Reminds me when Tim Cook came out as gay conveniently as all the investigations about Apple’s tax dodging were ramping up and rich successful gay white men in the media (*cough Chris Hughes cough) literally shut down stories on Apple’s tax dodging because of some bullshit malarkey about how it was attacking Tim Cook. I remember a bunch of bullshit about Tim Cook being “brave.”

Yeah, a rich white guy in charge of one of the world’s richest companies who definitely has his own private security, that’s real fucking brave. What a joke. Actual bravery is a gay kid in the deep South coming out in their 500 person hometown.

Shit, I knew a white kid from a town like that in Louisiana, and he wasn’t gay, just atheist, and some kids on the football team found out and beat the living shit out of him. His mom told him he asked for it for his beliefs. He filed for emancipation, applied for college, went to college at 16 and started double-majoring in molecular biology and botany. I hope he’s doing well.

Source for my Chris Hughes claim:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170308174919/https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic

Hughes’s eroding relationship with the staff took on an ideological edge. On the morning that Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, announced that he was gay, MacGillis wrote a note to “the Plank,” T.N.R.’s internal e-mail listserv for writers and editors. “I see the celebration of his announcement, while entirely justifiable, as another sign of what’s happened to liberalism today, where rights/identity liberalism trumps economic liberalism,” he wrote. “This is, after all, a guy who embodies so much of what’s amiss in the age of inequality—pulling down $378 million in 2011 alone; Apple skirting taxes more brazenly than anyone else—yet those revelations have caused barely a stir.”

Hughes responded to the note six minutes later: “I think those are valid issues, although Apple has acted squarely within the law,” he wrote. “The law itself is fucked up. But I don’t think you can underestimate the difficulty of his decision or how tone deaf that argument would be today.”

The other editorial employees on the list were surprised by the response. It was an internal listserv for writers and editors, and the staffers didn’t realize that Hughes, who had relinquished his title as editor-in-chief when he installed Vidra, was on it. MacGillis responded by saying that he would hold off on writing, but added, “Just for the record, though, it is not so clear that Apple acted squarely within the law. The law’s a mess, but Apple pushed the bounds of it more than anyone.” He pasted text from a piece in the Times that questioned some of Apple’s practices.

“I’m confused,” Hughes wrote back. “Has anyone, including this article, said what they did was illegal? Companies have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize shareholder value, including through strategic tax planning.”