You all know that Tim Cook, the man in charge at Apple to whom Steve Jobs personally handed the torch, is a gay man, right? We've been talking about this ever since he ascended to the throne in 2011, and even Gawker predicted at the time that he was "destined to become an icon for gay advancement." Of course, that hasn't happened, at least not yet, and three years later Cook still doesn't feel comfortable being any kind of posterboy for the LGBT cause. But since this very open secret has never really been a secret, it's not unreasonable that a CNBC talking head might mistakenly blab about it on air, only to cause some extreme awkwardness on the panel.
New York Times columnist Jim Stewart was there talking about an interview he just did with former BP CEO John Browne, who's just written a book about his tortured life as the closeted gay CEO of a major company. Stewart notes that Browne is now the first person ever to have led a Fortune 500 company to have come out as homosexual, at least publicly. Cue one of the CNBC guys being a little confused about the Tim Cook situation, after which Stewart just shakes his head and gets really weird, because the Apple people had obviously told him they'd string him up and take away his iPhone if he even so much as mentioned Cook's name. I'm just guessing.
