The witch hunt against Brendan was just terrible. He made a minor donation years ago and it's something people blew out of proportion.
Here was his statement about inclusiveness after his donation became an issue https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ To me it looks like he was committed to keeping Mozilla inclusive and would have been a great CEO.
To most Americans, $1k is not a "minor" amount of money.
Furthermore, the exact amount of money that he donated is fairly irrelevant anyway. The donation, no matter it's magnitude, serves to illustrate what he believes. If I made a $1 donation to the local KKK group, would you make excuses for me because $1 is a trivial amount of money? Of course you would not.
Comparing donating to an active hate group to a campaign doesn't make sense. The amount is irrelevant, I'll give you that but in my opinion something someone did six years ago isn't going to determine my opinion of something now.
In six years time Brendan could have gone through a lot of experiences that changed his opinion on marriage and based on his statement I would have given him the benefit of the doubt.
Feel free to substitute "KKK" with "campaign to ban interracial marriage" in my above comment. Frankly I think the later is even worse anyway; the KKK only wishes they still had enough political influence to pass unconstitutional laws in a state like California.
If Brendan had publicly released a sincere apology I would consider forgiving him. All he did was issue a bunch of "It doesn't matter, you guys are wrong for caring" statements.
And this is the other important fact, right here, what you just said. Not only is Eich a bigot who supports other bigots with his own money, he very obviously still has those views because he didn't do even the slightest thing necessary to defuse the outrage. He could have said "Yeah, that was a long time ago", thrown a symbolic $1,000 at GLAAD, and it would have literally wall went away overnight.
In the face of that, his repeated assertions that he can somehow keep his personal and professional lives separate (yeah, the human mind does not work that way) ring very hollow, at best.
Here is a person, incredibly talented, well paid for his work, that decides his personal beef with LGBTs takes precedence over his professional life and everyone else at Mozilla.
That, right there, shows a tremendous lack of decision making and prioritization skills. Kiss of death for a C-level position.
I think that if he hadn't resigned, he'd have eventually been asked to leave anyways. You do not, as a company, go out of your way to promote an image of inclusiveness and togetherness, and then hire an unrepentant bigot for a high level position. Mozilla would have lost huge amounts of credibility.
He never said he changed his opinion on same sex marriage even when he was directly asked. Given that it could have saved job, i think you can conclude he doesn't support same sex marriage.
Do you have a better definition for a confluence of people that uses irrational FUD to tilt public policy away from certain people having rights?
The commercials sponsored by this group are freely available on YouTube. I suggest you go watch them, and then re-evaluate whether you feel the campaign doesn't qualify as a hate group. Violence is not the only or most important qualification in defining what a "hate group" actually is.
Wow. As a non-American I hadn't seen these ads before. They're pretty much the definition of FUD.
And the one with the mother is especially insane. Wouldn't want your kids to be taught facts that are uncomfortable to you, eh? What do you know, if your kids knew homosexuality was a thing they might like it and fall from grace.
Comparing donating to an active hate group to a campaign doesn't make sense.
It does if that campaign ran hate ads on your local TV station. If you think that the issue around Eich is only about his support for a certain ballot issue (by itself), then perhaps you should look a bit more into bigger story behind it -- and what got people so angry.
I'm very, very far away from judging people's work abilities (like being an CEO) based on their skin color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or ideology.
You would not judge a CEO for publicly admitting to being a racist? I do not believe you. I think that you are lying, either to us or to yourself.
Calling something "Ideology" is not a "get out of criticism free" card. You are free to have whatever political beliefs you desire, but we are all free to criticism you for your political beliefs. Our criticism of political beliefs is just as political as the beliefs that we are criticizing; it is fundamentally illogical to put political beliefs above reproach.
> Calling something "Ideology" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.
Of course. It is after all entirely different than:
Calling someone "Gay" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.
Or:
Calling someone "Jew" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.
Or:
Calling something "Black" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.
Or:
Calling someone "woman" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.
Or:
Calling someone "Muslim" is not a "get out of criticism free" card.
Right.
Obviously our public sphere is full of criticism of Islam (a.k.a. islamophobia), Black people (a.k.a. racism), women (a.k.a sexism), Jews (a.k.a. antisemitism), Gays (a.k.a. homophobia).
And YES I would take a racist for CEO - if he is more qualified than others - each and every time. Because I truly believe in a society where gender, sex orientation, race, religion, ideology - do NOT matter.
See, this is a paradox. You can't have that, and you just admitted it. Cultural Marxism is full of paradoxes like that. It's impossible to truly have society where gender, sex orientation, race, religion, ideology - do NOT matter. Thank you very much for providing evidence that you see a paradox there as well.
Given that hiring/firing people is a key part of being a CEO, a racist CEO would result in hiring/firing/not promoting talented, capable people based on irrelevant factors. Speaking purely from a business perspective, this will give the company a disadvantage and negatively impact performance.
"Ideology" is too broad of a term the way you are using it: after all, believing that COBOL the ultimate programming language for all use cases could also be labeled an "ideology", one that would make somebody a poor CTO.
Similarly, beliefs that certain groups of people, based on unrelated criterion like gender identity, are inherently inferior to others or deserve lesser treatment, do materially impact the workplace.
Unlike the previous two examples, somebody's personal beliefs about things like religion or their cultural background have nothing to do with job performance.
> Obviously our public sphere is full of criticism of Islam (a.k.a. islamophobia)
Islamophobia, racism, etc., are not criticisms. Criticism is the application of reason and intelligence for the purpose of analysis and improvment. Bigotry is the assumption that "others" are worse simply by their being "other". Nothing you listed is criticism, it is various forms of bigotry. In bigotry there is no desire for dialogue, simply judgement and superiority.
> And YES I would take a racist for CEO - if he is more qualified than others - each and every time. Because I truly believe in a society where gender, sex orientation, race, religion, ideology - do NOT matter.
Those two sentences are incongruent. You cannot claim to champion a society where gender, race, etc., do not matter, and then turn around and state your acceptance of a racist CEO.
I have no problem if people want to continue to rehash and re-litigate the Eich affair. But a story about the triumph of a gay man leading one of the world's most powerful companies is not the thread to do it in.
Please post another story about the Eich issue and upvote it, and comment there. Bringing up his donation and the fallout here is just being deliberately provocative and borderline disrespectful. Please don't.
Here was his statement about inclusiveness after his donation became an issue https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ To me it looks like he was committed to keeping Mozilla inclusive and would have been a great CEO.