Who's Persecuting You?

Originally posted on The View Point - 8/1/2012

By Bill Holmes

One of the latest examples of much ado about nothing is the Chick-fil-A vs gay marriage controversy.  It is an example of how every group feels that they are being persecuted or discriminated against.  It also shows that people really don't look at the full story or let facts get in the way of their reactions.  Knee jerk and immediate inappropriate response is the norm and gets all the media attention.

The controversy started when Dan Cathy, president of Chick-fil-A, madecomments about what a “traditional” family is.  His contention is that marriage can only be between one man and one woman (actual biological male and female).  That's probably not the smartest marketing strategy for the head of a company that has stores everywhere and all kinds of diverse customers but it is his right.  Chick-fil-A has always had a religious bent and is not open on Sunday's because of that.

The initial knee jerk reaction came from the gay community.  Outrage and calls for boycotting the chain were all over the news and Internet.  OK, that's their right.  Then came the reaction to the reaction.  Christians Fundamentalists called for support of Chick-fil-A and urged people to patronize the stores.  That's OK too.

Then the politicians chimed in.  Chicago and Boston mayors spoke out against the chain even to the point of threatening to deny approval for new stores.  On the flip side the conservative politicians supported the chain and encouraged everybody to buy chicken sandwiches.  My opinion, that is not OK.  Elected politicians do not get to threaten people or companies for expressing an opinion.  They can disagree but not wield power or threats

An opinion?  The remarks by Dan Cathy appear to be just that.  So far there is no evidence that Chick-fil-A is refusing to sell a sandwich to gays or discriminating in their hiring.  If discrimination were to be proven then the righteous indignation can begin.  The anti-gay comments put the spotlight on Chick-fil-A and I would expect discrimination complaints to surface if for no other reason than publicity.  If they arise then the allegations should be investigated.  Let's allow any investigations to proceed without all the rhetoric too.

So, pick your side, there is no right or wrong as long as it's just your opinion and belief.  Just don't discriminate on either side.  If gay marriage is against your religious or moral beliefs you have the right to speak your mind and be true to those beliefs.  If you are gay or support gay rights you have the right to say so and buy your chicken sandwiches at KFC or Church's.

What got me started on this story was the chatter on the Internet about how each side was discriminated against by by the media, the government and/or social sites.  Is it possible that both sides can be persecuted  by everyone?  The fact is that almost every group has been persecuted and discriminated against somewhere or at some time.  The Egyptians and Nazis oppressed the Jews.  The Romans and lions killed Christians.  The KKK hung Blacks.  Men controlled women.  The straight ridiculed the gays.  The Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Italians, Germans, Irish, Asians, Blacks and Latinos have all had to fight through persecution over the years.  Now that we have eliminated or at least reduced most of that persecution we are left with a fight between a guy who sells chicken sandwiches and the gay community.

In this situation I was amazed that the Christian community felt discriminated against.  Sure some news outlets and posturing politicians may side with the gays and condemn Cathy and Chick-fil-A but many others side with the conservatives and Fundamentalist Christians and some remain neutral.  I can agree that the gay community has been and is discriminated against in general but not in this case.  I also find it near impossible for the Protestant Christian community to feel persecuted in this country.  They may be the only group never persecuted since this country was settled by Europeans.  They have always been and remain the majority.  For the WASPs of our country that will change in a few years.  It may be prudent to back off the intolerance of some minority groups before you become one. 

I guess it's human nature that if we hear or see one thing opposed to our beliefs we extrapolate that into everyone against us.  We seem to thrive when perceived as the oppressed or underdog. Coaches, leaders and politicians have use this knowledge for centuries.  If you are a liberal and watch Fox News or a conservative and watch MSNBC you will be offended.  If you watch CNN, ABC, CBS or NBC news you can pick your side. They are either for or against you and you will mostly remember the news stories or commentary opposed to your  viewpoint.  If you want to ignore the other side of the argument you can find a media outlet or web site that exactly matches your views. Comforting but not very enlightening. 

I was also interested because I go back to the beginnings of Chick-fil-A.  Back in the late 1960's and earl 70's I was working night shift in Atlanta.  One of the few places open all night was the Dwarf House in Hapeville by the Atlanta airport.  They actually had a small door (maybe 3 feet) that kids could use.  They had a regular size door too for full size people.  I was able to use either.  The Dwarf House was more like an IHOP or Denny's where you could get breakfast, lunch or dinner.  They had takeout, counter service, tables and booths.  It was always full of airport workers when we went for lunch around 2 or 3 in the morning.   I remember the food being good but when it's 2 am and you're 22 years old the gourmet genes are not exactly active.  They did have chicken sandwiches like the fast food Chick-fil-A's serve now and were just starting the fast food stores.  Apparently they did better than I did over the last 40 years.  The same family owned the company back then so I guess they were closed on Sundays although I don't know.  I didn't usually work on Saturday or Sunday nights.  I assume that they were opposed to gay marriage then or at least would have been had they known about it.  I also don't remember if they discriminated against Blacks.  That was the minority just making their way into society in the 60's. 

To give you an idea of how perceptions and what is acceptable has changed over time just think of the names we used to call certain groups of people even just a few years ago.  Our parents or grandparents had slur names for every different ethnicity and those terms were used in normal conversation.  African-American or Gay were not in our vocabulary.  Mentally and physically challenged people were ridiculed and/or hidden away.  Before that we had slaves in this country and women couldn't own property or vote.  Thankfully we have evolved.  To be honest, I think the original Chick-fil-A restaurant name, Dwarf House, is no longer politically correct although it is still in business.

So the latest flak is because a chicken sandwich salesman said he doesn't support gay marriage. Hopefully like all the discrimination and prejudices we've seen in the past, this too will pass.  We now look back and wonder how could mankind support or at least allow slavery, persecution or discrimination of a certain group.  Perhaps our children will look back at controversies between gays and chicken sandwich vendors and wonder what was the big deal.

As I've said before, we all have the right to our opinions and beliefs.  We also have the right to champion those beliefs.  Support or boycott Chick-fil-A, but let's keep the self-serving politicians out of it.  A little thicker skin might help too.  Every comment should not create either a knee-jerk reaction or media storm.

wjh

iPhone 5

by Bill Holmes

So, the iPhone 5 (actually 6 or is it really 3) is out and the reviews are all over the place.  Weed out the Apple flunkies and the Apple haters and most reviews seem to say it's what was rumored and expected.  An incremental upgrade but no real "WOW" feature or innovation.  I fully expect the iPhone 5 to be a roaring success.  I do wonder if Apple waits a full year to come out with the iPhone 6 (or 5S) will the buzz still be there?  By then Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG, Nokia and even RIM and others will have introduced dozens of new phones.  Not only that, there will be new OS's. Windows 8, a new RIM OS and probably at least an Android upgrade to 4.2 or maybe a full release to 5.0.  What new features will those phones and OS's bring us?

I'm not an Apple hater or a fan.  They make some good stuff and have brought change to our technology landscape for many years.  Not as much as they would like us to believe and often more marketing than technology but change nevertheless.  For that I an thankful.  I've used and implemented and integrated Macs into corporate environments.  Sometimes that wasn't easy.  At one point they were years ahead of Windows PC's in graphic capabilities.  I worked at a company that had many graphic artists and they loved their Macs.  I am opposed to their big brother approach to their products.  A closed, mostly proprietary, expensive approach to hardware and software.  How many non-Apple hardware products run OS X or iOS?  How many Apple hardware products run some thing other than OS X or iOS?  No fair if you have an Apple Lisa still running although that was an Apple OS also.  I am also diametrically opposed to the petty and ridiculous patent suits that Apple has spawned onto our courts.  Patent laws and the need to reform them is fodder for a separate blog.

Apple got a big head start with their iPhones and iPads.  I give them credit for kick-starting the smart phone, table and touchscreen markets.  I don't pretend to know whether it was brilliant marketing on Steve Jobs part or being in the right place with the right product at the right time.  Probably both.  Apple even came up with some of the technology that pushed the demand.  Timing is often everything, as I've mentioned before, we knew how to do touchscreen, voice recognition, GUI, WiFi and even mobile phones all the way back to the 60's and early 70's (that's 1960's).  We just didn't have the hardware and networks available to make it practical.  It's hard to think about a viable tablet computer when the only computers available filled a large environmentally controlled room.  Even the room sized computer had memory measured in kB and disk storage measured in MB (if it even had disks).   A fast network, point to point and all hard wired, was 1200 baud (kinda bps) not Mbps or even Gbps we have now.  Whatever device you are viewing this blog on has more computing power and memory than the first data centers I worked in.  Probably more storage too, positively if you use cloud storage.  Those physically huge but computing & storage challenged systems ran all the processing for big companies.  So you see even visionaries almost as smart as Steve Jobs couldn't have brought a viable iPhone or iPad to market much before the mid 2000 decade.  Some tablets were around prior to the iPad all had technical and/or price and/or marketing problems.  Apple gets credit for getting the category going. 

Here we are about five years after the first iPhone and almost three years after the first iPad.  Smartphones and tablets are now mainstream with a large user base.  That means competition.  The original iGadgets were on the front edge of the technology available to consumers and were new ideas about how to use that technology.  Now we have dozens of companies in the marketplace, each trying to grab a piece of a multi-billion dollar market.  There is no way that Apple can stay several furlongs ahead of all the competition in these categories of consumer electronics.  Sure, they can win a battle or two and even leap ahead for a few months.  They can even stave off the competition for awhile by suing them for using a rectangular container to package their product.  Remember when IBM PC's (made by IBM) were the standard, remember when Motorola and Nokia were the cellphone kings, remember when Blackberry (RIM) revolutionized the cellphone market, remember when...  

In my over 40 years of experience in the computer/technology industry every proprietary and closed hardware/software architecture has eventually failed.  Even with superior technology the companies get greedy and the costs of their products become non-competitive.  Sound familiar?  The other scenario is that the industry passes a company.  Some companies can't afford all the R&D and some skimp on it to wring out extra short-term profits.  Sometimes a punk college kid comes up with a better idea nobody at the big corporation thought of.  Sometimes it's just marketing blunders.  IBM ruled the roost for business computing for decades starting with punch cards and tabulating machines.  They had the best equipment, software and support for years but it was expensive and when bits & bites became kB's and MB's became GB's & TB's they lost their edge.  Computing became a commodity and companies were willing to buy cheaper non-proprietary equipment with less service and support built in.  There are many more examples.  IBM is still a vibrant company but it is nowhere near the same company it was 15 or 20 years ago.  It's now a service company that runs IT operations and networks.  It still sells systems but they are now UNIX, Linux and Windows servers.  Not much proprietary architecture.  Same stuff HP, Sun/Oracle, Dell and even Cisco sells.  Oh yea, HP & Sun sold proprietary systems for years too as did Univac, NCR, Burroughs and DEC. 

So my point is that Apple and their i-Universe is now sitting on top of the world raking in the profits with over-priced and over-hyped products.  Android phones and tablets have already caught and often surpassed i-Stuff.  Windows 8 and hardware hit the market in a month.  Even RIM and new Blackberry stuff is coming.  Remember too that some really geeky kids are sitting in dorm rooms and basements all around the world thinking up, building and programming new stuff 24/7.

The iPhone 5 will sell millions on hype and coolness (is that a word? cause I'm not).  Better and cheaper phones are out there.  To paraphrase a Texas saying the iPhone 5 is "All hat and very little cattle". 

How will that iPhone 6 do a year from now?  Who's the next big technology company?  IBM, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Facebook and now Apple have all had their time at the top.  Stay tuned

wjh