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Something like this? https://twitter.com/raytheontech/status/880497266255175685?lang=en https://twitter.com/raytheontech/status/880497266255175685?l... It's n

Something like this? https://twitter.com/raytheontech/status/880497266255175685?lang=en https://twitter.com/raytheontech/status/880497266255175685?l... It's not that there's something wrong with gay rights, or any other specific social cause powerful organizations adopt. It's just that it's a very cheap way to win a positive image for things that ... would have trouble getting a positive image if focus was on their core business.

foldr 5y ago
It's possible to be not totally cynical about this stuff. The CEO of Raytheon might very well genuinely support gay rights. After all, many people do. Also, I don't really see the connection between this tweet and Holywood.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  Eh. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/yemen-us-made-bomb-used-in-deadly-air-strike-on-civilians/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/yemen-us-made... Raytheon lobbies for Mideast arm sales. In the hierarchy of shit they need to be ethical on, LGBTQ rights is not really top of the list. It’s nice though, nonetheless. No connection to Hollywood of course, Raytheon would love nothing more than war never being mentioned. The more they can sell outside of the US and not have anyone know it’s causing genocide in places like Yemen, the better.
  - foldr 5y ago
    You're going off on a tangent here. By all means criticise Raytheon for the bad things they do. But why criticise their CEO for making a tweet supportive of gay rights? No evidence has been presented that the tweet is not sincere. HN all too often seems prone to spinning complex and sometimes borderline conspiratorial narratives around LGBTQ rights advocacy.
    - atq2119 5y ago
      It's arguably not a tangent but simply a more holistic view. Twitter is a lot of posturing, and the tweet is posturing "look how progressive/ethical/whatever I am". GP is simply pointing out that yes, supporting gay rights is a good thing, but the person overall is still a piece of shit for all the atrocities they implicitly support. The gay rights stance, even if genuine, simply can't balance that out.
      - foldr 5y ago
        Yes, of course it is possible to advocate for gay rights and yet also do bad things. Perhaps that was the OP's point, but it seems too obvious to be worth mentioning. You may view the tweet as 'posturing', but we have seen no evidence that it is not the expression of a sincerely held belief. This is the sort of attitude that I was talking about when I said that HN seems to like to spin complex narratives around LGBTQ rights advocacy. Sometimes people speak out for LGBTQ rights because...they support LGBTQ rights. And that's all there is to it. If you don't like other stuff that Raytheon does, then it makes a lot more sense to criticise them for doing that other stuff than it does to spin speculative narratives around the motivation behind their pro-LGBTQ tweets.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      > No evidence has been presented that the tweet is not sincere. Imagine, in the age of chivalry, a lord who arrives at every battle with his forces - but who delays his arrival until the battle is already won, and always joins the winning side. You might well say arriving late is better than not arriving at all. Perhaps there are some last pockets of resistance, you wouldn't turn down his help sweeping those up. Alternately, you might say they are cowardly, insincere opportunists. They ended up on on the right side, but the timing calls their sincerity into doubt. To some people, all LGBTQ 'activism' by Fortune 500 companies looks like this. Especially if their 'activism' doesn't extend to their middle east or russian divisions.
      - foldr 5y ago
        First of all, I would want to do a bit more research than you appear to have done before calling someone a "cowardly, insincere opportunist". I don't know much about the CEO of Raytheon or his historical record on gay rights. I suspect that you don't either. I do wonder just how early people are required to come to the 'battle' in order to escape your scorn. If someone was an adult in the 80s, are they an insincere opportunist if they weren't speaking out in favor of gay rights then? What if they were an adult in the 1960s and didn't support the Stonewall riots? As a gay person, it means something to me that a company is willing to speak out publicly in support of its LGBTQ employees. No-one is perfect and no-one is free from hypocrisy. All of us have probably blown with the wind on certain social issues where we could have spoken up earlier if we'd had more courage and moral clarity. This holier-than-thou cynicism about corporate LGBTQ activism is extremely destructive, in my opinion. In the final analysis it only gives succour to those who are opposed to LGBTQ rights. For actual gay people, the massive shift in corporate attitudes to LGBTQ employees is a huge deal, and has real practical benefits in our lives. Edit: By the way, a little bit of internet research suggests that Raytheon are actually pretty above average in their support for LGBTQ rights. E.g. they have been praised by the HRC: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/defense-giant-raytheon-protects-transgender-employees https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/defense-giant-raytheon-pr... And here's some news coverage dating back to 2006: https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/12/11/8395465/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006...
pydry 5y ago
I think it's kind of an compromise between the artistic community in Hollywood who usually want to be progressive and capital, which dont want to do anything risky or threatening to powerful/rich people/advertisers. Gay rights and a few other issues satisfy both groups.
ben_w 5y ago
That example sounds like pinkwashing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkwashing_(LGBT) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkwashing_(LGBT) Whenever I see someone use “woke” as an insult… it’s been an inconsistent mishmash that matches what was called “political correctness gone mad” when I was a kid — stuff the user doesn’t like but knows better than to say plainly that they don’t like. Of course, I know plenty of people who have used the word “woke” positively, in the same way I know people who respond to “X is PC gone mad” with “X & PC is just being polite to people”. Hard to tell what the common current use is though, given the lack of social connection during the pandemic and living in a non-English speaking country. Online polls have a self-selection bias, but I wouldn’t know in which direction that bias alters results.
- pydry 5y ago
  It's a word whose meaning is gradually being deradicalized by mass media. Once it stops being about fighting back against the black community being murdered in broad daylight by police or striking for $15/hour and starts being about "unthreatening-to-state-and-capital" topics like pronoun choice and diversity quotas in the C suite it starts to look a bit ridiculous. And thats the point where a lot people start to hear about it and reject what they see.

foldr 5y ago

It's possible to be not totally cynical about this stuff. The CEO of Raytheon might very well genuinely support gay rights. After all, many people do. Also, I don't really see the connection between this tweet and Holywood.

crate_barre 5y ago
Eh. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/yemen-us-made-bomb-used-in-deadly-air-strike-on-civilians/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/yemen-us-made... Raytheon lobbies for Mideast arm sales. In the hierarchy of shit they need to be ethical on, LGBTQ rights is not really top of the list. It’s nice though, nonetheless. No connection to Hollywood of course, Raytheon would love nothing more than war never being mentioned. The more they can sell outside of the US and not have anyone know it’s causing genocide in places like Yemen, the better.
- foldr 5y ago
  You're going off on a tangent here. By all means criticise Raytheon for the bad things they do. But why criticise their CEO for making a tweet supportive of gay rights? No evidence has been presented that the tweet is not sincere. HN all too often seems prone to spinning complex and sometimes borderline conspiratorial narratives around LGBTQ rights advocacy.
  - atq2119 5y ago
    It's arguably not a tangent but simply a more holistic view. Twitter is a lot of posturing, and the tweet is posturing "look how progressive/ethical/whatever I am". GP is simply pointing out that yes, supporting gay rights is a good thing, but the person overall is still a piece of shit for all the atrocities they implicitly support. The gay rights stance, even if genuine, simply can't balance that out.
    - foldr 5y ago
      Yes, of course it is possible to advocate for gay rights and yet also do bad things. Perhaps that was the OP's point, but it seems too obvious to be worth mentioning. You may view the tweet as 'posturing', but we have seen no evidence that it is not the expression of a sincerely held belief. This is the sort of attitude that I was talking about when I said that HN seems to like to spin complex narratives around LGBTQ rights advocacy. Sometimes people speak out for LGBTQ rights because...they support LGBTQ rights. And that's all there is to it. If you don't like other stuff that Raytheon does, then it makes a lot more sense to criticise them for doing that other stuff than it does to spin speculative narratives around the motivation behind their pro-LGBTQ tweets.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    > No evidence has been presented that the tweet is not sincere. Imagine, in the age of chivalry, a lord who arrives at every battle with his forces - but who delays his arrival until the battle is already won, and always joins the winning side. You might well say arriving late is better than not arriving at all. Perhaps there are some last pockets of resistance, you wouldn't turn down his help sweeping those up. Alternately, you might say they are cowardly, insincere opportunists. They ended up on on the right side, but the timing calls their sincerity into doubt. To some people, all LGBTQ 'activism' by Fortune 500 companies looks like this. Especially if their 'activism' doesn't extend to their middle east or russian divisions.
    - foldr 5y ago
      First of all, I would want to do a bit more research than you appear to have done before calling someone a "cowardly, insincere opportunist". I don't know much about the CEO of Raytheon or his historical record on gay rights. I suspect that you don't either. I do wonder just how early people are required to come to the 'battle' in order to escape your scorn. If someone was an adult in the 80s, are they an insincere opportunist if they weren't speaking out in favor of gay rights then? What if they were an adult in the 1960s and didn't support the Stonewall riots? As a gay person, it means something to me that a company is willing to speak out publicly in support of its LGBTQ employees. No-one is perfect and no-one is free from hypocrisy. All of us have probably blown with the wind on certain social issues where we could have spoken up earlier if we'd had more courage and moral clarity. This holier-than-thou cynicism about corporate LGBTQ activism is extremely destructive, in my opinion. In the final analysis it only gives succour to those who are opposed to LGBTQ rights. For actual gay people, the massive shift in corporate attitudes to LGBTQ employees is a huge deal, and has real practical benefits in our lives. Edit: By the way, a little bit of internet research suggests that Raytheon are actually pretty above average in their support for LGBTQ rights. E.g. they have been praised by the HRC: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/defense-giant-raytheon-protects-transgender-employees https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/defense-giant-raytheon-pr... And here's some news coverage dating back to 2006: https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/12/11/8395465/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006...

pydry 5y ago

I think it's kind of an compromise between the artistic community in Hollywood who usually want to be progressive and capital, which dont want to do anything risky or threatening to powerful/rich people/advertisers. Gay rights and a few other issues satisfy both groups.

ben_w 5y ago

That example sounds like pinkwashing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkwashing_(LGBT) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkwashing_(LGBT) Whenever I see someone use “woke” as an insult… it’s been an inconsistent mishmash that matches what was called “political correctness gone mad” when I was a kid — stuff the user doesn’t like but knows better than to say plainly that they don’t like. Of course, I know plenty of people who have used the word “woke” positively, in the same way I know people who respond to “X is PC gone mad” with “X & PC is just being polite to people”. Hard to tell what the common current use is though, given the lack of social connection during the pandemic and living in a non-English speaking country. Online polls have a self-selection bias, but I wouldn’t know in which direction that bias alters results.

pydry 5y ago
It's a word whose meaning is gradually being deradicalized by mass media. Once it stops being about fighting back against the black community being murdered in broad daylight by police or striking for $15/hour and starts being about "unthreatening-to-state-and-capital" topics like pronoun choice and diversity quotas in the C suite it starts to look a bit ridiculous. And thats the point where a lot people start to hear about it and reject what they see.