The new high crime is disagreement
Apr 7, 2014, 1:05 PM | Updated: 1:08 pm
From Monday’s edition of the David Boze Show.
Well, it remains to be seen whether Mozilla will have the chance to enjoy their newfound definition of free speech with the sheer volume of people that are expressing a fury at Mozilla Firefox for booting out the CEO all for, well, for pressuring the CEO. Supposedly he resigned – for the good of the company, but was feeling clearly under pressure, and he’s supposed to be a great pariah and they released that statement on Friday saying that they’re all for free speech as long as that free speech is consistent with what the loudest people that criticize them think.
Because, again, they boot this guy out because he donated $1,000 to defining marriage as between – keeping the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Even the headlines by the way were not so. The headlines that say ‘anti-gay views;’ it’s not necessarily anti-gay view as in anti-gay people view, to say marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s not necessarily anti-gay marriage because it did not exist. It was, there was obvious reason why marriage was previously defined as between a man and a woman and they have nothing to do with animosity toward anyone, it’s just simple biology, which would inspire those definitions.
So, this notion that it requires some kind of hatred in your heart is a grotesque distortion of that, of the view. Not only that but if then you look at the company and they’re saying this guy’s view is so bad, how dare Mozilla do this – I even saw on, I think it was Slate, they had a column where they said that, that having a view like this; in other words a view that Hillary Clinton had until this year, a view that Barack Obama had until Joe Biden spilled the beans; having a view like that on marriage should be a disqualifier for being a CEO. Because a modern CEO couldn’t possibly do that.
And I think one of the underplayed, one of the under examined aspects of this story has been that the CEO of Firefox – the guy developed, what? Javascript, and cofounded Firefox, the Internet browser. And when he did so, the company kept growing, and obviously they have a wide variety of employees, including many gay people. And what should that indicate? Also, countless gay people were using, just like straight people, were using Firefox, and presumably they were doing it because they felt that service was better. So what was this man’s great sin against these individuals? And let’s include, let’s say that as the individual, as Mr. Eich granted, he said, ‘I regret that my views cause some people pain. I don’t want that.’ Which, by the way, is true given any mutually exclusive view. You know with Prop 1 coming up in Seattle where they want yet another hit on your car tab taxes in Seattle, it’s doing to be one of those things where they want yet another hit on your car tab taxes in Seattle – it’s going to be one of those things where, where if I lived in King County, if I lived in Seattle and I was hit by this new tax, it would be quite annoying to me. I would feel hurt. Particularly when I paid the bill. That doesn’t mean I would presume that everybody who takes the position opposite me is focusing on hurting me.
And I know that analogy breaks down to a certain degree because of the nature of what we’re talking about here. But there are other things as well. You know I had friends who were devoutly religious who would point to, they had strong beliefs about divorce, my parents were divorced when I was a kid and sometimes those beliefs that they described would offend me because of how they viewed, you know, my family. I never thought in a million years that they hated my family. I never thought in a million years that their views could possibly impact my family in some way. Just the fact that they disagreed with my family – well, so what? Put on the big boy pants. Time to grow up a little bit.
But, anyway, for this creator, this innovator, who’s been driven out – what did he do? He created a service that served people of all different walks of life – and presumably that service was an advantage to them in one way or another. And that was a plus. His company, he hired the best people not people that he agree with, otherwise why would he hire gay people? But he still hired people based on the merits and their ability to do their job and then treated them well by all accounts. And treated everybody the same according to their ability to work. So, he provided for their families, he created innovation, he allowed them employment security, healthcare and other things. So what was his great crime? Disagreement.
And the proof that he’s supposedly an example of what a CEO cannot be and how a CEO cannot be successful is in this one view. I’ve even seen a follow-up column where the argument was that a CEO holds this kind of view can’t possibly be a good one. And I thought, so every, basically, every company prior to say 1997 had a horrible CEO. Because generally prior to 1997 nobody was really talking all that much about gay marriage, right? So none of these companies that developed, none of these companies that provided employment and benefits and luxuries that everybody from all walks of life enjoy, none of them were successful? None of them have a good CEO? We live in an era where nonsense is argued.
From Monday’s edition of the David Boze Show.