Apple CEO Tim Cook Gives Remarkable Speech on Gay Rights, Racism
Notoriously private executive spoke of personal discrimination
"Tim Cook, Apple’s media-shy chief executive, made a rare public
speech at the U.N. this week. Auburn University, Cook’s alma mater,
posted his 13-minute talk on Saturday.
Cook made his comments after receiving an achievement award from the
university. He talked of personally witnessing a cross burning during
his youth, an event that “changed his life forever,” and went on to say,
“Since these early days, I have seen and have experienced many types of
discrimination and all of them were rooted in the fear of people that
were different than the majority.”
Cook, 53, continued by describing the values he says he found in
Apple and its founder Steve Jobs when he joined the company in the late
1990s. These include creating products accessible to the disabled and,
later, backing national nondiscrimination legislation.
Cook went on to talk of gay rights, saying, “Now is the time to write
these basic principles of human dignity into the book of law.” He also
backed an immigration overhaul, adding of proposed reforms, “Do not do
them because they are economically sound — although they are — do them
because they are right and just.”
The statements are remarkable for the notoriously private Cook
because they strongly imply personal experience with discrimination. In
2013,
Out Magazine named Cook the
most powerful LGBT person in the world.
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RIP JOAN FONTAINE--BEAUTIFUL LEGEND:
Hollywood stalwart
Joan Fontaine, best known for her roles in director
Alfred Hitchcock's 1939
Rebecca and her Best Actress Oscar-winning role in his 1940 film
Suspicion, died Sunday at her northern California home, according to several reports. She was 96.
Details of her death were not immediately available.
In addition to playing a mousey spouse in both the Hitchcock films, first alongside Laurence Olivier and then to
Cary Grant, Fontaine's other well-known movies included 1943's
The Constant Nymph, which got her a third Oscar nomination, 1944's
Jane Eyre with Orson Welles, 1952's
Ivanhoe with Robert Taylor, and 1957's controversial
Island in the Sun with Harry Belafonte.
I also remember her as the meek socialite in "THE WOMEN".
Her final role was in a 1994 TV movie.
