Suggested Song: Bordertown, Bill Magill
Suggested Drink: Tecate Cerveza, with lime

Puta, Spanish for “Whore” (noun): “A person who is willing to compromise their integrity or principles for personal gain.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary

1980s

I was known to venture south of the border on occasion in my youth, crossing the Rio Grande into Nuevo Laredo or down the Baja coast to Ensenada. The unpredictable lawlessness of these border regions sparked the adrenalin injectors in ways not possible north of the divide.

I made acquaintances down there that still warm the corazón. I sought to be a safe after-hours companion, with little money and pidgin Spanish, but charming in my clueless gringo way. Nothing was solicited but trust and adventure. Rainée took me midnight dancing at the Ballroom Holiday Inn, where she kept a room on the manager’s tab. Claudia had a tiny live/work bungalow behind a La Zona cantina. We drank Tecate from the can and talked LA Olympics until sunrise. She aspired to dance the salsa for a gold medal. Never mind my teasing that modern dance wasn’t an official category. But Billy, mírame bailar!

These were very good people with no good options. What they did on-meter was transactional and transparent; contrived but not shameful. I didn’t venture south for that and they appreciated it, but tenderness can be found in dark corners. Green shoots in squalor. Good people with no good options. Putas descontentas.

2025

Tim Cook and Marc Benioff (CEOs of Apple and Salesforce, respectively) joined a coterie of business leaders for dinner at the White House last week, and toasted Mohammed bin Salman’s red carpet visit to Washington. Salman had come bearing petro-riches, including $1T in US investments in return for Saudi access to America’s world-leading technology in energy, defense, and AI.

The 2 tech titans enjoyed honeynut squash soup and pistachio-crusted rack of lamb with a man who, according to the CIA, ordered the brutal murder and bone saw dismemberment of an American journalist (Jamal Khashoggi) in 2019. The Saudi government, when confronted with a mountain of evidence including an audio recording of Khashoggi’s final moments, conceded that, yes, it executed the killing. (Salman contested the CIA’s claim that he ordered the hit.) Also in 2019, 5 Saudi men confessed under torture to homosexual acts and were publicly beheaded. Common theater in the enlightened kingdom.

I’ve long admired Cook and Benioff. In contrast to a legion of increasingly brash and self-consumed tech titans, Cook and Benioff are reserved and stoic. They direct their considerable wealth toward charities and good causes heroically, and Benioff has been a great champion of my beloved San Francisco. But in the Trump multiverse, sharing polite dinner conversation with a murderous authoritarian is okay. I’m crestfallen.

Here was Tim Cook, powerful leader of the second most valuable company on this planet, presenting (with stunning deference) a glass wafer on 24-karat gold base in August to our own aspiring authoritarian. “You have been a great advocate for American innovation and manufacturing, and I’m grateful for your leadership and your commitment.” The words from his lips were pure ingratiation; the look on his face complete descontento.

And there was Marc Benioff, exasperating admirers in October by backing Trump’s call for a National Guard deployment in San Francisco and adding, in a New York Times interview, “I fully support the president,” who “is doing a great job.” A virulent backlash provoked a rapid backtrack, but the damage was done. Yet another self-inflicted momento descontento.

An instructive aside

Ford Motor Company was the largest car manufacturer in the world in the early 20^th century. Our man Henry was a brilliant pioneer of production design, supply chain management, and mass marketing and sales. He was also lauded in Mein Kampf and decorated with the Nazi Grand Cross of the German Eagle for complicity, through Ford-Worke, with Hitler’s war machine. Despite Ford’s stellar accomplishments and immense wealth, a vulgar little asterisk attesting to this Nazi complicity forever colored the legacy. (Public mea culpas later in life did nothing to remove the stain.)

Tim and Marc, you are good people. Unlike my gal pals Rainée and Claudia, YOU HAVE OPTIONS. Your net worths exceed $2B (Cook) and $9B (Benioff) in fuck you money. You can simply refuse to play the grovelling game, turn down the royal invitations, and decline comment on the current administration. And if this most minimal display of moral backbone puts shareholder value at risk (I submit that it will have the opposite effect), then FUCKING STEP DOWN.

Your 2 companies have deep benches of talented CEOs-in-waiting. You are getting on in age and not indispensable (I know that is hard to hear, on both counts). Your shareholders will be just fine; you’ll be just fine. Your legacies will remain (mostly) intact, and those vulgar little asterisks can be avoided. Best of all, you will cease being putas descontentos.

Bill Magill
San Francisco