Mozilla CEO Resignation Raises Free-Speech Issues

by JASmius

Well, not exactly.  Yes, it raises speech issues, but it ought to be obvious as the nose on my face that free speech is a thing of the distant, ancient past, depending on what it is that you wish to say:

The resignation of Mozilla's CEO amid outrage that he supported an anti-gay marriage campaign....

Stop the tape.  Not even a full sentence into the lede and the first tell-tale sign of semantical deck-stacking already appears.  No, Assholiated Press, it was not "an anti-gay marriage campaign," it was a defense of true, traditional marriage by opposing the police power of the state being used to force everybody to recognize and accept, to describe it in corporate terms, a hostile, debased takeover.

....is prompting concerns about how Silicon Valley's strongly liberal culture might quash the very openness that is at the region's foundation.

"Might"?  What "openness"?  Any "strongly liberal culture" will and does inevitably produce fascist levels of "closedness" and vicious intolerance in short order because it is based on an assumed foundation of atheism coupled with moral supremacy.  That's the key difference between a "strongly liberal culture" and a, you know, culture -  and especially a Judeo-Christian one: Yes, we are given the ultimate moral code, but it comes with a humility that recognizes that nobody is capable of keeping it, and consequently we need self-indwelling divine forgiveness and assistance.

Nothing takes the edge off viciousness like the daily reminder of one's own fallibility.  If SiliconValley-ians had that app, this fellow might still have a job today:

Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich stepped down Thursday as CEO, just days after his appointment. He left the nonprofit maker of the Firefox browser after furious attacks, largely on Twitter, over his $1,000 contribution to support of a now-overturned 2008 gay-marriage ban in California.

This raises the other issue of why Eich didn't either ignore this Twit-storm or issue a public statement politely and diplomatically telling his tormenters what to go do with themselves.

There's an exchange from the upcoming X-Men: Days Of Future Past movie in which the young Charles Xavier reproachfully accuses the young Erik Lensherr of taking from him everything he ever held dear.  Lensherr doesn't hang his head in shame or contrition, nor does he seek Xavier's forgiveness; glaring right back at him, the man known as Magneto retorts, "Then you should have fought harder for them!" (Mr. Gibbs will appreciate that line)

To wit: Why didn't Eich - who co-founded Mozilla, after all, so it was, in fact, not him getting bleep-canned but rather his company being ripped away from him - fight for his position against the lynch mob trying to not-so-figuratively drag him out of town and throw him off a cliff?  Did he forget where he lived and worked?  Taking a stand for true, traditional marriage is like being a missionary in the cannibals' village; sooner or later they're going to eat you.  Unless you want to cut straight to martyrdom, you've got to at least cause them to have to stock up on anti-acids.

Implicit in the notion of "standing up to The Man" and "speaking the truth to power" is that (1) "The Man" won't immediately cut and run like a mewling quim and (2) the truth be spoken.  Since Eich had the truth on his side, why did he flee so easily?  Blackmail?  Death threats?  Hostile work environment?  It isn't how Tony Stark would have handled it.

"There was no interest in creating an Internet lynch mob," OkCupid co-founder Sam Yagun, whose dating service site was among those engaged in online protest, said Friday. "I am opposed to that with very bone in my body."

Bull.  Bleep.  Bull-bleeping-bleep.  That is exactly what came after Brendan Eich, you meant to do it, you knew you were doing it, and you're still celebrating it.  He violated your inviolable groupthink and for that unforgivable sin, he had to be destroyed.  You, Mr. Yagun, do not oppose that any more than you oppose breathing, or you wouldn't have been party to it.

But, again, listen to that phony-baloney, plastic banana, good-time-rock n' roll piety.  His erstwhile "friends" and "colleagues" have torn Brendan Eich limb from limb and messily devoured his entrails like a zombie horde for transgressing the biggest tribal taboo - Thou shalt not fail to bow down and worship the Golden Cornhole - and now that the deed is done, back they morph into little angels of light, astonishedly wondering how anybody could see what they did as anything other than what it wasn't.  What would you call driving a man out of his own company over a cultural difference of opinion, Sam?  "Tough love"?  And what would your reaction be in Eich's shoes and in the mirror opposite circumstances?  Do we even have to ask?

But Eich's abrupt departure has stirred the debate over the fairness of forcing out a highly qualified technology executive over his personal views and a single campaign contribution six years ago. And it raises questions about how far corporate leaders are allowed to go in expressing their political views.

What "questions"?  Seems pretty clear to me: corporate leaders are as free as the wind to express their political and cultural views....as long as they're the "right" views.  Otherwise, shut the bleep up.

In retrospect, however, Yagun said he wished he had framed the Firefox boycott in a slightly different light....

Stop the tape.  Bleep you, Yagun.  Ditto the rest of your lib lynch mob.  With big, rubber bleeps.  With thumbtacks and razor blades attached.  How about you try owning what you did to Brendan Eich instead of trying to reconcile it to your own conceited "deified" self-image?  A bubble that is in desperate need of popping.

Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker touched on the delicate balancing act in her Thursday blog post announcing Eich's resignation.

"Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech," Baker said. "Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard."

My advice to Yagun applies just as much to you, "Ms." Baker.

While a handful of workers at top tech firms including Apple, Yahoo and Google supported the gay-marriage ban, the vast majority gave money to oppose it.

Well, I guess their asses should have been pink-slipped with hellfire missiles, shouldn't they?  After, wouldn't true "fairness" demand it?

Funny how Mr. Eich didn't do so.  I guess we know the wages of gracious restraint, when distributed on yet another one-way street.