Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutterings takes a jaundiced eye to the pious declamations of corporate leaders against the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act:
Indiana: The Worst Place Ever?
It is if you listen to Apple CEO and billionaire, Tim Cook (scroll down).
Enacting a state-law religious freedom restoration act makes it a veritable hotbed of discrimination and such. According to him of the ironclad principles.
However, if you have an ounce of intellectual integrity, you’d ignore Tim Cook, given that he just opened the world’s largest Apple store in the United Arab Emirates last month.
That would be the same United Arab Emirates where you can be put on trial for “gay handshakes” and other through-the-looking-glass views of human rights.
So, think of that when pondering Cook’s admonition that “opposing discrimination takes courage.” When dollars are on the line, his courage is placed into some kind of medically-induced coma. Well, OK, to be fair–Apple also expanded into Saudi Arabia this year, too, so…
Oh, and speaking of corporate posturing–Angie’s List, too, is just so concerned about Indiana these days, alleging that it has to pass on the expansion of its headquarters in Hate Central.
Because Integrity.
Or is there just the outside chance it’s trying to posture for good publicity in the wake of major credibility problems posed by a lawsuit filed three weeks ago in Pennsylvania and the likelihood that public funding would not be approved? You decide!
Filed March 11 in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, the lawsuit alleges that Angie’s, an online consumer review service, manipulates company ratings that are sold to its subscribers as impartial user reviews. It does so, the lawsuit claims, by giving paid advertisers preferential treatment, such as boosting their visibility on the site and suppressing negative reviews.
Go here to read the rest. This week has summed up the truth of the adage of Horace Walpole: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.
I am contemplating emigrating out of NY to Indiana.
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As if they needed more on their (alleged) minds than preparing their gangs of agile, tall (mainly) black youngsters to win the next final-four game, four millionaire coaches of said mainly tall, black teams came out with a shameless statement that the protection of religion, Indiana law is discrimination. The lack of self-awareness is astonishing.
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Here is the plan. I will watch the games with a pad of paper and pen and even will sit through the far-too-many commercial times-out writing out a list of advertisers that I will boycott.
Horace Walpole: “The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel”. No, it is not a comedy, those who only think are wrong. Czeslaw Milosz, the only person to be both a Nobel Laureate and Righteous Among Gentiles, and a friend of St. John Paul II, is paraphrased as having observed that those who became dissidents against Communism were not necessarily those with the strongest minds, but rather those with the weakest stomachs; the mind can rationalize anything, he said, but the stomach can take only so much.
Did Tim Cook say he is closing all Apple stores in Indiana? Did he praise or condone the laws of the UAE? I don’t think he did. So where is the hypocrisy? It’s not unreasonable for people to hold the US to a higher and/or different standard than a Muslim dictatorship. If Tim Cook decided he was going to take a public stand against abortion, would this site call him a hypocrite until he closed every store and plant in any region that allowed abortion? By the standards of this article, any executive who publicly supports democracy and human rights but also does business in China is a hypocrite.
The media won’t report it.
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Indiana’s Memories Pizza has been closed due to threats and fake orders. But donations pour in via GoFundMe have gone over $100,000. Send them some of the money you didn’t give to the bishop.
T Shaw-
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If this move ever becomes a reality, please let me know and I can recommend areas of the state that would meet your preferences in occupation opportunities, amenities and population density. There is a generally good supply of strong Catholic parishes all around the state.
Tim Cook is a $%&&@#$ hypocrite. The open homosexualist Cook thinks nothing of doing business in nations with sharia law – nations that would put Cook to death for doing what Cook considers “natural” but he has the gall to castigate Indiana.
What was the comment Belloc made to the sacristan who told Belloc to stand? “Go to hell.” Seems apropo to me.
And so it seems Angie’s List has been, shall we say, “exposed”.
I wanna see the homosexualists go after Texas.
from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
“The media won’t report it.”
Except for CBS, ABC, Yahoo, TMZ, Salon.com, and I stopped counting.
As several folks have pointed out, this behavior makes sense if one believes that other countries are less than fully real.
If only the US is real, and Europe is slightly less real, then places like Saudi Arabia are a step less real, and finally the really bad places in the third world are the least real– it makes sense.
There’s some other levels of, to borrow a phrase, “more equal than others,” but it’s a useful predictive format.
(Example of the elaborations: describing Hillary Clinton as a nag is hateful to women, Bill Clinton abusing power for sexual favors from an employee is just fine, vicious attacks on Mrs. Palin are great and mass slaughter of infant girls for not being male is “choice.”)
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Sancho:
I went and checked CBS.
They have a clip about the pizza place now, but it does not do what you claim it does.
They state under the clip The restaurant faced backlash and massive criticism for denying service to same-sex weddings and was forced to close.
Actually, they closed due to threats of violence (including someone asking for volunteers to help burn the place down, a threat serious enough that the police got involved– the person asking for volinteers is/was a coach from a few towns over) when they, in response to being asked a hypothetical question, said that they would not cater a homosexual wedding.
[…] Ths The Perils of Political Propaganda: Mass Hysteria Over Indiana – Randall Smith PhD, PD Tim Cook’s Corporate Hypocrisy – Donald R. McClarey JD, The American Catholic Indiana’s RFRA Controversy: The Sexual […]
Has anyone considered the symbolism of a bitten apple being used as Apple’s logo? I seem to recall a certain event in Genesis chapter 3. Based on that, it is small wonder that Apple would act against the religious freedom freedom of Christians but for or in behalf of the adherents of the Muslim religion. This is the result of eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good evil – Apple gets to decide what is to be considered good and what is to be considered evil. With all their gadgets of technology they elevate themselves to godhead – that is the devil’s temptation: “God doesn’t want you to eat of the fruit lest you become like Him a god.”
http://www.edibleapple.com/2009/04/20/the-evolution-and-history-of-the-apple-logo/
The bite is so that people could tell it was an apple, not a tomato. Plus, bite, byte…that’s high nerd humor, there.
Trivia! The Fruit being symbolized by an apple was either a translation error, a pun, or because it has to look like something. (depends on who you ask)
Sancho,
Of course, they are using this flap to divert attention from real bad news.
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I missed all that, but saw where Salon aired a twit that the pizza joint was getting what it deserved: deat thrats and fake orders.
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Thanks for you being you!
Steve Miller of The Steve Miller Band fame said it best with the song title “Take the Money and Run”.
Good Sancho, rolling over for his corporate masters! Free spin–isn’t that *adorable*?
For those whose lips aren’t affixed to Apple’s sphincter: it is self-evident that a man who eagerly pants for business with medieval theocrats –and who evinces no qualms about bowing to regimes which would gleefully execute his gay a– if he were one of their subjects–is in no position to wave his elitist plutocratic finger at anyone about “discrimination.”
As the resident paleo-conservative , I feel like taking a victory lap. I’ve had numerous disagreements with those conservatives who support big business capitalism. I’ve been told repeatedly that I need to rally to the “makers” and “job creators” as if it is somehow my patriotic duty. All along I’ve insisted people read the social encyclicals of the Popes going back to Leo XIII who warned that business must be subordinated to the common good which includes not allowing porn, divorce, homosexuality, slave wages and all of the other social ills of modern society. I for one, have never welcomed our corporate overlords.
Has anyone considered doing the research to find out why the Apple logo is what it is and what its creators intended it to mean? The truth is out there. Take and read.
Steve Jobs got the idea on a visit to an apple farm while he was on a fruitarian kick.
All along I’ve insisted people read the social encyclicals of the Popes going back to Leo XIII who warned that business must be subordinated to the common good which includes not allowing porn, divorce, homosexuality, slave wages and all of the other social ills of modern society.
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Regarding the first three, take your complaints to a libertarian site. As for the last, the notion of ‘slave’ wages is close to a nonsense concept in a free labor system.
Please note that Tim Cook has no issues manufacturing his overpriced toys in the anti-gay country of China. The US Dept of State cannot even send same sex couples to official posts in China yet Tim has no issues investing billions of dollars in infrastructure. Progressives rarely walk the talk, its all smoke and mirrors to confuse and hide the truth.
“Did Tim Cook say he is closing all Apple stores in Indiana? Did he praise or condone the laws of the UAE? I don’t think he did. So where is the hypocrisy? It’s not unreasonable for people to hold the US to a higher and/or different standard than a Muslim dictatorship.”
This is one of the stupidest attempts at reasoning that I have seen in a while. Killing gay people is a religious belief in those Muslim countries mentioned above–one that is allowed, encouraged, supported, and practiced on a regular basis in those lands.
In case you can’t reason this out for yourself, Sancho, there is a BIG difference between having to go across the street and ask someone, without religious convictions against gay marriage, to bake you a cake is not anything like being murdered.
Also, the US does have a higher standard. We don’t murder LGBT folks as a society or as part of our legal system. Nor do we think they should be mistreated because of their chosen life styles.
The civil society in this nation has always made allowances for people’s religious belief. Sancho, why should that stop? Why should someone be forced to take their own private belongings/resources and be made by the gov’t to participate in something that is against their conscience? Hmmmm??? Now give me your reasoing for that instead of throwing around comparisons that are meaningless, please.
If what I heard on the news this morning is correct, the so called “religious protection” law that Indiana has now requires people to violate their conscience if a gay couple asks them to bake a cake (or whatever) and they don’t agree with it.
Good job Barbara Gordon! Also, I cancelled my Angie’s List subscription today. Just a small token of my appreciation for Angie’s political stunt that is an attempt to “play it safe”. I feel a little better.