The Babylon Bee lampoons Apple CEO Tim Cook for pulling ads from X ‘while shaking hands with brutal Chinese dictator’

Apple CEO Tim Cook
The Babylon Bee, famous for publishing satirical articles on a wide variety of topics with 20 million monthly page views, has trained its sights on Apple CEO Tim Cook in an article headlined “‘We Cannot Be Associated With Elon Musk,’ Says Tim Cook While Shaking Hands With Brutal Chinese Dictator.”
The Babylon Bee:
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Amid charges that Elon Musk’s social media app “X” has become a dangerous breeding ground for speech Communists don’t like, Apple CEO Tim Cook has elected to pull all Apple advertising from the platform.
“I refuse to allow my morally pristine corporation to be associated with disreputable characters like Elon Musk,” said Cook while shaking the hand of murderous communist dictator Xi Jinping at this week’s APEC Dinner…
Sources confirmed Cook had a lengthy discussion with the cruel tyrant who runs the slave state of Communist China, including how they can produce more iPhones with the same number of Uyghur slaves without too many of them dying. “At Apple, we are willing to make the hard, yet moral choices,” he said…
Mother Nature, the vengeful pagan god presiding over Apple’s climate change mitigation efforts, applauded the move. “I want fewer people on the planet,” she said. “And Elon Musk wants more people on the planet. He must be eliminated.”
Sources confirmed Cook has moved his advertising dollars over to Facebook, which is currently the preferred platform for organizing “Kill the Jews” rallies around the world…

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MacDailyNews Take: Ouch (and we omitted the Epstein Island stuff).
This satirical article is painful, but predictable, as Cook put himself in this hypocritical position which he could have avoided simply by waiting a second instead of knee-jerkingly pulling advertising from X over a manufactured “controversy.” But, we already know that Cook would very much like to control what people are allowed to read, hear, and see, so perhaps he was just looking for any excuse to yank Apple’s ads from X.
True power is restraint. If words control you, that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass. – Warren Buffett
X owner Elon Musk addressed the situation on November 18th, just hours after Apple pulled its advertising from the social media site:

As we wrote back in 2019:
There exists a dichotomy that screams hypocrisy that is impossible to overlook:
Apple CEO Tim Cook, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ 2015 Ripple of Hope Award for “his lifelong commitment to human rights,” who subsequently took a place on the board Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights the following year, and winner of Newseum’s 2017 Free Expression Award in the Free Speech category, no less, also aids and abets China’s commitment to violating human rights with serial regularity.
Two phrases immediately spring to mind:
• Do as I say, not as I do.
• Talking the talk, but not walking the walk.
Accepting awards, plaudits, and board positions for “free speech” and “human rights” while banning publications and protest apps are tough actions to reconcile due to their diametrically opposed nature.
For how long can Tim Cook, and by extension, Apple, get away with positioning themselves as the world’s white knight while kowtowing to every whim of the Chinese authoritarian socialist censors?
This is about leadership, or lack thereof.
Obviously, in recent days, this all seems to be coming to a head, but it’s been building for years.
• Apple removes Quartz news app from App Store in China over Hong Kong coverage – October 10, 2019
• Apple kowtows to China by censoring Taiwan flag emoji – October 7, 2019
• Apple Music censors songs in China that reference Tiananmen massacre, democracy – April 9, 2019
• Apple removes VPN apps from China App Store – July 29, 2017
• In bid to improve censorship, China to summon Apple execs to discuss stricter App Store oversight – April 20, 2017
• Apple removes New York Times apps from App Store in China at behest of Chinese government – January 4, 2017

China is critical for Apple in every way from sales to product assembly, so Apple continues to kowtow to China. With Apple’s strong stance – in other places of the world – on users’ rights and privacy, it’s a bad look for the company and a tough tightrope that Tim Cook is trying to walk. — MacDailyNews, July 29, 2017
See also:
• Elon Musk’s X CEO Yaccarino: Apple has only ‘temporarily paused’ ads due to ‘misleading and manipulated article’ – November 20, 2023
• Elon Musk to file ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ against Media Matters action which caused Apple, others to pull advertising from X – November 18, 2023
• Tim Cook firmly latched Apple onto China’s CCP teat. What’s his plan for weaning it off? – November 2, 2022
• Apple CEO Tim Cook signed secret $275+ billion deal with China in 2016 – December 7, 2021
• Tim Cook’s Apple is built in China; now it has to answer to the Chinese Communist Party – May 17, 2021
[UPDATE: Fixed “sights.” Thanks, Macaholic.]
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