Reuters blogger: Don’t Ignore Tim Cook’s sexuality

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Apple's new boss will sit opposite Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg a D10 next month.
Apple's new boss will sit opposite Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg a D10 next month.

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon wrote a provocative post about Tim Cook and his personal life.

“Tim Cook now the most powerful gay man in the world. This is newsworthy, no? But you won’t find it reported in any legacy/mainstream outlet.”

 

 

Salmon’s post is over the 800-word mark and is well worth a read but to sum it up:

Cook is heading up one of the world’s most important companies, he’s a “boring systems-and-processes guy” who ” cuts sharply against stereotype” and the times are now such that it’s “incumbent upon a public-company CEO not to be in the closet.”

The institution of the closet is one of fear — one where people would rather be ignored than noticed, because they fear the negative repercussions of being known to be gay. It’s an institution which Cook, like any gay man born in 1960, knows at first hand. But now the risk of being ignored is bigger in the other direction: if the world can’t see gay men and women in all their true diversity, if the only homosexuals they know of are the flamboyant ones on TV, then that only serves to perpetuate stereotypes.

Is this a question of  a media code of silence or does Cook’s private life just not matter?

Via Reuters

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