I have a film offer for Apple. It’s from a little Bill Murray movie called Stripes.
“Calm down, Francis.”
The tech giant has reportedly ousted Tony Blevins, a top executive and one of just 30 employees who reports directly to CEO Tim Cook, after reciting a crude quote (albeit with his own flair) from the Dudley Moore classic ” Arthur” from 1981.
To summarize this corporate criminalization of comedy, Blevins, Apple’s vice president of procurement, was at a California auto show in August when TikToker Daniel Mac, known for asking people in fancy cars what they do for a living, rotated his camera and Question to Blevins.
“I have rich cars, I play golf, and I fondle women with big breasts,” Blevins said as he climbed out of his expensive Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. “But I take weekends and holidays off.”
The woman who was with him and probably really knows him was hardly offended. She cackled as if she were in the presence of a reincarnated Richard Pryor.
The video eventually went viral and caught the attention of Apple bosses, who launched an internal investigation into the matter. Although they could have saved the time and work and instead crouched down for a Liza Minnelli movie marathon.
Apple exec Tony Blevins plays a quote from the film Arthur in Daniel Mac’s video that led to him leaving the company. hisdanielmac
Blevins – who joined the company in 2000 – saw his 22-year tenure set on fire by a second-long video. On the way out, he apologized, calling it “my mistaken attempt at humor.”
It seems that the good people who made my iPhone not only have no general appreciation for good cinema, but they also have quite a shortcoming in the grace department.
Gross overreaction aside, for the world’s leading tech company to preserve top talent for a benign pop culture reference is a bizarre route to innovation. According to a 2020 WSJ profile of Blevins, he’ll “stop little to get a bargain deal. He pushed manufacturers past competitors in Apple’s lobby and spurned a UPS contract by shipping it back to UPS executives via FedEx.”
Dudley Moore plays a wealthy townsman in the 1981 film Arthur.©Orion Pictures Corp/Courtesy E
The man clearly has a unique aptitude for his work that has allowed him to rise to the top of his industry. Imagine an NFL team cutting off a Pro Bowl cornerback during the playoffs for uttering an inappropriate movie quote or song lyric.
You lead the league in interceptions, but you must pack your locker and go, son.
Blevins was clearly parodying an already outrageous fictional character, but that doesn’t matter. A scolding mentality has plagued American corporations, turning us into talkative PC robots more interested in detecting microaggressions than doing an effective job.
Perhaps it could be argued that Blevins’ big mistake was simply playing along and being playful. And maybe that’s true. But we get mixed messages from our cultural overlords about what is and isn’t kosher. On Apple TV+’s Gutsy, Hillary Clinton interviews rapper Megan Thee Stallion about her orifice opus WAP and pays her the homage she would pay a head of state.
Tony Blevins, a former vice president at Apple, speaks at an event. NC State ISE
One day we’re praising the libertines and the next we’re shouting at others for being prudes. Pearl clinging is schizophrenic at best.
Humor used to be a unifying and essential force in our society – a salve that soothed our gross differences. As the great Joan Rivers once said, “If we didn’t laugh, where the hell would we all be?”
Unfortunately, in 2022 we have the answer: we are infantilized adults living in a playroom simulation.
And since we are increasingly surrendering to this mentality, we voluntarily drag ourselves into the loser bracket.