Did I miss something about how Jobs was some great progressive leader??

[Logical]

I feel bad for his family and friends. But no more than any truck driver or plumber who died yesterday on the job.
This is the DU! Was Jobs some huge progressive or liberal supporter that I missed? Like Ted Kennedy or something?

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. +1 n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

15. I think you should try to cram more goofy red meat dog whistles into your posts.

you left out arugula, and 'effete elites'

[Odin2005]

24. Was what I posted false?

:eyes:

[Warren DeMontague]

29. Worse, it was gibberish and nonsense, & it makes you sound like you have issues.

people don't fit into neat little boxes, and oftentimes the only reason other people try to stuff them INTO those neat little boxes, is to make them easier to hate.

You're a smart guy, you should know better.

[Odin2005]

37. The people I mentioned in the deleted post are the types that support the DLC.

[Warren DeMontague]

41. "the types"

See, you're doing it again. Even if you COULD draw a statistical correlation between, say, usage of Apple products (Full disclosure: I have an ipod, but I'm a PC person) and, say, "suppport of the DLC" it would STILL be a silly generalization. As it is, I strongly doubt such a case could even be made.

The way I see it, you've got this cartoonish, cardboard cut-out person in your head:

yuppie, shops at whole foods, likes Apple, 'supports the DLC', probably drives a Lexus

something like that- and that's who you think you're doing battle with. It's in your head, not out in reality.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. I think a lot of people just like their iToys. n/t

[closeupready]

34. There it is, in a nutshell.

nt

[Warren DeMontague]

42. Here I am! I'm in a nutshell!

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TBF]

4. Political donations -

http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/Steve_Jobs.php

He donated to democrats.

[itsrobert]

5. 209K over 30 years for him is like me donating 2 cents to the Democrats

$1,000 Republican
$209,000 Democrat
$19,000 special interest
total: $229,000

Not very impressive at all for a man of his wealth.

[Logical]

6. Great point!

[Kablooie]

11. So you'd have respect for him if he were a liberal version the Kochs?

I wouldn't.

To manipulate politics with money on either side is a negative for me.

[TBF]

21. All I was responding to was the question about whether he was progressive.

He was obviously a democrat - I read somewhere that he advised the Kerry campaign.

FWIW, I found him an interesting person (mainly because he didn't grow up with money), but it's certainly a mixed bag. No one is going to compare him to Mother Teresa or anything like that. All of us in this country enjoy our comforts (at whatever level) at the expense of others worldwide (including pillaging of resources and oppression of labor). At his level he would've been a business leader directly contributing to those abuses for sure.

[Major Hogwash]

7. Evidently you did!!

He sure as hell wasn't a truck driver!

[HappyMe]

8. They are worried that there won't be any

more expensive toys. Part of the hipster thing. Skinny jeans, ironically drinking pbr & iToy.

[WCGreen]

18. DAmn, I was ahead of my time...

PBR was my drink of choice back in the 70's....

[HappyMe]

26. Me too.

:D

[SidDithers]

25. Wonder how many of the OWS hipsters are tweeting on their iPhones...nt

Sid

[Wait Wut]

31. That's what I was thinking.

But, then I realized, they're actually using old cameras and someone has setup a film development lab right there on site. It's a real bitch to get the 9mm videos out, though.

[Ikonoklast]

32. Did you see all the bitter whining over the Apple iPhone 4s not being the iPhone 5?

One guy wrote, "How will everyone else know that I am better than them now? The 4s is almost the same thing as a regular iPhone4 all the common people have."


Jobs was the most successful toy seller the planet has ever seen.

[HappyMe]

36. Wow!

:puke:

[Retrograde]

44. Everytime I go by the Apple store

I look at all that space they have in an expensive retail location and just marvel: what markups they must have! I'm not cool at all: I just have an iPhone3 - and a refurbished one at that. OTOH, it was cheap.

It's going to be interesting to see what Apple does without Jobs: I expect the cult-like atmosphere will continue for a year or so, but then? I'll have to walk by and see if the store is draped in black yet.

[geardaddy]

Agreed - I've got a comic for you.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/hammer_vs_hipster

[NYC Liberal]

9. But DU does mourn truck drivers and plumbers who die; all the time.

I've seen many, many threads posted over the years I've been on DU about such people with hundreds of replies.

If someone wants to post about a truck driver or plumber they know who died, I guarantee you DU will mourn them (and I will join).

By the way, Steve desperately tried to convince Al Gore to run in 2008. He said Gore was the guy to clean up Bush's mess.

[truedelphi]

45. And outside of that, some here at DU personally knew Jobs.

Can't say I did. But I knew people who knew him - back in the days when he and Wozniak were in their garage, needing opinions about the computer they were building.

I even know people now who are close to him. Certainly some of the Silicon Valley folks that come to DU know him.

Just because you are an iAppliance celebrity doesn't mean you don't have flesh and bones and the mortality that those items imply. And also, family and friends who will miss you.

RIP, Steve.

[phleshdef]

10. Does someone have to be a great progressive leader in order to be appreciated?

Not everything has to be born out of emotionally driven ideology you know.

[Ineeda]

12. I wonder how many of the 47K Apple 'employees'

are Americans working in America. I read that there are about 200K sweatshop employees in Asia.

[jeff47]

20. Almost all of them.

The sweatshop employees work for Apple's subcontractors.

And to be fair, Apple requires its subcontractors to treat their workers better than the sweatshop norm....as bad as that is.

[shireen]

13. we'll never know about most heroes because they live and die silently

We knew Steve Jobs because he was a public figure who made a big impact on many lives through the work he did at Apple. I admired him. I'm sad about his death.

Sometimes, DU'ers post about people they knew; I'm often touched by those posts, and feel sad for the loss of a remarkable human being from this Earth. Quiet heroes like the mom who sacrificed everything for her kids. There are so many stories out there, each one very special in its own right. Jobs was one one them. Everyone's posting about it because he was a high profile public figure.

[NYC Liberal]

19. Thank you. When DUers do post about those quiet heroes, they are very much

mourned here. Many such threads have hundreds of replies.

[Warren DeMontague]

16. Would you like him more if he had invented the 'ignore thread' function?

:shrug:

[pintobean]

17. Rec

[jeff47]

22. One doesn't have to be a great progressive leader to change the world for the better

Even if your computer isn't a Mac, it runs completely differently thanks to Apple & Jobs. A lot of technology left science fiction and became a consumer device thanks to Jobs. He built a lot of better mousetraps, which made everyone else in the industry build their own better mousetraps.

[Rex]

23. Cultist want to honor him like a techno-god.

Apple has a cult following, so no surprise here.

[SidDithers]

28. ...

Sid

[Rex]

39. Wrong that is true, sorry if you are ignorant to that fact.

PCs/Microsoft have no cultist, Apple does and I know a few of them.

Sorry if it hurt your little feelings.

[jeff47]

47. You're kidding, right?

Microsoft has their own army of fanboys. Just go over to Slashdot and you'll see them doing battle with the linux fanboys every day.

[n2doc]

27. We have lots of posts about Obama also. He's no great Progressive leader either

Your point?

[Major Hogwash]

30. What about the Dalai Lama?

Would he count?

[closeupready]

35. Jobs was a Buddhist, and so is the Dalai Lama; the difference is Jobs amassed a material fortune

in the $$B - the Dalai Lama lives in poverty.

[Major Hogwash]

38. Buddhists don't disparage anyone with material fortune.

So, the lesson has been lost on you.

[closeupready]

40. Get a clue. The Buddha was a prince who eschewed his own fortune.

:eyes:

[Major Hogwash]

43. Once again, Buddhists do NOT disparage anyone with material fortune.

Seriously.

[Warren DeMontague]

49. And your Western Monotheistic lens interprets that to mean "fortune"="sinful"

The Buddhist recognizes that the fortune is neither sinful nor the answer to life's central pressing problem; rather, that everything, from our relationships to our material possessions to our own bodies, is like a house on fire, or a wisp of sunlight briefly passing through the curtains of an open window.

To try to hold onto any of it, to imagine that we CAN hold onto any of it "for very long", as the song goes, is insanity. And a recipe for suffering, which IS life's central pressing problem.

It has jack diddly shit to do with "sin".

[closeupready]

50. That's nothing more than a psychological rationalization.

And not even a very opaque one.

[Warren DeMontague]

51. Okee Dokee.

Still, everything IS transitory. Like it, hate it, try to ignore it, you aint gonna change it.

Buddhism is about becoming aware of this, and if not eliminating one's attachments, at least realizing that they are ultimately futile.

People try to hold on to all sorts of things, not just money and stuff- dogma, their own Belief Systems, the need to be "right" or feel morally superior, all sorts of shit.

[closeupready]

33. K&R - no, he was't at all a progressive or liberal.

nt

[emulatorloo]

46. He was a liberal Democrat, and he got Al Gore on the Apple Board of Directors

During a very bad time for Gore. Apple was one of the first companies to extend benefits to same sex partners, etc etc

[Tx4obama]

48. He might have been a progressive, but he was NOT a humanitarian

SNIP

Last year the founder of the Stanford Social Innovation Review called Apple one of "America's Least Philanthropic Companies." Jobs had terminated all of Apple's long-standing corporate philanthropy programs within weeks after returning to Apple in 1997, citing the need to cut costs until profitability rebounded. But the programs have never been restored.

Unlike Bill Gates - the tech world's other towering figure - Jobs has not shown much inclination to hand over the reins of his company to create a different kind of personal legacy. While his wife is deeply involved in an array of charitable projects, Jobs' only serious foray into personal philanthropy was short-lived. In January 1987, after launching Next, he also, without fanfare or public notice, incorporated the Steven P. Jobs Foundation. "He was very interested in food and health issues and vegetarianism," recalls Mark Vermilion, the community affairs executive Jobs hired to run it. Vermilion persuaded Jobs to focus on "social entrepreneurship" instead. But the Jobs foundation never did much of anything, besides hiring famed graphic designer Paul Rand to design its logo. (Explains Vermilion: "He wanted a logo worthy of his expectations.") Jobs shut down the foundation after less than 15 months.

SNIP

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/index4.htm