if he did anything vaguely favorable towards Palestinians.

    ReplyDelete
  163. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:32 PM

    And did a good job of it, too. Only fix was to pull the link out of the html tag.

    ReplyDelete
  164. something fun, like Haskell

    Obligatory.


    (And yes, it took me almost 36 hours to post this reply. I was extremely lazy in evaluating your comment.)

    ReplyDelete
  165. JennOfArk12:07 AM

    To be fair, lots of us grew up thinking that being clever meant we were innately superior. The difference is, we became adults.


    Or at least that was my experience. I was quite the shit as a youngster (as opposed to the cranky old bitch I am today). I remember in school thinking that the kids who struggled just weren't trying, because all that shit was easy. You just listened and did the work and that was all it took. Or perhaps that's just one of the Asperbergian traits of my personality; YMMV. In any case, I don't remember how old I was when it finally occurred to me that I had shit really easy compared to a lot of folks. Certainly older than I should have been, something like early to mid-20s. But the point is, I did get there. Sullivan (and McArdle) never will.

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  166. I bet that's it exactly.

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  167. I can relate to that.


    The way I see it, a large part of growing up is admitting that things aren't what you might like to think they are. It's realizing that you can't go around believing whatever satisfies you.


    Like right now, I have to admit that I'm really not expressing what I want to say very well...

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  168. Barry_D8:54 AM

    And people should remember that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the mists of time (last November), Sullivan hounded Alec Baldwin from his job, and gloated about it.


    G-d-d-mn, but Sullivan is so crooked that he makes a corkscrew look straight.

    ReplyDelete