The Babylon Bee, famous for publishing satirical articles on a wide variety of topics with 20 million monthly page views, has trained its sights on Apple CEO Tim Cook in an article headlined “‘We Cannot Be Associated With Elon Musk,’ Says Tim Cook While Shaking Hands With Brutal Chinese Dictator.”
Amid charges that Elon Musk’s social media app “X” has become a dangerous breeding ground for speech Communists don’t like, Apple CEO Tim Cook has elected to pull all Apple advertising from the platform.
“I refuse to allow my morally pristine corporation to be associated with disreputable characters like Elon Musk,” said Cook while shaking the hand of murderous communist dictator Xi Jinping at this week’s APEC Dinner…
Sources confirmed Cook had a lengthy discussion with the cruel tyrant who runs the slave state of Communist China, including how they can produce more iPhones with the same number of Uyghur slaves without too many of them dying. “At Apple, we are willing to make the hard, yet moral choices,” he said…
Mother Nature, the vengeful pagan god presiding over Apple’s climate change mitigation efforts, applauded the move. “I want fewer people on the planet,” she said. “And Elon Musk wants more people on the planet. He must be eliminated.”
Sources confirmed Cook has moved his advertising dollars over to Facebook, which is currently the preferred platform for organizing “Kill the Jews” rallies around the world…
MacDailyNews Take: Ouch (and we omitted the Epstein Island stuff).
This satirical article is painful, but predictable, as Cook put himself in this hypocritical position which he could have avoided simply by waiting a second instead of knee-jerkingly pulling advertising from X over a manufactured “controversy.” But, we already know that Cook would very much like to control what people are allowed to read, hear, and see, so perhaps he was just looking for any excuse to yank Apple’s ads from X.
True power is restraint. If words control you, that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass. – Warren Buffett
There exists a dichotomy that screams hypocrisy that is impossible to overlook:
Apple CEO Tim Cook, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ 2015 Ripple of Hope Award for “his lifelong commitment to human rights,” who subsequently took a place on the board Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights the following year, and winner of Newseum’s 2017 Free Expression Award in the Free Speech category, no less, also aids and abets China’s commitment to violating human rights with serial regularity.
Two phrases immediately spring to mind:
• Do as I say, not as I do.
• Talking the talk, but not walking the walk.Accepting awards, plaudits, and board positions for “free speech” and “human rights” while banning publications and protest apps are tough actions to reconcile due to their diametrically opposed nature.
For how long can Tim Cook, and by extension, Apple, get away with positioning themselves as the world’s white knight while kowtowing to every whim of the Chinese authoritarian socialist censors?
This is about leadership, or lack thereof.
Obviously, in recent days, this all seems to be coming to a head, but it’s been building for years.
• Apple removes Quartz news app from App Store in China over Hong Kong coverage – October 10, 2019
• Apple kowtows to China by censoring Taiwan flag emoji – October 7, 2019
• Apple Music censors songs in China that reference Tiananmen massacre, democracy – April 9, 2019
• Apple removes VPN apps from China App Store – July 29, 2017
• In bid to improve censorship, China to summon Apple execs to discuss stricter App Store oversight – April 20, 2017
• Apple removes New York Times apps from App Store in China at behest of Chinese government – January 4, 2017
China is critical for Apple in every way from sales to product assembly, so Apple continues to kowtow to China. With Apple’s strong stance – in other places of the world – on users’ rights and privacy, it’s a bad look for the company and a tough tightrope that Tim Cook is trying to walk. — MacDailyNews, July 29, 2017
See also:
• Elon Musk’s X CEO Yaccarino: Apple has only ‘temporarily paused’ ads due to ‘misleading and manipulated article’ – November 20, 2023
• Elon Musk to file ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ against Media Matters action which caused Apple, others to pull advertising from X – November 18, 2023
• Tim Cook firmly latched Apple onto China’s CCP teat. What’s his plan for weaning it off? – November 2, 2022
• Apple CEO Tim Cook signed secret $275+ billion deal with China in 2016 – December 7, 2021
• Tim Cook’s Apple is built in China; now it has to answer to the Chinese Communist Party – May 17, 2021
[UPDATE: Fixed “sights.” Thanks, Macaholic.]
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In real life, Tim Cook is a vindictive hypocrite who deserves this comeuppance, and much, much more.
There’s a word for that behavior, libturdiness.
A well deserved highlighting of Apple’s always bizzarre hypocrissy.
https://babylonbee.com/news/palestinian-authority-warns-that-gaza-hospitals-are-running-dangerously-low-on-ammunition
My favorite headline of that past week (although the Hunter Biden/ Disappointed by fake snow article is good too….)
Ever notice these pathological virtue signallers are always frauds?
Some people are incredibly naive. They somehow think that the ceo of a company, no matter how large, can influence the leader of another company. Apple and other foreign companies have exactly zero influence there.
Google made a big deal years ago of supposedly leaving China for this reason. What did that accomplish? Nothing! Just helped the rise of local Chinese companies who now control what the billions of people in Asia read and see. What little control they may have maintained is completely gone.
So sure, Cook can be the hero of a shall number of people here by not shaking his hand, but he’s too smart for that. Google had little to lose by leaving, while Apple has almost everything by being in the bad graces of the regime. Apple is moving things elsewhere, but they, as a manufacturing dependent company, can never leave China completely, while 20% of their sales are there.
On the other hand, they can do this in the USA. So you use your influence where you can. Thinking otherwise is childish and gullible.
In other words, take a “bold” stance when it’s convenient and ignore when it’s not.
Apple’s motto – “Be Evil”
“Stand with X to protect free speech”, unless it is bad press about Elon Musk or X. In that case it has to be prosecuted.
That thermonuclear lawsuit turned out to be a weak fart in the wind.
You win most ignorant take of the week.
Media Matters lied about X in an effort to drive away its advertisers.
Musk has the receipts. He know exactly what ads went where and how MM manipulated it to falsely portray it negatively.
Media Matters truly deserves to be shut down over its malicious fraud.
If this has anything to do with actual free speech, it is that MM is trying to shut it down.
Apple sucks!