ARTS & FARCES internet

I don’t like Steve Jobs—never have. He’s an arrogant, abrasive, prima donna. But unlike most other people I dislike, I have tremendous respect for Steve Jobs. He’s outrageously creative, wildly persuasive, has a gift for seeing what the rest of us don’t, and is obsessed with quality. The positives, believe it or not, far outweigh the negatives.

Steve Jobs and Apple’s board of directors have done everything that’s necessary with regard to his personal information and his role as CEO of a publicly-traded US corporation. Period. If he doesn’t want to disclose the details of his health, that’s no one’s business but his own and the financial and technical media must back the fuck off.

I’ve chosen to take a fairly open position with regard to the status of my health. I fully disclose my health condition, its co-morbidities, and the ramifications involved to employers and co-workers, up-front. Partly because I don’t want to be accused of withholding crucial information later, should my condition worsen—of which there’s a fairly high likelihood. But mostly because it’s easier to just get it out of the way as early as possible: like my job, it’s part of my life but it’s not who I am.

But full disclosure was my choice. Steve Jobs’ choice is to disclose the minimum amount of information necessary for appropriate decisions to be made. That’s his choice—and his choice alone—and it’s every bit as valid as mine. Fact is, it’s none of our business.

This morning while layering up to venture out to the bus stop in -20 Fahrenheit weather I heard a CNBC news reader, Erin Burnett, suggest that perhaps Jobs has a psychological disorder that prevents him from being honest about his health status. That’s unbelievably out of bounds and inexcusable. But not nearly as putrid as the “remote diagnostics” of alleged medical professionals throughout the corporate media. Way to report, you putzes. Has it dawned on you that none of your “sources” have examined Jobs?

Unless you have a chronic disease you have no understanding of how fast and how drastically your condition can change. It’s repugnant that I have to explain to all you normals that it’s more than merely plausible that Steve Jobs’ health condition could indeed have become “more complex” over the past week. Over the past day, for christsakes. Get it now? That investors do or do not believe Jobs is, frankly, of no concern to anyone but themselves.

And for those saying Apple is done without Jobs (oddly mostly the same people who have been saying that for 20 years or more): get a clue. Jobs has always—always—gone out of his way to say that business success is the result of teamwork not the contributions of any one individual.