Yesterday I heard Walter Isaacson talking about his biography of the last Steve Jobs on Terry Gross's NPR show Fresh Air.
The story of Jobs's parenthood is amazing. He was given up for adoption by his American mother, Joanne Schieble, and his Syrian-American father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, born in Homs. He was raised by Paul and Clara Jobs in Mountain View, California.
In his 20s, Jobs sought to find his biological parents. By reaching out to the doctor listed on his birth certificate, he was able to find Schieble. And Schieble introduced him to his sister, Mona Simpson, the novelist.
Walter Isaacson said that Jobs was pleased to discover that his sister was a great artist. Simpson told Jobs who his father was, and Jobs realized that he had met Jandali. Because Jandali ran a restaurant in Silicon Valley.
Says this account online:
“When I was looking for my biological mother, obviously I was looking for my biological father at the same time. I learned a little bit about him, and I didn’t like what I learned,” he told Walter Isaacson.
Jobs decided he did not want to see his father again. On the radio yesterday, Isaacson said that Jobs described Jandali as fat and balding. Terry Gross did not press the point: Why was Jobs averse to meeting his father?
No doubt Steve Jobs was an aesthetic monster. That taste/perfectionism/snobbery guided his achievement.
But I have to wonder whether he did not also share the conventional social prejudice against Arab-Americans, even in our "high" culture, the attitude reflected by novelist Erica Jong, who once titled a chapter of a book, Arabs and Other Animals. I hope that Mona Simpson, who shares Jobs's Arab-American background, will write about this issue some day.
P.S. Jobs's adoptive mother was an Armenian-American.
Hating him because he was Arab doesn’t fit with an artistic reaction. I read on HuffPo that he used to eat in his father’s restaurant before he knew who the guy was, but he didn’t like the man himself. And that was before he knew the guy was his father.
Is Terry Gross trying to create anti-Arab stuff? I’m becoming appalled by NPR’s innuendo in general. These just seems like more of the same.
Same impression I got…that Jobs just didn’t like the guy , not the type of person he admired.
Don’t think his being Arab had anything to do with it.
a lot of people who are adopted have psychological issues with their biological parents. a childhood imagining why your parents gave you up and things like that. sometimes it has to do w/the positioning of their relationship with the parents who raised them. i have a friend who never visited her biological father until her stepfather died. something to do with disloyalty. within a few months she made the effort and visited him..he had cancer and died within weeks but she got to meet him and then began a relationship with his wife who became sort of like a second mother to her and she moved to their state and into his house with his widow and they went into business together.
it’s complicated. hundreds of thousand of hours of therapy have been dedicated to this issue.
Terry Gross did not press the point: Why was Jobs averse to meeting his father?
yes, it seems like a natural follow up. (why no reference to how ‘smart’ gross is in this post?) the interview was pretty light stuff, with hagiographic references to jobs inventing the cell phone, personal computer, sliced bread, the mousetrap, and the latest surgical techniques to repair inguinal hernias. not a single reference to apple’s relationship with Foxconn, the superficial uses of the gadgetry produced, the cult of apple and jobs (i was in a store recently with my daughter, and a sales person was being ‘knighted’ in kitsch medieval styale as he passed the 3-month mark as a sales associate. oh, the thrill! and, yes, it seems most/all employees were a ‘he’ for whatever reason). and why the lack of interest in ‘dad’? i suspect it’s just that jobs has no use for anyone who isn’t a celebrity of sorts, either in their field, or in the true sense. but who knows. he wasn’t much of a human being, that’s for sure.
Jobs cult. Listen closely to who Gross promotes and books etc she covers. Very limited
she is narrow minded. not the sharpest interviewer in the drawer either (there are at least 4 or 5 local NPR hosts in my home state who do a much better job than she does.) i don’t know how much editorial control she has over the selection of subjects, but i understand that she has been at it for quite a while, so she must have some juice, as they say.
For Jong, that was directed to her brother-in-law who was a Lebanese Catholic.
Interesting, thanks, Phil.
Heard about 10 minutes of the program. Tired of this effort to canonize Jobs. Know he was a genius, innovator, visionary billionaire. Really bothered that the guy never really spread credit for the products created amongst the geniuses that he could afford to harness.
He could have made those to bridge the digital divide. How many jobs did Jobs create in the US?
Interesting that he would make such a rigid judgement about his bio father. Guess he deserves no more no less
i like your take on all of this kathleen.. i share much of it..
“He could have made those to bridge the digital divide. How many jobs did Jobs create in the US? ”
Without being a Jobs fan, I’d say quite a few since Apple is the world’s most valuable company, the guy built a chain of stores around its products, and there have been oodles of accessory products made by other companies to keep up.
Jobs was great at steering the design of his products but he still worshiped profit above all else. Apple had the mother of all windows of opportunity (no pun intended) when Vista flopped, to sting the market with a new (and lower cost… or free even) OS to dislodge Microsoft in their monopoly. The opportunity passed.
Then came the iPhone, the first time a cell phone was enhanced with enough tech and software to be the next generation of computing devices — what the laptop was a couple decades ago. But he passed on market share in order to maintain tight-fisted control of what the phone can do. And that’s why Google’s Android has exploded into the void that the iPhone left unfilled.
Jobs was an impressive businessman but I don’t consider him a visionary, myself.
By the way what does Jobs or what he did have to do with a middle east mostly focused on the I/P issue website? Are you taken with him Phil?
i read an interview w/jobs father before jobs died. i was impressed. i will try to dig it up. he spoke of the circumstance of his birth. they were in love, her parents wouldn’t approve of their marriage. it was the 50′s and unmarried women gave up their children for adoption back then. as i recall after that happened the defied the parents and got married anyway and that is when the sister was born. the marriage didn’t work.
it was a good interview, i liked the guy.
here is the interview w/job’s father Abdul Fattah Jandali. i recommend.
interesting.
Have been pushing Chris Matthews etc for years to cover how many of our congress members are millionaires and how they have personally profitted from reduced capital gains taxes that they voted for
Capitol Gains
Are members of Congress guilty of insider trading—and does it matter?
By Megan McArdle
In a different NPR interview for Morning Edition Isaacson related how Jobs felt abandoned by his biological parents while simultaneously felt chosen by his adoptive parents. Another anecdote from that interview was just plain weird. Jobs was not sure if there was an afterlife or whether death is just turning off the switch. This was why — according to Isaacson — Jobs didn’t put on/off switches on his devices.
“But I have to wonder whether he did not also share the conventional social prejudice against Arab-Americans”
I’m just curious. Do you actually have any journalistic standards? Like, maybe, some evidence that Jobs felt this way?
It seems like your standard is “if there is an infinitesmal possibility of truth, I will use it for my own political agenda.”
Hey, Steve Jobs called his company Apple.
I have to wonder whether he did not also share the conventional social prejudice against lemons.
Like you, apparently, have a conventional social prejudice against straw men. You keep beating on them every chance you get here.
I ordered the Isaacson book but have not read it yet. I watched the 60-minutes segment last Sunday in which Isaacson was interviewed about his book. On Jobs’ father, it seems that Jobs was turned off because when unknowingly dining at his father’s restaurant more than once actually, his father (not knowing that Jobs was his son but knowing who Jobs was) flouted to Jobs how much money he had made, how much money he had, and all the good things he was able to afford, etc. That is the part that turned Jobs off, and I can understand why since Jobs did not like to flaunt his wealth and lived a pretty low-key life by Silicon Valley standards. Nothing to do with religion.
Steve Jobs’ mother left his father while she was pregnant with Jobs after great pressure from her bigoted parents. She went back to California and in the process divorced the Syrian father.
In the 1980s, Jobs met his sister. Despite numerous attempts by the father to contact Steve, the latter refused any contact.
Incidentally, I read an article on ABC news that attempted to paint the father as a gambling mafioso; the article stated that the father worked at a casino in Vegas.
But the fact is, the father was a political science professor and was also a businessman who owned a casino in Vegas.
Ironically, when Steve Jobs passed away, Syrian media mourned his death as a son of Syria, if you will.
RE: “No doubt Steve Jobs was an aesthetic monster.”
SEE: “Steve Jobs, Hubris, and Destruction of California Architectural Legacy”, By Richard Silvertein, Tikun Olam, 10/06/11
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to richardsilverstein.com
P.S. I believe the Jackling house might have been used as the home of Noah Cross in a memorable scene in the film Chinatown; where Jake Gettis was invited to lunch with Mr. Cross (jpeg images on Facebook), and was served trout complete with the head (but not chicken, fortunately). The “Sheriff’s Posse” also made a cameo appearance, and Mr. Cross explained that he was good friends with the sheriff and allowed the “posse” to practice at his estate. El Rancho Escondido on Catalina Island was also used as Cross’ estate, according to one source. – link to movie-locations.com
FROM IMDb:
SOURCE – link to imdb.com
“But I have to wonder whether he did not also share the conventional social prejudice against Arab-Americans”
Jobs “not liking” what he found out about his father was likely pre-9/11. The stigma on people of Arab origin was nowhere near as great in the 80′s and 90′s, would whatever stigma was abound back then have been enough to warrant a prejudice against Arabs strong enough to completely override his admitted curiosity? IMO I doubt it, but there’s no use in speculating, what he said could reference an infinite amount of things, none of which are our business.
Actually, if you spoke with Arab-Americans in the US who attended college as early as the 1970s, they would tell you that they were harassed, taunted and stereotyped like they were during the 1973 oil crisis.
So 9/11 or no 9/11, there is no point in speculating what it was like being an Arab-American in the US without either experiencing such discrimination or at least doing some basic research.
After all, the Zionist lobby wasn’t born in 2001. It has been around for decades and was quite active after 1967.
It helps to know some history.
I stand corrected.
what he found out about his father was likely pre-9/11.
i second, avi _g. the ‘mooslims’ as monolithic terrorist group meme long pre-dates 9/11. it has been cited before, but i again refer to ‘reel bad arabs’, first published in 2001, which is a survey of racist hollywood productions, such as ‘delta force’, ‘true lies’, etc., the production of which all pre-date 9/11. the munich olympics, iranian crisis, bombing of the marine barracks in beruit, were all flashpoints for anti-arab/muslim racism. (and to be clear, most racists don’t spend much time analyzing the distinctions between arabs, muslims, non-muslim arabs, non-arb muslims, and so on.)
marc b.
Those are all great points. I would also add that it wasn’t just what you referred as “flashpoints” that energized and fomented the bigotry in question, but an Israel lobby that benefited from vilifying Arabs. Cherry picking data and incidents to demonize Arabs as though they were uniquely evil was utilized early on by the Israel lobby.
The more evil Arabs and Moslems seem, the higher the probability of Israel’s propaganda succeeding.