Selective intolerance

[muckefuck]

So for days I've been mulling a rant in response to this open letter chastising those who called for the resignation of Brendan Eich and warning of the dire consequences of this kind of "intolerance". (I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty sick of being called "intolerant" for not particularly caring that an anti-gay millionaire lost his job for badly handling his first PR crisis as CEO.) Now, thanks to Donald Sterling, I don't have to.

I do wonder if I'm guilty of a false equivalence here, but to the degree the cases aren't comparable, I think they actually favour Sterling. After all, his remarks were private and involved only private affairs (i.e. who his girlfriend should associate with). Eich's donation was public and had the political aim of depriving others of their civil rights (unconstitutionally, as it turns out). David Badash spells it all out pretty clearly I think. Perhaps I'm missing something, though, so I'm hoping one of the signatories comes forward to take and defend a stand on Sterling so I can pick through their justification.

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

That's probably true. (And more so for Mozilla, which is a corporation owned by a non-profit foundation complete with manifesto.) But the fact that corporations have played their part in sowing the wind doesn't make me favor the whirlwind.

And it seems they should at least be judged on the basis of what ground they've actually chosen to stake out. Google, of course, has its nigh-universalizing "Don't be evil" motto, which would cover just about anything. IIRC, some of Apple's claims range nearly as far. But Mozilla's mission seems to be defined specifically around the Internet as an open and public resource, rather than broader social issues.