Capital is cloaking itself in the rainbow flag. The most recent demonstration of this fact came when veteran reporter Alec MacGillis suggested writing on Apple’s tax-avoidance strategies for the New Republic. Owner Chris Hughes wouldn’t allow it. Criticizing the multi-billion dollar corporation would be “tone deaf,” he said, because its CEO had recently come out as gay:
Hughes lashed out in a group email to staff because senior editor (and former Post reporter) Alec MacGillis had dared to propose writing a piece about Apple avoiding taxes just after Apple’s Tim Cook had come out of the closet. Hughes shot back that “Apple has acted squarely within the law” and that MacGillis’s argument would be “tone deaf.” MacGillis quickly backed off, but Hughes did not, writing twice more to defend Apple’s tax strategy and to call Cook “incredibly heroic” for coming out.
One must choose one’s loyalties. In this case and in many others, the Democratic Party and its organs have chosen the sexual desires of the rich over the economic aspirations of working Americans. Many on the left have noticed and called out this trend, not least MacGillis, who earlier this year explained how Andrew Cuomo exemplifies it:
Cuomo’s first term as governor has been defined by his melding of liberal policies on social issues such as same-sex marriage and gun control with far more centrist if not conservative policies on the economic front, where he has pushed tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. This ideological hybrid has come to dominate the center-left elite consensus of the “Morning Joe”-watching, Acela-riding set, to the consternation of economic populists who wish that bien pensant liberals would get as exercised about rising inequality and stagnating wages as they do about marriage equality.
Gay rights have allowed oligarchy to put on progressive drag. This is all well and good if one is hoping to resurrect Ayn Rand, but it is the kind of thing that would make William Jennings Bryan spin. Liberalism is narrowing to libertinism. Even from my position on the right, it seems a loss.
Matthew Schmitz is deputy editor of First Things.
