The Cult of Steve

Among all the fairy tales, of which I read hundreds to my sons when they were young, my very favorite remains "The Emperor's New Clothes". For, try as I might to grow as a human being, to understand the amazingly convoluted logic of social reality, I am continually struck on every side by the assertion of a plethora of emperors who claim to be wearing beautiful clothes, when I can see none whatsoever. Like many technical people, I am a creature of logic, spending most of my days interacting with machines which will not be cajoled by fine words, no matter how hard I try. If I tell the computer to print 10,000 times (yes, I did that inadvertently on day one of a new job once—oops!) it will in fact print 10,000 times without any consideration of my feeling its pain or anybody else's, or of my having chummed it up in front of the cameras in its home district.

Thus, when I am repeatedly assured that married men in powerful positions taking advantage of their young female employees for sexual favors is "exploiting" them in a "sexist" way known as "sexual harassment", and that dire consequences should properly follow, I am inclined to believe that when I see an example of a married President exploiting his dim-bulb intern for sexual favors that this constitutes "sexual harassment" and that dire consequences should follow. But I am assured that this is not the case by the socially savvier people among whom I live. They have explained to me that in fact in this particular case it was a good thing, not a bad one, because said President supported women's rights and was in fact the country's first woman President. Though said President appears very male to me, there is clearly a logic operating which is far above my limited abilities to discern or calculate.

What's a social simpleton to do? I just have to take their word for it....

...I remember well how, in 1998 and 1999 all of my Democratic friends assured me that only Puritanical Republicans who were still stuck in the Nineteenth Century would ever have a problem with such behavior. One could fairly have written that "Democrats exonerate Democrats" in order to summarize the whole experience.

Similarly, when it has been explained to me carefully by my social betters that it is morally wrong and actually illegal for company CEOs to play financial shenanigans, creating fictitious entries in the accounts in order to enrich themselves and their millionaire cronies at the expense of "widow and orphan" shareholders, an example of moral turpitude so dire that as in the case of Enron and Worldcom it requires not only restitution but actual jail time lasting many years, I am inclined to agree.

What do I know? Looks wrong to me, and I just have to take their word for it.

So it is with a sense of deja vu that when I learn that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been performing illegal acts within his financial reporting, creating fictitious and illegal entries, this time in the form of backdated options which net millions of extra dollars for him and his millionaire cronies at the expense of "widow and orphan" shareholders, I am inclined to believe that he deserves jail time, running to many years. That just shows what a simpleton I am. I noticed a few weeks ago that there were several articles running through the tech blogs which exhibited some fear on the Jobs news. Apple is their darling. Apple, like Bill Clinton, can do no wrong. Yet here was their hero quite evidently and publically defrauding his own investors. But then Apple came out with a statement that everything was fine, nothing to see here, move along folks, and as The Register put it "Apple Exonerates Apple". At that point, all was sweetness and light once more in tech-land. The fearful articles quickly disappeared, to be quickly replaced with paeans to the iPhone iTouch Mobile. Once again it has been made painfully clear to me what a simpleton I am. It's obvious, isn't it? Repeat after me: Oil Companies Baaaaad, Apple Goooooood.

Similarly, when I read that Apple is bullying bloggers, trying apparently to stop word of Jobs's shenanigans from getting out, I the social simpleton am inclined to think that this is morally wrong; yet I realize that unlike in the case of that evil Microsoft, there is probably a higher logic which, though I am completely incapable of understanding it, makes Apple's actions morally acceptable, or even superior. Likewise, Apple's new attempts with the iTouch Mobile to ensure massive vendor lock-in must be wonderful in a way impossible for people on my lowly level to comprehend. Repeat after me: Microsoft baaaaaad, Apple gooooood.

Silly me.