Uber Falling to Little Tiny Inappropriate Comment Pieces

The fall of the executive staff and brand image of Uber is hard to pin down precisely. There was certainly a huge bullseye on the company after CEO Travis Kalanick joined the Trump Presidential economic advisory board. A move lauded by nearly nine percent of people in the Silicon Valley. Measured anonymously of course. The published results said zero.

Kalanick’s Trump taint shaded much of what came next. The refusal to join the travel ban driver protest at JFK and the Twitter boycott. The chick who wrote the scathing blog post about how horrible it was to be a female tech at Uber since it turns out Silicon Valley is pretty spot on in male nerd misogyny. Followed by paying former Obama A.G. Eric Holder to come do a objective report on the company and how they’re mistreating women and Hmongs alike. Kalinick recently announced he was taking a leave of absence because who needs this shit when you’re a forty year old billionaire. Now Board member David Bonderman is resigning because he made a catty comment about women to fellow board member, Ariana Huffington. Yes, the same people own all the same shit in the Valley. 

As recorded from the Uber Board meeting:

Huffington: “There’s a lot of data that shows when there’s one woman on the board, it’s much more likely that there will be a second woman on the board.

Bonderman: “Actually, what it shows is that it’s much more likely to be more talking.”

Not a super zinger, but in reference to Huffington’s grating squeak, everybody gets it. It was enough to force Bonderman to issue an amazingly heartfelt apology, in the manner of claiming the Rwandan genocide as your doing, and a resignation. 

The lesson here is that, nothing’s funny anymore. Don’t even attempt to make a joke about Huffington marrying a wealthy gay man in order climb the social business ladder early in her ambitious career. Or the tainted rag cynically deployed to feed professional white women stories of their horrific subjugation. Actually, Bonderman’s line was slightly more amusing. Nice knowing you fella. It must suck to be an old man in a new world.

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