Institutions are hard things to love. This is a lesson being learned by the employees of Microsoft, many of whom—gay, lesbian, and straight—have been enriched by a company that has excelled at bad behavior. Ruthless, monopolistic, Darwinian: Microsoft is like a neocon seeking to transform the world into a global empire. They have won through intimidation, appropriation, and domination.
Surprised the company sold out over the matter of gay marriage? Hey, we’re lucky we all haven’t been turned into Soylent Green.
That could be next. More interesting than whether or not an Eastside evangelical pastor successfully intimidated the company into backing off its support for the gay-rights bill in Olympia last month was the company’s denial of the reverend’s account. Microsoft executives say the decision to stay neutral this time on the legislation was made long before pressure was applied by the Rev. Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church (and a KTTH-AM personality). Hutcherson, whose role in threatening to organize a national boycott against the company was first reported in The Stranger, told that paper in a follow-up interview that the company’s version of events was a lie.
Maybe so. But it is certainly consistent with what Microsoft has been saying for months about its newly revamped lobbying efforts in Olympia. In a Seattle Weekly cover story last year (see “Citizen Microsoft,” Sept. 29, 2004), former Microsoft manager Jeff Reifman offered a detailed look at the company’s political and civic agenda. Microsoft made clear that it was going to focus on “competitiveness,” as in making Washington a more “competitive” place to do business. It was echoing the approach that we are well familiar with in Boeing, which so recently flexed its muscle to extort billions in new tax breaks and subsidies as the cost of continuing to do business here.
Microsoft has been lobbying for more spending on education and transportation, even while dodging hundreds of millions of dollars in state taxes by running software sales through subsidiaries in Nevada. Washington improves its “competitiveness” by giving Microsoft more. Everything is subservient to that self-interested business agenda, and it’s clear that somewhere along the line, perhaps in horse-trading for support for infrastructure and education spending, the company shoved gay rights onto the back burner.
The fact that Microsoft’s stands on such moral issues are situational is also indicative of another shift. Software companies have often argued that creative, tolerant, liberal communities—Seattle, Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin—are ideal high-tech hubs because they attract and keep the kind of valued knowledge workers companies like Microsoft need. But that view might be far too limiting today. The subtext of Microsoft’s competitiveness rhetoric is to remind us that they can do business anywhere. Gay rights are now as expendable as the workforce. Gay rights don’t make Microsoft—or Washington—more competitive.
As software companies outsource jobs to the Third World, as they search for cheaper, more compliant, and less troublesome labor markets, Microsoft signals that progressive blue-state values might be a luxury they can no longer afford. Maybe the next Seattle will be Salt Lake City.
Another institution that is disappointing some of its fans is the Seattle Monorail Project. SMP offers proof positive that global warming has arrived in our fair city, because no setback, no disappointment, no screwup is ever met with anything other than a sunny forecast. These guys make more lemonade than Sunkist.
As the agency operates in secret, bad news continues to leak out about the current, single monorail bid and bidder. Spinmeisters used to say that every problem was really just an opportunity, but SMP goes beyond that by insisting that every setback is an actual improvement. Cut the Green Line through Seattle Center? It’s saves money! Run single tracks instead of two? Less clutter! Only one bidder? More efficient! A key contractor drops out? Who needs ’em! By this evolutionary logic, the biggest boon would be a bond default followed by a catastrophic structural failure.
Even the boosterish Seattle Post- Intelligencer editorial page is getting antsy. They had the gall last week to suggest that SMP take a page from Sound Transit to “reinvigorate public confidence.” SMP was supposed to be the alternative to Sound Transit! Now the light-rail boondoggle is a role model. What ignominy.
Also, there are growing rumblings among monorail faithful, who fear the project might unravel without a more open process and a fair rebidding of the venture, even at the risk of delays. They grow restless at months of secrecy and spin and worry that the dream may be compromised.
The monorail has been weird from its very beginnings, first as a gleam in a cabbie’s eye, then as a populist moral crusade to do big things right in Seattle. Logic and common sense have often given way to a civic fanaticism that has turned the monorail from a mere elevated rail project into a righteous cause. But the Kool-Aid may be wearing off.
As Microsofties and monorailers nurse their hangovers, it is well to remember that it rarely pays to love companies and government agencies. When push comes to shove, they won’t love you back.
