After being lured to Apple and then promptly fired after an employee-driven petition over passages from his 2016 book Chaos Monkeys, Antonio Garcia Martinez commented briefly on the situation in an online chat.
Mikey Campbell for AppleInsider:
In a Twitter Spaces chat with tech journalists Kara Swisher and Casey Newton, Garcia Martinez characterized his axing as a “snap decision” on the part of Apple management. Citing a strict non-disclosure agreement, he offered no additional information regarding the move and claims to have been in the dark about the petition prior to a news blitz.
Garcia Martinez said the sentence was taken out of context, an explanation he gave Swisher when interviewed shortly after his book was published five years ago. Elaborating on the line on Thursday, the ad specialist and author said it was meant to cap off a joke made about his then-girlfriend.
The book was written in an over-the-top style invoking Hunter S. Thompson, Garcia Martinez explained, adding that the section in question was, in fact, a “paean” of praise about the unnamed woman… “In retrospect, I would not have written it that way,” Garcia Martinez said.
When pushed on the subject, he said, “Why shouldn’t Dr. Dre’s lyrics be different?”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s weak leadership shrank like violets from a vocal minority, defaming Garcia Martinez in the process.
They should try to grow a backbone for the next time this inevitably happens, given their bad choices in select current employees.
Antonio Garcia Martinez should be compensated for Apple’s ill-taken knee-jerk reaction to an inane petition.