There were a lot of reasons why Firefox’s CEO had to go. The obvious one, of course, is that the guy created JavaScript, which has never worked right cross-platform and routinely makes my life tougher. But that’s just on a personal level, and there are many more reasons.
One of Josh Marshall’s readers nailed it, though: this is simply an unacceptable look for a company in an industry that already has an image problem. Silicon Valley 2014 is basically Wall Street 1986 with more Asians and Indians: still overwhelmingly young, male, white, and churning up tons of money for no visible product or benefit. It’s turned into a shell game again, and the new Mike Judge series on HBO seems like it’s going to skewer this perfectly.
But there are other things, as I was discussing with a woman last Friday night who was uneasy about having this guy mau-mau’d in such a fashion, her happiness with her own marriage to her wife notwithstanding. And while I do appreciate the need to take the high road and show some understanding and tolerance of those who disagree with us, there are a couple of things that make me say “…nah.”
1) Had the guy been a CEO in Boston or New Orleans and revealed as a major donor to anti-Catholic organizations, or a CEO in Miami or San Diego and a major donor to a nativist “English-only” organization, he would almost certainly have gotten hounded out of office with a quickness. Even if your political beliefs are completely orthogonal to your business, it’s not a good idea to give offense to your local community. And given the stance of Google on Prop 8, and the extent to which Firefox still relies on money from Google, that was going to be an issue at some point at a time when Google really doesn’t need negative press.
2) In 1967, Loving v Virginia invalidated laws against interracial marriage. In 2000, Alabama voted to remove those laws from the state constitution – by a vote of 60% to 40%. And if you consider that a quarter of the electorate is black, and probably voted to throw it out, you’re left with a majority of white people thirty-three years later still voting to uphold unconstitutional statutes against miscegenation. Having grown up in the South and still waiting for enough people to die off so that it can move forward, I can only say that if the supporters of equal marriage don’t want to be fighting a rearguard action for the next six decades, the time to make Eich’s opinions publicly unacceptable is now. People have to know that this is no longer OK – sure, it happened fast, and there are some sincerely held religious beliefs, but I had ancestors who sincerely believed that God sanctioned chattel slavery of black people too. Believing doesn’t make it right.
Normally when something like this happens there’s an apology and a bunch of hemming and hawing. But for whatever reason, Eich stuck to his guns. And now he’s paid for it. Far too often, these sorts of things end in a muddled haze of postmodern equivocation and nothing happens in the end – somebody gets a charitable donation, somebody reads out a prepared statement, and it goes away in a week. Actions have consequences. Too much of the last decade and a half has been about a class of people who reach a level in life that they no longer face consequences for their actions. That needs to stop. The CEO of a high-tech non-profit is a good warning shot for the return of accountability for all, but it won’t do much good unless there are a few more shots fired.