Shut Up, They Explained (Part 2)

You have heard the jokes about the most common lies: "The check is in the mail", "We can still be friends" (I used to hear that one a lot) and  "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you".

We have to add another one: "We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public."

The above statement was made by Mitchell Baker, the executive Chairperson of the Mozilla Corporation after Brendan Eich was forced to resign as the CEO of Mozilla for giving a contribution to an anti Same-Sex marriage political group in 2008. It is important to note a Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, was anti Same-Sex marriage in 2008.

No, Ms Baker, you don't have a culture of openness and what happened to Eich does not "encourage" anyone to "share their beliefs and opinions in public".  If Ms Baker actually believes that it does, I have bridge in Brooklyn she might be interested in.

Speaking of that Senator from Illinois, what was The White House reaction to this?  A lot of whistling and staring up at the ceiling. Other than that, nothing from the man who in January of 2011 said, "But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -– at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do -– it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds."

It was a time we needed a Profile in Courage-a President standing up to an interest group that supports him and standing up for the Constitution that he is supposedly an expert in. But as typical for this administration, we got more Profile than Courage. He's got to crow about the great Affordable Care Act as if the volume will change people's minds.

By the way, Eich was not just your run-of-the-mill CEO hack. He was a co-founder of the Mozilla Corporation. They are makers of the Firefox web browser. How a person makes money off of a web browser is beyond me, but it makes a ton. Eich also invented something called Javascript, which makes him a big deal.

But, as we now realize, that stuff is not important. The kids at the cool table in the lunchroom (The Twitterverse) have decided that Same-Sex Marriage is okay and if you don't think that way, you're a combination of a Bull Connor/Adolph Hitler knuckle-dragging mouth breather that doesn't deserve a salary much less a seven figure one.

One of the things I noticed during my long college career was that the people who championed "open expression" and  "diversity of opinions"  were neither interested in open expression or diverse opinions. They claimed to want "a dialogue" but actually they wanted a "monologue". Guess who they wanted talking in the "monologue"? It wasn't you if you had any other opinion.

Here's the skinny: they don't care about your opinion. They got an argument to win and people to marginalize.

It is not all gloom and doom out there. Yitz Jordan, a developer at Quartz (a "digital" news outlet) and a gay global hip-hop artist, said,  "One does not simply let Pablo Picasso go from the art school faculty—Eich’s talent alone makes him indispensable."  Jordan goes on to say,  "Brendan Eich ... should not have his life’s work invalidated by bygone donations."

There was even encouraging common sense from The Daily Kos and from Bill Maher (!) that maybe this whacking of people with different views isn't the right way to make a point.

Lord knows what would happen if you respected somebody's opinion that disagrees with yours. You might actually see them as people. That would be terrible.

Hopefully, all of this blows up in Mozilla's face because they deserve it.