To the Late Show With Stephen Colbert writer who came up with the following question for Apple CEO Tim Cook on last night’s show: well done.
“You yourself came out as gay recently,” Stephen begins. “Was that an upgrade or just a feature that had not been turned on before?”
But as we’re coming to expect from Colbert’s Late Show schtick, there’s a serious question behind every cleverly worded joke.
“And the reason I ask,” he continues, “is that experience of growing up in Alabama as a resident outsider because of your sexuality — did that inform in any way your trying to help people who are in hardship around the world?”
“It did, yeah,” replies Cook, who has established Apple’s first ever charitable wing (nice, considering the company is worth a trillion dollars by some estimates).
Related: Corner Office: Six Powerful Out CEOs Who Aren’t Tim Cook
“In all honesty, every day I come to work I have right in front of my desk a photo of Robert Kennedy and a photo of Dr. King. And every day I sort of ask myself — it was Dr. King’s quote that said “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘what are you doing for others?’
“And it became so clear to me that kids are getting bullied in school, kids were getting discriminated agains, kids were even being disclaimed by their own parents, and that I needed to do something.
“Where I valued my privacy significantly, I felt that I was valuing it too far above what I could do for other people, and so I wanted to tell everyone my truth.”
Then Tim tries his own awkward iPhone joke. Leave it to the pro.
Watch below:
Billy Budd
He is nice but I will not buy an Iphone just because of him.
Curty
A powerful gay man. I wonder what his story is. Growing up in the deep, deep south having to be so closeted all of those years. He should write a book and donate proceeds to charity.
Ladbrook
If memory serves, he came out after a talking-head outed him (literally) on one of the CNBC business news shows. I don’t think it was intentional; I just think the journalist knew he was gay and assumed it was common knowledge. At that point, Tim didn’t have much choice in the matter. It reminds me of how NPH and ACooper were sort of outed.
Anyway… on YouTube you can type “Tim Cook outed” into the search engine and watch the awkwardness as it happened: live and on national television.
girldownunder
Just because he may have been outed, doesn’t mean that he hadn’t decided at that point to come out as he’s said on the show.
1EqualityUSA
Tom Cook, thanks for coming out. Your “truth” helps others immensely.
Bisexual-Transwoman
@Ladbrook: I remember this as well. He’s a better spokes person than Steve Jobs was but I’m not going to buy any overpriced and overrated apple products just because he’s gay.
NateOcean
“And the reason I ask,” he continues, “is that experience of growing up in Alabama as a resident outsider because of your sexuality — did that inform in any way your trying to help people who are in hardship around the world?”
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Come on Stephen, you’re better than that. That question is fully loaded. Why not ask small questions and ferret out that info, instead of a fully charged paragraph and ask him to agree.