The Endless Celebration and Enablement of Assholes
Jesse LemischSteinbrenner… Donald Trump… Simon Cowell… Judge Judy… the brutality of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette”… Dr. Phil…. If you haven’t seen these horrors, you ought to acquaint yourself with them. They give strength to the environment in which Sarah Palin and the rest operate… We need to present and get out there in new ways an alternate set of values, just, humane and non-competitive. The left won’t make a better world so long as we dismiss such concerns as “soft,” and leave the presentation of alternate values to the right, or to Oprah.
> The Endless Celebration and Enablement of Assholes
ReplyDeleteFrom a Charlie Rose interview with Linus Torvalds
(Friday, May 18, 2001, following
the publication of _Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary_
by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond
http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620732 )
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/3114
Charlie Rose: Let me just ask for some impressions, OK?
Um, one. . . a good friend of mine. . .
Bill Joy.
Linus Torvalds: Hm, hm.
Rose: What do you think of him?
Torvalds: Well actually, I mean, one of the advantages of
going to Silicon Valley was that I got to meet. . .
Rose: Hang out with Bill Joy, yeah, right. . .
Torvalds: Well, I haven't "hung out" with Bill Joy, but
I've met him a number of times, and I. . . I really
liked him, he was teaching me about, uh, how the sushi
I was eating. . . the green stuff wasn't actually wasabi,
it was just horseradish. Even though they called it
wasabi. That was a big disappointment. . .
Rose: That's really a bummer, isn't it. . .
Torvalds: And, uh, he's actually one of the few nice
guys I met. I mean, a lot of the, like, high-powered. . .
Maybe I shouldn't say this.
Rose: Oh yes you should.
Torvalds: A lot of the high-powered people aren't very
nice.
Rose: Really?
Torvalds: Yeah.
Rose: Well, name some names here. Who are we talking
about?
Torvalds: No, I'm not going to name names.
Usually. . .
Rose: You weren't thrilled. . . didn't come away with
a great. . . when you met. . . When you met Steve Jobs,
you said "he's everything. . ."
Torvalds: . . . that people say he is.
But see, I kind of like that.
Rose: He's authentic to what his impression. . . his
initial. . .
Torvalds: Absolutely, and it's interesting meeting people
who are that driven and who live in their own world.
That's true of people like Richard Stallman too, who is
one of the "gods" of open-source programming. He's so driven,
he's so self-assured, just because he **knows** what he
does is right. And it's very interesting meeting people like
that. You may not **like** them, as people, but they're
fascinating.