[MacSpirit] Larry Ellison ain't no mere Apple polisher

by Rodney O. Lain

6/12/01

[Apple is] the only company people feel passionate about. My company, Oracle, is huge; IBM is huge; Microsoft is huge; but no one has incredible emotions with our companies.

Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO and FOS (Friend of Steve)

 

Dave Letterman: “What can I say about our next guest that hasn’t been said before? Paul?”

Paul Schaeffer: “He’s a kook, Dave. A maniac. A real lunatic. No, I mean it. He’s a nut.”

Frank Miller’s fictitious dialogue, from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, 1986

Oh, sure, you know Larry Ellison. He’s a kook. A maniac. A real lunatic -- especially when you mention anything concerning Bill Gates and Microsoft in his presence. No, I mean it. He’s a nut. I’m sure each of you, whenever you read about Ellison, you think the same thing, imagining him with a nervous twitch, a high-pitched maniacal laugh, and a smile akin to the one flashed by Jack Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

But there is another thing to consider: he is CEO of Oracle, Inc., the software maker second only to Micro$oft. Excuse the grammar, but don’t no idiot become CEO of the Number Two company in the Valley if he’s good for nothing but drooling, picking boogers and drawing a “crazy check” from the Gub’mint. We’re not talking Forrest Gump here.

So, there’s some credibility in the man’s comments about Apple… nowadays, anyway. After all, he has a good track record. And he isn’t saying anything today different from what he was saying back when Apple was dying. Remember that? The “anal-ysts” were telling you to dump your Apple stock. Wall Street was breathing heavy over dot-com’s. Michael Dell kicked the corpse a couple of times himself, and he still won't eat his crow.

But good, ole Larry was out there telling us to keep the faith.

Sure, he couldn’t make a comment without cursing in Microsoft’s direction. Everyone has faults; his just happens to be a case of Microsoft-inspired Touret’s Syndrome. If I were to criticize Larry’s Apple cheeleadering, the only thing I’d say is that he’s so damned incessant about it. No one likes incessant cheerleadering, even if you’re right. Especially if you’re right.

So we ignore Larry whenever he points out that he’s a FOS, Steve’s self-styled best friend. But Larry actually said something yesterday that gave me one of those epiphany moments. I’m sure it is an epiphany, because Larry’s probably only said it about a million times. It was a comment made in the middle of his interview with SiliconValley.com (see URL at end of this column):

Steve Jobs is my best friend, and I love him dearly, and he's one of the most remarkable people on this planet. You watch him create Apple, then in one of the worst human-resources mistakes in the history of Silicon Valley -- the only thing worse was when the French fired Napoleon -- they fire Steve Jobs and Apple almost completely disintegrates. Then he comes back and he saves a company that was on life support.

I never see this quoted about Steve, but they once asked Andy Grove who he most admired in the PC industry, and he said, ``One guy: Steve Jobs. He invented the PC industry.''

You know, we live in a very egalitarian world. We don't like heroes. And Steve is one of these heroic guys whose accomplishments are of such epic proportions, and it gnaws away at our egalitarian sense of the world.

I’m sure Larry gets a stipend every time he says that.

But the point is that, whatever you may say or think (shut up, Gil Amelio!), Steve P. Jobs is credited with resurrecting Apple. I’m sure you remember that whenever you mentioned Apple in the past, people laughed. “Apple is dying,” they said. Worse, they’d say, “Apple is dead.” Nowadays, everyone knows that Apple is doing more than just hanging in there. Here is a company that leads more than it follows.

I work in the IT world daily and regularly hear computer professionals -- people pulling down six-digit salaries -- tell me how much they loathe Microsoft. Meanwhile, I get to talk to kids, parents, professionals, IT guys, geeks -- near most anybody who has used Macs for a good period of time -- and they do more than praise their Macs; they damned near rhapsodize the thing. This is what Ellison respects about Steve Jobs’ Apple, that which no other American company has achieved: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Someone wrote a book about Ellison titled The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison. If I were to write a book, it would be titled The Difference Between Larry Ellison and Michael Dell, and Between Larry Ellison and Bill Gates: Larry Ellison Openly Admits that He Wants to Be Like Steve Jobs When He Grows Up. You don't spend so much ink and air talking about someone if you truly believe that person is immaterial in the scheme of computer-industry's things.

More than just us Mac users will be trying figure how Steve does it. And I'm sure that Larry isn't the only high-roller who wants to be an FOS. We will spend forever trying to fathom the Jobs mystique and the Apple phenomenon, yet they will both remain.

We will spend the rest of eternity trying to figure out what the deal is with Larry Ellison’s near-obsession with praising Steve Jobs. But, the same way that we look at the rich and famous, wondering “how do they do it?” and “can I do it, too?” many should look at Apple’s recent success (and the best is yet to come, this columnist thinks), and wonder, “what does Ellison know that we don’t know?”

I’m sure he knows far more than he alludes to in his myriad public comments on Apple. After all, the guy is an Apple Board Member, as well as an FOS. I’m sure that that in itself makes him privy to plans that Apple rumor mongers can only imagine in their wettest dreams.

Besides, he hasn’t been wrong about Apple yet.

Fini.

*Note
Before you grammar hounds write to tell us about a) the use of “ain’t” and b) the use of the double negative “ain’t no,” relax, folks. We know our grammar. It was done intentionally, just for effect…

Works Cited/Suggested Reading
SiliconValley.com (6/8/01), “Ellison reflects on great race in life, work, commitment,” http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svtop/ellisn060801.htm

This column is © 2001 Rodney O. Lain. All rights reserved.

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About Rodney O. Lain

A former journalist and college prof, Rodney lives in Minnesota, where he freelance writes by night and works by day as a junior manager for a Fortune 50 company (daily he bemoans the fact that he was assigned a Gateway laptop by the IT guys). He has a soft spot for H. L. Mencken, Steve Jobs, Prince, Richard Wright and other well-known status-quo breakers. Rodney also writes "iBrotha" for Mac Observer and "Things Macintosh" for Low End Mac. Also, he writes about religion, race and culture at his website iBrotha.com.

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