Summary

Gruber dissects Tim Cook's company-wide memo about 'events in Minneapolis,' arguing it exemplifies the Orwellian political language that uses words to avoid making a point while creating the illusion of having made one. He draws on Patrick McGee's criticism that the memo 'literally says nothing, via intention and cowardice,' then extensively quotes Orwell's 1946 essay 'Politics and the English Language' on how political speech serves to defend the indefensible through euphemism and cloudy vagueness. Gruber methodically deconstructs Cook's language — the unspecified 'everyone that's been affected,' the directionless call for 'deescalation' — contrasting it with the brutal specifics Cook omits: shootings, a five-year-old used as bait, detention centers. The piece concludes that Cook's real sin isn't bad writing but using competent prose to avoid saying anything meaningful about federal agents brutalizing citizens in Minneapolis.

Key Insight

Tim Cook's Minneapolis memo is a masterclass in using competent English to say absolutely nothing, deploying the exact Orwellian euphemism and vagueness that political language requires when one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 8

  This literally says nothing, via intention and cowardice.

• 6

  Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them, indeed.

• 8

  Cook's call for 'deescalation' is meaningless without specifying which side he's calling upon to change course, and there's no weaker sauce than the weak sauce of 'both sides'.

• 9

  Using words, not to make a point, but to avoid making a point while creating the illusion of having made one, is the true sin.

• 3

  Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

• 9

  It's colder in Minnesota, but the wind is gusting in Cupertino.

• 7

  Who, exactly, has been affected? Affected how? By whom? Numerous examples come to mind, but not from Cook's memo.

Tone

excoriating