Does being woke lead to canceling?

Matt Taibbi and Casey Newton have VERY different takes on Apple firing Antonio Garcia-Martinez; I'm inclined to think that Taibbi got it right...

What fun today!

First I read Matt Taibbi’s rant (and I do love a good rant!) about Apple firing Antonio Garcia-Martinez, author of the book Chaos Monkeys. I hadn’t read it, but I bought it instantly, and it’s next in line.

Then I read Casey Newton’s rant on the same topic, which could not come to a more-different conclusion. In theory, these are two respected journalists who have gone out on their own, writing newsletters on Substack (the very same service from which you are reading this, except I’m not asking anyone to pay for what I write.)

These guys should meet in a boxing ring! The topic is whether a guy who wrote a book was such a mysoginist, based on what he wrote in the book, that he should not be allowed to work for Apple, where he had worked previously and where he was recruited to return by the company. Apple decided to fire him, without any “due process”, purely based on a petition from Apple employees, who expressed concern for their personal safety based on that part of the book that Garcia-Martinez wrote.

Sample of what Garcia-Martinez wrote (and remember that I haven’t actually read the book yet): “Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.”

On the facts, which I tried to stick to (but you can tell where I land), the two writers agree. But Taibbi rails against Wokeness and Cancel Culture and Newton praises Apple for acting quickly and being sensitive to its employees.

Oh, come on! I’m a writer, professionally for 20 years. You would not believe the shit I wrote! (Fortunately, you can’t track it down since I wrote most of it before the internet existed.) All I want to do now is work with and get to know Antonio Garcia-Martinez. Hey, @antoniogm: Have you ever considered being in the VC business? It’s a much better follow than going back to work for Some Big Company!

By the way, I am not a Woke Person; I made this bumper sticker to celebrate that fact!