Our Obsession Over Steve Jobs - Enough Is Enough - Millennial Money with Cliff Mason

BIO

Cliff Mason is the author of Millennial Money. He is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like. Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.

MILLENNIAL MONEY RELATED LINKS

LATEST FROM OUR BLOGS

» More

RSS FEED

» Help

Subscribe to this RSS feed
Stay up to date with the Millennial Money blog.

CNBC ON DIGG

Text Size

Jan.16

5:26 PM ET

Friday, 16 Jan 2009

Our Obsession Over Steve Jobs - Enough Is Enough

Posted By:Cliff Mason

Topics:Media | Print Media | CEOs and CFOs | Steve Jobs | Stock Market

Companies:Apple Inc

Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs

Enough is enough.

The cult of personality surrounding Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple [AAPL Loading... () ] has reached levels that would make even Joseph Stalin feel self-conscious.

This guy's health problems get more media attention than Fidel Castro's ever did, and say what you will about Jobs, nobody's ever called him Generalissimo.

It's bad enough that all the twenty-something Apple die-hards think the man is the second coming, something I feel a personal sense of embarrassment about given that I'm an Apple convert and fan, if not a fanatic. But the latest media furor over Jobs' health, and the endless recriminations that he, and Apple, must have been hiding something are only making things worse. What does the press want? To take the guy's temperature every morning? Should Jobs have to pee into a cup before every conference call? Do we now demand that a full blood work-up be included in Apple's SEC filings? Should the highlight of next year's Macworld conference be a Steve Jobs stool sample that all the sell-side analysts can examine to their heart's content? Come on!

We've got Joe Nocera, who I have enormous respect for as a business columnist, writing things like this, "There are certain people who simply don’t have the same privacy rights as others, whether they like it or not. Presidents. Celebrities. Sports figures. And, at least in terms of his health, Steve Jobs. His health has become a material fact for Apple shareholders. His vagueness about his health, his dissembling, his constantly changing story line—it is simply not an appropriate way to act when you are the most important person at one of the most high-profile companies in America. On the contrary: it is infuriating".

Pardon me, but CEOs do have the same privacy rights as everyone else, even the great and mighty Steve Jobs. And now that the poor guy might need to have his pancreas removed, he, and Apple, are facing a veritable witch-hunt from the press. Everyone's asking what did senior folks Apple know about Jobs' health, and when did they know it? This isn't Watergate, people. Isn't it possible that his constantly changing story line might have something to do with ever-change diagnoses, given that his health has been deteriorating? Does no one in the financial media watch House?

I take issue with all of this for two reasons. First, Apple is a company with 32,000 employees. Steve Jobs has been a great, even brilliant CEO. But the business will do just fine without him. Apple's developed a popular aesthetic, and unlike many other gadget, computer and software companies has a very strict philosophy of designing products that are easy and fun to use. While Jobs gets full credit for developing the original Apple OS X, beyond that, the rest of the team at Apple deserves more acknowledgement than it ever gets, thanks to the cult of Steve. If I were an Apple shareholder, I would care a lot more about Mac, iPod and iPhone sales than the health of the company's CEO. Even great men are replaceable, so let's stop pretending otherwise.

Now, the second problem I have with the media's feeding frenzy is that it's tasteless. Everyone assumes that Jobs or Apple have been trying to hide these health problems. Tell me, please, where's the percentage in that for them? It's going to come out eventually, so why would they postpone the inevitable? Isn't it far more likely that Jobs simply didn't realize he was this sick until quite recently? People have accused him of being in denial, and somehow blamed the guy for it. If I was about to lose a major organ, you bet I'd be in denial, too.

Why is it so implausible to believe that Jobs was telling the truth before, and then found out, through new medical tests (the way we usually find out we're sicker than we thought), that he was in worse shape than expected? Jobs thought, and hoped, he simply had a hormonal imbalance. Then he found out he was in much worse shape. I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs even sought a second, or third opinion before releasing this information to the press, which, by the way, is exactly what you, or anyone else, would do when faced with this kind of health problem. And if it took him a week to come clean, does it really matter?