Political Irony

I’ve been watching the kerfuffel about Mozilla (the nonprofit that produces the Firefox browser among other things) and its new CEO with quite a bit of interest. Personal interest, because to me Brendan Eich is better known as the creator of the JavaScript language, which I use to earn my living. And political interest, because it brings up an interesting irony about tolerance, namely is it ok to be intolerant of someone who is intolerant?

The facts are that in 2008 Eich contributed $1000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, which banned same sex marriage (SSM) in California. This contribution became public knowledge in 2012. At the time, Eich was the CTO (Chief Technical Officer) for Mozilla, an organization which he co-founded. A couple of week ago, Eich was promoted to CEO, and that’s when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Many people both inside and outside Mozilla were upset about Eich’s beliefs against same sex marriage, and believed that they made him unfit to be the CEO of a community based organization like Mozilla. One website urged a boycott. Ten days later, Eich resigned.

It is worth noting that Proposition 8 passed in California (although it was later overturned by the state supreme court). That means that in at least some sense Eich’s opinions were not out of the mainstream at the time. Public opinion about SSM has changed dramatically in the last few years.

And Eich himself promised to continue Mozilla’s policy of inclusiveness, including for gay rights, and to separate his personal beliefs from his professional life. According to people who worked with him, he has kept that promise and never let his personal beliefs influence his work or how he treated others.

In a legal sense, this played out as it should have. Of course Eich has a right to his personal opinions. And of course Mozilla has a right to get rid of their CEO for any reason, including if public outcry will hurt the organization.

I have been a CEO in my life, so I understand that a CEO represents a company in a way that the CTO doesn’t. Even so, should Eich be punished for an action he took back when it was mainstream, but which no longer is?

I can see both sides of this issue, so why does this bother me so much? I think Andrew Sullivan (who is a gay conservative columnist) hit the nail on the head:

The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out.

I have watched with amazement and awe as the fight for gay rights has been won in a stunningly short amount of time. It really was just back in 2008 when California passed Prop 8. I live in Oregon, and it too passed a constitutional amendment banning SSM. Opposition to gays was one of the strongest red meat causes of the religious right. And now, just a few years later, those laws are being overturned and few people question gay rights.

In my opinion, this fight was won because it was not a fight. Gays did not win because they banded together and fought straight people. They won by being normal and non-threatening. They won because TV shows and movies started showing gays as real people who were not so different from everyone else, and who shared the same dreams and aspirations. They also won because we all started recognizing that the many contributions by gays made the world a better place. Gay people were not scary or evil. They were normal. Rather than a threat to the family, they were an asset.

In the past I have written posts where I did not support SSM. Not because I didn’t believe that gays should marry, but because I thought that marriage should not be the domain of government. Instead, I wanted everyone (gay or straight) to have a right to a civil union, and leave marriage to the church. Any church that wanted to could perform marriages for gays, but all the legal rights would be stripped from marriage and transferred to civil unions. We are supposed to keep church and state separate, right? As they like to say, my opinion has evolved. Should those old posts be used against me now?

Maybe Eich’s opinion hasn’t evolved the same way as mine, but I’m still afraid that hounding him out of his job because he is was (and may still be) a heretic is a terrible strategy for the gay rights movement. As one commenter on Sullivan’s site put it:

I don’t spend my money at Chik-fil-A because I don’t like the idea of it being funneled into an anti-equality organizations. I don’t buy Barilla because their CEO explained that they don’t make their products for me, which I assume means they don’t need my money. I don’t watch Duck Dynasty because – well, I never did. But this is a horse of different color. I don’t want to be party to purges and I sure as hell don’t want to give the likes Sarah Palin the satisfaction of an “I told you so” moment. Snap out of it people! We’re winning! We don’t need to do this!

I’m not just talking about natural resources or fuels. Do we have the political resources and energy to solve our most pressing national problems: namely global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity.

While it is clear that our elected representatives don’t have the political resources or energy to tackle these problems, a group called The Solutions Project has decided to take matters into their own hands.

We’ve all heard the naysayers and propagandists who claim that we don’t have the technology to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, or that it would hurt our economy, or cost too much money. So the group came out with a detailed, state-by-state plan for how we can completely transition to 100% clean, renewable energy. This is not just about technology, it also details the benefits, including how much money can be saved, how many jobs will be created, and even more importantly, the thousands of lives that can be saved every year by switching away from polluting fuels.

You can see an easy-to-understand infographic about their plan at their website. Just hover over your state, or click on it to see the benefits.

On March 24, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), he who shut down the government in a failed attempt to repeal Obamacare, went to Facebook and posted the following:

Quick poll: Obamacare was signed into law four years ago yesterday. Are you better off now than you were then?
Comment with YES or NO!

Did he really expect that Facebook would reply with anything less than a tsunami of YES votes?

The question becomes, will Ted Cruz change his mind about Obamacare now? I’m not holding my breath (despite the fact that I now have better, cheaper health insurance under the ACA).

© Mike Stanfill

I have an actual Obamacare horror story to add to this comic. In Michigan, Democratic senator Carl Levin is retiring, leading to one of the most hotly contested races for control of the Senate. Republican Terri Lynn Land has been leading in the polls against Democrat Gary Peters for the last couple of months.

Then the SuperPAC Americans for Prosperity started blanketing the state with some misleading ads attacking Representative Peters for his support for the ACA. The ad featured a woman suffering from cancer telling a supposed Obamacare horror story — claiming that Obamacare is unaffordable and even potentially life-threatening for her. But when fact checked, it turned out that she was actually saving over a thousand dollars a year for her medical treatments (while getting to keep her same doctor and getting better coverage).

The ads backfired. As a result, the next poll for the race showed that Peters had gained 8 points against Land, and was now leading in the race.

Then it gets even more interesting. Sensing an opportunity, Democrats blasted the Koch Brothers (the primary funders of Americans for Prosperity) for the lies about Obamacare in their ads. Americans for Prosperity fired back, trying to shame Democrats for picking on a woman with cancer. Then they doubled down, running a new ad featuring the same woman, but changing the wording so that they didn’t say anything that was fact checkable (e.g., that Obamacare is unaffordable), but instead substituting vague language that her new plan “just doesn’t work for her” (it doesn’t matter if saving money and getting better coverage doesn’t work for her, you still can’t fact check a subjective statement like that). However, the fact checkers at the Washington Post responded to the new ad by giving it three Pinocchios instead of two.

Republicans have been using the one-trick pony of attacking Obamacare in order to win elections. Now that strategy seems to be backfiring. What do they do now? Now that’s a true Obamacare horror story!

Indeed, business magazine Forbes ran an op/ed piece titled “The Real Numbers On ‘The Obamacare Effect’ are in – Now Let the Crow Eating Begin“, which points out that pretty much every attack Republicans have made against the ACA has turned out to be false.

Remember all the attacks claiming that Obamacare was a job killer, and that employers would be forced to reduce their workforce hours to less than 30 hours a week in order to avoid having to provide health insurance benefits to their employees? Well, the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the number of part-time employees in the US has actually fallen by 230,000 in the last year (the time during which Obamacare was implemented), while full-time employment went up by 2 million jobs. Ironically, the numbers would have been even better, except that the only sector where hours were reduced were government workers (such as cops, teachers, and prison guards) because cities, states, and universities had to cut expenses (why? because Republicans fought every attempt to raise government revenues).

Who’s the real job killer?

© Matt Bors

Just in case you don’t get it, this comic is making fun of CNN and their pitiful coverage of the missing flight in SE Asia. Or as New York magazine put it “CNN Gives Up, Wonders About Supernatural Conspiracy Theories for Flight 370 Disappearance“:

There’s only so much “breaking news.” After more than a week of wall-to-wall coverage on the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, much of it baseless speculation from vaguely defined experts, CNN today resorted to the most baseless of speculation from a certifiable non-expert about what “supernatural” or conspiratorial explanations there could be for the disappearance.

It must be tough to be a modern mainstream media journalist. You have to follow a tight script:

1. Browse innertubes looking for interesting stories; find one
2. Avoid any temptation to verify facts
3. Evaluate interest:
   • Does it involve a celebrity doing something stupid or raunchy? +10
   • Will it upset any politicians or christians? –10
   • Will it upset any corporations? –5 ; Any that advertise with us? –15
   • Will it increase ratings? +15
   • Is it actually newsworthy? +1
4. Find someone to interview about it, preferably someone who sounds controversial while not actually being controversial
5. Beat the story to death until nobody is interested anymore
6. Keep reporting on it anyway

And as long as everyone is piling on to CNN, we’ll let Jon Stewart have the hilarious last word: